Draft Casinos (Gaming Machines and Mandatory Conditions) Regulations 2025

Ian Sollom Excerpts

Monday 16th June 2025 General Committees

[Ian Sollom (St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Hobhouse.

The regulations before us today represent a change that runs directly counter to the Liberal Democrat approach to tackling problem gambling and gambling harm. Public Health England estimates that problem gambling costs the economy £1.27 billion annually in healthcare, criminal justice and other social costs. Over 420,000 online gamblers lose at least £2,000 a year, with those losses being disproportionately concentrated in our most deprived communities.

Recent NHS data shows that gambling addiction referrals to specialist clinics more than doubled last year; that is partly why the Liberal Democrats have consistently called for a public health approach to gambling harm. We know that gambling affects not just individual players but families, communities and wider society. We know that there are more than 400 gambling-related suicides annually and that 340,000 problem gamblers in the UK deserve better protection than these regulations provide.

The stated aim is to help land-based operators compete with online gambling companies, but I suggest that that creates a race to the bottom. Instead of relaxing physical gambling regulation to match that online excess, maybe we should look at strengthening the online space. I have two questions for the Minister. First, what specific assessment has been made of whether increasing gaming machine ratios from 2:1 to 5:1, combined with that new extended entitlement for up to 80 machines, will increase gambling-related harm? Secondly, given that 20% of the UK population are directly or indirectly harmed by gambling, will the Government commit to monitoring harm rates following these changes and to adjusting the regulations if harm increases?

The regulations are easing controls precisely when stronger controls are needed. They prioritise industry convenience over consumer protection and take a step back from the harm reduction principles that should guide gambling policy. For those reasons, the Liberal Democrats oppose the regulations.