Integrity panel: Commission welcomes Parry’s report

Press release

Date: 1 February 2010

The Gambling Commission today welcomed the package of recommendations from the integrity expert panel, chaired by Rick Parry. The Commission stands ready to play its part in implementing the recommendations and looks forward to working with its partners in the sports and betting industries to do this once the package is endorsed by the Sports Minister Gerry Sutcliffe.

The Commission’s support comes as the Minister considers the panel’s recommendations for tackling the risk to the integrity of sport. At the time the panel, which included the Commission’s Director of Regulation, Nick Tofiluk, and Commissioner, Ben Gunn, an integrity expert, was launched last June, Commission Chairman Brian Pomeroy said:

“By acting together against the threat to integrity, the betting industry, sports bodies, players and their representatives, police forces, the Gambling Commission and others can achieve much more than any of us alone."

Underlining that commitment to cooperation in the light of the report’s publication, Pomeroy today added:

“We warmly welcome this report. It embodies the joint working with the betting industry and sports bodies that we have always envisaged necessary to protect betting integrity.

“The Commission stands ready to establish a new sports betting intelligence unit by enhancing its existing intelligence capacity in Birmingham. This will enable the Commission not only to pursue criminal investigations more effectively but also to support sports bodies and the betting industry more effectively with intelligence in their efforts to detect and prevent sports betting corruption.”

Ends

Notes to editors

The Gambling Commission

  1. 1. The Gambling Commission (the Commission) regulates gambling in the public interest. It does so by keeping crime out of gambling, by ensuring that gambling is conducted fairly and openly, and by protecting children and vulnerable people from being harmed or exploited by gambling. The Commission also provides independent advice to government on gambling in Britain.
  2. 2. The Commission is responsible for licensing and regulating all gambling in Great Britain other than the National Lottery and spread betting, which are the responsibility of the National Lottery Commission and the Financial Services Authority (FSA) respectively.
  3. 3. The Commission licenses betting operators and licensees must adhere to the Commission’s licence conditions and codes of practice.  Licence condition 15.1 requires betting operators to provide information regarding suspicious activity to the Commission or in some cases the relevant sports governing body.
  4. 4. Cheating is an offence under section 42 of the Gambling Act and the Commission has powers to void bets, or to temporarily stop winnings being paid out (by issuing an interim moratorium) in certain circumstances. 
  5. 5.  Letter from Brian Pomeroy on sports betting integrity panel report - February 2010
  6. 6. More information on the Commission’s approach to betting integrity can be found in the Commission’s Betting integrity: policy position paper - March 2009.
  7. 7. Report of the Sports Betting Integrity Panel 

Further information

  1. You can call John Travers on (0121) 230 6700, (07852) 124624 or email him via communications@gamblingcommission.gov.uk.