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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to prevent gambling operators from using the 'dark' web for illegal activities.

In 2019/20 the Gambling Commission took enforcement action in 59 cases involving unlicensed online operators. It has taken enforcement action in 74 cases so far in 2020/21. The Commission’s action includes coordinating with regulators in other jurisdictions, working with payment providers to prevent payments to unlicensed operators and working with web hosting companies and search engines to remove sites or prevent them appearing on searches.

The Commission have not received any reports of the dark web being used by GB customers for illegal gambling, but the Review of the Gambling Act 2005 will consider the risks posed by emerging technologies and a number of issues around unlicensed gambling operators, including the current scale of the issue and whether the Gambling Commission has the powers it needs to tackle it effectively. The government is also consulting on an uplift to industry licence fees, which will provide the Commission with greater capacity in the short to medium term to investigate and tackle the threat caused by unlicensed operators.