Peers for Gambling Reform Gambling Summit – Tim Miller speech
03 September 2025
This speech was delivered by executive director Tim Miller at the Peers for Gambling Reform Gambling Summit on 3 September 2025.
Please note: This is the speech as drafted and may slightly differ from the delivered version.
Thank you everyone and thank you for that introduction.
Given we are at a summit hosted by Peers for Gambling Reform, I’d like to spend my time with you talking about where, from the Commission’s perspective, the regulatory reform agenda has got to and where it needs to go next. I also want to explore what is needed to ensure that reforms deliver real, effective and measurable outcomes and what our role is, as the national regulator, in achieving those outcomes.
In the ongoing pursuit for gambling reform it is worth stepping back and remembering that we are currently in the midst of seeing the delivery of the largest programme of reform since the Gambling Act of 2005. The Gambling Act Review and the White Paper that followed in 2023, was a significant moment in the development of gambling regulation in Britain. Instead of piecemeal calls or attempts at reform, sometimes driven by misuse of data or evidence, we finally saw a joined up and more evidence-led approach to building upon the regulatory and public policy framework for gambling that had existed for over 15 years. The result was a comprehensive, Government-backed programme of work, with support across many areas of Parliament. And the Gambling Commission was first out of the blocks in playing its part when it came to implementation.
Within a couple of months of the White Paper being published we had already delivered a number of our actions and began publishing the consultations that statute rightly requires us to conduct before considering changes to our regulations. And our work to implement the Review has already led to significant changes:
- financial vulnerability checks, using publicly available data at a threshold of £150 per 30-day rolling period have come into force – helping protect those who are at risk of harms
- Changes to how operators use direct marketing, have given consumers greater control over the marketing they receive from gambling companies
- New rules that have reduced the speed and intensity of online products while making them fairer and increasing consumer understanding about game play
- And we’ve tightened age-verification, requiring staff at gambling premises to check the age of any customer who appears to be under 25 years of age, whilst introducing new rules so that even smaller licensees, must carry out age verification test purchasing.
These are just some of the changes that we have delivered that have already come into force.
Taken together, alongside actions by government and others, this is already clear progress in delivering a significant body of reform. And there is plenty more to come, as foreshadowed by the White Paper.
But I know that for many people in this room and for others who will read this afterwards, this may not feel enough. And it may prove that further reform will be needed in the future - the gambling industry is a rapidly evolving landscape where the risks and challenges change equally quickly. Let’s not forget as well that some in the gambling industry also have to own the fact their actions created the environment where reform was absolutely needed. Some of the egregious failures that we saw in our own casework over the years demonstrated that.
Now I have worked with many operators who have taken the lessons from our casework seriously and have sought to meet high standards. But I have also worked with some who needed to be dragged along that journey kicking and screaming - along with some that weren’t able or willing to make that journey and are consequently no longer part of the industry.
However, to understand whether the reforms being implemented are effective, whether they are delivering the outcomes that we all want to see, they need to be properly evaluated. To make the greatest progress in making gambling safe, fair and crime free we need to understand what actually works in practice. And candidly, getting into a position where we are on an endless treadmill of reform does not take us any further forward in achieving that understanding of what works. Indeed, like a treadmill, we risk expending a lot of energy just running on the spot.
I sometimes worry that the public policy debate around gambling spends a lot of time trying to generate, and campaign on, new ideas yet gives limited attention to ensuring and assessing the effectiveness of those ideas once they are put into practice. In line with the Regulators’ Code, that we and most other statutory regulators have to follow, we are committed to understanding the impact of our efforts. To finding what works so we can do more of that. To finding what doesn’t work so that we can improve it. To finding out what provides no or limited consumer benefit so we can remove unnecessary regulatory burdens. And it is a sign of that commitment that we have developed a shared evaluation plan of the White Paper programme with DCMS and have jointly contracted with the National Centre for Social Research to deliver the many elements of that plan. We are not going to rely upon gut instinct or belief to measure the success of the White Paper - we will rely upon evidence.
The delivery of the White Paper recommendations has been a resource intensive exercise and coincided with us addressing ever more complex regulatory casework. It also coincided with us significantly ramping up action against the illegal market - an illegal market that we know sees consumers that have experienced gambling harm, especially those that have self-excluded, as a key part of its customer base.
Just since the start of the Financial Year in April, through to early August, we have:
- issued 344 Cease and Desists to advertisers and operators
- reported 45,674 URLs to various search engines and seen 30,605 URLs removed as a result
- referred 466 websites to the search engines for delisting and
- disrupted 235 websites so that they have either been taken down or geo-blocked.
This level of activity is of course resource intensive but it is delivering results.
On top of what we have already been delivering we know that there have been calls for us to take on additional roles, beyond those that Parliament empowered us to fulfil. One recent example has been around the inspection of individual gambling premises, particularly adult gaming centres.
The Gambling Act was and remains very clear on this. The power to grant premises licences sits with local authorities in their role as licensing authorities. It also made clear that any licence fees they charge must be used solely for the purpose of their local regulatory activities, which includes premises inspections. And there was a clear statutory logic to this. As a fairly small regulator based in Birmingham, the Gambling Commission is not in a position to police every gambling establishment up and down the nations of Britain. Any change to that position would require government to introduce a very different funding model for the Commission. It is certainly the case that we must and do provide robust oversight of the licensed entities that operate those premises. It is also the case that we provide appropriate guidance to local authorities and work in close partnership with them to aid the exercise of their functions under the Gambling Act. We value our relationship with local authorities as our co-regulators. But it can not be the role of the national regulator to fill any gaps left in local regulation when less than half of licensing authorities are conducting any premises inspections, that the licensing fee funds them to perform.
And so, I am unapologetic in saying that the Commission must and will remain focussed on delivering the already considerable statutory roles that Parliament gave to us. We are equally committed to remaining focussed on playing our part in implementing the Gambling Act Review White Paper, as quickly and efficiently as possible and then evaluating its effectiveness. This will then provide a strong evidence base to inform any discussions that there may be in the future about potential further reforms.
You can also expect us to continue our work to achieve compliance at the earliest opportunity from licenced gambling businesses. And where we find failings, we will continue to take appropriate action. Already this year we have suspended licences, forced non-compliant operators out of the market through our enforcement activity and issued both financial and other penalties. We are taking more action to hold Personal Management Licence holders accountable for the actions of their businesses. We have deployed our powers as a prosecuting authority perhaps more than at any other time in our history. On top of this, we continue to ratchet up the pressure on those who look to offer illegal gambling at scale in Great Britain.
There will always be more to do and I do not expect that the implementation of the White Paper will be the end of the story when it comes to reform of gambling regulation in Britain. But my encouragement to all of those that have an interest in making gambling fair, safe and crime free is do not allow a drive for future reforms to be at the expense of effective delivery and measurement of current reforms - because it is delivery, not further policy papers, that will actually protect consumers.
So thank you for your time today and I look forward to your questions.
Thank you.
Last updated: 3 September 2025
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