Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps she is taking to improve enforcement against unlicensed gambling operators.

We are committed to working closely with the Gambling Commission to ensure that illegal gambling, in all its forms, is addressed.

In the past year, the Commission has significantly increased its disruption activity and has a renewed focus on finding innovative ways to tackle the illegal market. Since April 2024, they have issued over 1,150 cease and desist, and disruption notices. In the same period, over 118,000 URLs relating to illegal gambling have been referred to search engines, Google and Bing, with over 81,000 URLs removed by those search engines.

The Crime and Policing Bill, introduced in Parliament on 25 February 2025, will grant the Gambling Commission with new powers to more quickly and effectively take down illegal gambling websites.