Gambling: Loot Boxes Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
Lord Suri
Main Page: Lord Suri (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Suri's debates with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
(2 years, 3 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, as I outlined, this is a technical area and we have had a lot of submissions to look at, including academic literature on this changing and emerging area. But this has not stopped us taking action in the meantime: we have banned gambling on credit cards, tightened restrictions on VIP schemes and updated the gambling advertising codes to ban adverts that have a strong appeal to children—for example, those featuring sportsmen such as Premiership footballers.
Lord Suri (Con)
My Lords, loot boxes are a form of online gambling. There is no harm in regulating them, but we have to remember that underage persons are certainly not allowed to participate in gambling. In Kenya, I was a trader in books and stationery and was a leading importer of gambling newspapers and magazines from the UK. Many sensible persons would approach me and say that I should tell my fellow traders that they should not sell these gambling newspapers to children, as a token of good service to society.