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The fight to bring tougher gaming control in the United Kingdom continues as the country’s members of parliament are now calling for a £2-per-bet limit to be imposed on online casino games. According to the MPs, this limit is primarily aimed at combating gambling addiction which is currently considered to be a “public health crisis” in Britain.

Even though these are just recommendations at the moment, they are already having an impact on the territory’s gambling industry. The shares of the county’s biggest gambling operators plunged at the beginning of the week. For instance, GVC saw a 10.5 percent drop in share price while William Hill and 88 Holdings saw share price drops of 12.5 percent and 13.9 percent respectively. No one saw this coming but considering the UK’s history of tough gambling regulation, it would seem like some investors prefer to play it safe.

Tougher Regulations

The calls for the limits on online betting games are being championed by the Gambling Related Harm All-Party Parliamentary Group. Previously they have successfully lobbied for reduction of fixed-odd betting terminal stakes to £2-per-bet. Now they want online casino games to be capped at the same amount.

In addition to that, the group is also hoping to convince lawmakers to implement a ban on the use of credits for online gambling. All this was included in a report by the group which also called for, among other things, stricter responsible advertising measures as well as restrictions to VIP programs which often try to convince players to gambler more for bigger rewards.

“For too long, online gambling operators have exploited vulnerable gamblers to little or no retribution from the regulator,” conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith, a member of the APPG, said.

The United Kingdom Gambling Commission (UKGC) has been taking a lot of heat from some lawmakers who feel that the regulator is not doing enough to fulfill its mandate. It remains to be seen how exactly it will handle this particular issue.

The iGaming Operators’ Response

As expected, the recommendations that were included in the parliamentary group’s report have not been met well by a number of online gambling groups and companies. Many of them have pointed out that the stake limit is not necessary since they use internal data to identify customers that are either gambling beyond their means or are at risk of gaming-related harm. These are just a few of the responsible gaming measures that they have been considering.

Needless to say, the main reason why online gaming operators are not amused is because the recommended stake limits would mean a significant drop in online gambling revenue.

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A review into the government's handling of the pandemic will accuse ministers of 'gambling with the UK's future' by relaxing restrictions over Christmas.

In the review, set to be published today, cross-party MPs have made more than 40 recommendations to the government 'so that its preparedness and response may be improved in future'.

The report says the government's approach has been 'based on the false choice between saving lives or saving jobs and the economy' and led to the UK 'mourning among the highest number of lives lost to the pandemic, while at the same time bracing for one of the deepest recessions in its aftermath'.

Nearly 60,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the UK since the start of the pandemic, according to government figures - the seventh-highest number of deaths per population globally.

The report also accuses ministers of taking an 'English exceptionalism' approach by not looking to other countries that had already handled similar epidemics.

'There's no doubt there was a delay in seeking advice from those countries, including Italy, where this experience had already happened,' it will say.

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As well as working with other countries, the report recommends the UK government 'works more closely and collaboratively with the devolved nations'.

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'Each devolved administration should retain the ability and capacity to respond to its own needs where necessary, but within the framework of an agreed four-nation strategy,' it adds.

It warned its recommendations are now 'more important than ever' as the government is 'gambling with the UK's future by relaxing restrictions over the Christmas period and returning to a tier system which we know has not worked before'.

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This is the All-Party Parliamentary Group's first interim report on COVID-19 after it was set up in July to conduct a rapid inquiry.

The group has heard from 65 witnesses in over 200 hours of live evidence sessions, with just under 3,000 separate evidence submissions.

Lib Dem MP Layla Moran, one of the APPG's chairs, wrote in the report's foreword: 'The central objective of the APPG on coronavirus is to save lives but, as is laid bare in this report, to save lives is to save livelihoods. To do that, the government must listen and adapt.
'We write this report with the sincere hope that, by working cross-party with scientists, civil society and individuals, we can help the government to do what we need it to do at this time of national crisis: succeed.'