£100 loss limit may protect lower-income gamblers, says report

GAMBLING websites may have to introduce a £100 loss limit to protect their lower-income customers under plans being considered by ministers.

Industry-wide “affordability checks” should be introduced to identify vulnerable gamblers, according to a report by the Social Market Foundation.

The think tank proposes a “soft cap” where anybody who wanted to gamble more than £23 a week would automatically be asked to demonstrate they can afford to lose without hardship.

These checks could be in the form of asking people to provide their credit rating, payslips or tax returns. The cap would not be applied to where someone wins and wants to bet again.

At present, operators conduct their own affordability checks if they think a customer may be at risk.

Under the proposals, an ombudsman would have access to data from all operators and oversee a new process of standardised affordability checks. The think tank’s report was this week presented to ministers as well as No10’s policy unit. It comes ahead of a government review of the UK’S gambling laws, expected in the autumn.

James Noyes, author of the report, said: “For too long, gambling operators have talked about the need to protect their customers but have not worked together in order to make affordability checks a reality. A fixed cap that applies across operators is the only way that consumers can be protected from harmful spend.”

He said gamblers should be free to spend more than the proposed threshold “only after they show that their gambling is neither unaffordable nor harmful”. The Betting and Gaming Council said: “We already carry out robust affordability checks. We disagree with the suggestion of an arbitrary and random low cap on spending and can think of no other area of the economy where the Government determines how much an individual can spend.”