Despair at toothless watchdog

MPS today slam

Whitehall and the Gambling Commisson for not doing enough to protect problem punters.

The Commons Public Accounts Committee says the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and the watchdog it oversees should do more to fight gambling addiction.

The committee’s Labour chairwoman Meg Hillier said: “The Gambling Commission must be quicker at responding to problems.

“A torpid, toothless regulator doesn’t seem terribly interested in the harms it exists to reduce or the means it might use to achieve that.”

She gave the commission three months to clean up its act.

There are 395,000 problem gamblers in Britain and 1.8 million

“at risk” punters.

Suicide

The MPS’ report says: “The effects can be devastating – lifechanging for people and whole families.

“They include financial and home loss, relationship breakdowns, criminality and suicide.”

The Gambling Commission charges the industry £19million a year to police it.

But that is less than 0.2 per cent of £11.3billion operators take.

They spend £60million on treating addicts but the DCMS Department is accused of failing to understand prevention is better than cure.

The report adds: “Pace of change to ensure effective regulation has been slow.

“Also, penalties on companies which don’t effectively tackle problem gambling are weak.”

Ms Hillier adds: “The issue of gambling harm is not high enough up the Government’s agenda. Review of the Gambling Act is long overdue.”