Ban betting ads on TV during live sport events, says Labour
TV AND online gambling adverts should be banned during live sporting events, a new Labour policy suggests.
Under a major overhaul of gambling laws, adverts would be outlawed from up to five minutes before kick off and five minutes after the final whistle.
The report, by Labour deputy leader Tom Watson, follows a year-long review of problem gambling. It states the ‘explosion’ in online gambling was ‘unforseen’ by the 2005 Gambling Act, passed by the last Labour government, which liberated gambling laws.
Mr Watson said problem gambling was a ‘public health emergency’.
As well as a ban on sport adverts, the report calls for a ban on credit card betting and a new tax on gambling firms of 1 per cent of revenues, used to fund treatment of addicts. There would also
be new rules to allow addicts to tell their banks to block debit card transactions, and a ban on free-to-play gambling games for under-18s.
Premier League football clubs would be told to end sponsorship deals with gambling firms, with the threat of a ban.
Existing laws ban gambling adverts before the 9pm watershed, but a loophole allows them before 9pm when linked to a live sports event.
During the Moscow World Cup, one in six adverts around matches was from a gambling firm, analysis found.
Last night Labour faced accusations of hypocrisy, with critics pointing to the negative effects of the 2005 Gambling Act.
Tory MP Chris Skidmore said: ‘Labour liberalised the gambling market. We are correcting their mistakes.’ There are about 25,000 problem gamblers aged between 11 and 16 in the UK.
‘We are correcting their mistakes’
THESE are words you will not read often in the Mail, but this paper warmly congratulates Labour on its belated support for our campaign to crack down on unscrupulous betting firms feeding a national epidemic of gambling addiction.
Just a couple of questions. Will the party now apologise for Tony Blair’s pernicious 2005 Gambling Act, which cleared the way for bookmakers to hook children with incessant TV advertising during live matches before the watershed?
Meanwhile, will Labour be returning the vast sums it has received in donations from Bet365 founder Peter Coates, garnered from the profits of addicts’ misery?
IN this age of street violence and ‘county line’ drug gangs recruiting children as dealers, Leicestershire police hoped for training in tackling crime. Instead, HQ offered a course in office banter, to teach them the ‘fine line’ between joking with colleagues and giving offence. First, an officer faces a racism inquiry for using the expression ‘whiter than white’. Now this. Isn’t it ever clearer that police priorities have gone dangerously awry?