Michael Dugher: Government aiming to release white paper by Christmas

Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) CEO Michael Dugher has revealed the UK government hopes to release the white paper into the Gambling Act 2005 review before Christmas. Speaking at the G2E expo in Las Vegas, Dugher divulged to the gathered audience the difficulties the industry and trade body had faced due to the political turmoil in recent years, but that the current government remained committed to releasing the document. A version of the white paper was delivered by former Gambling Minister Chris Philp earlier this year to then-Prime Minster Boris Johnson, before he was ousted in a Conservative Party revolt. Liz Truss replaced Johnson at the start of September and has faced a baptism of fire as the macroeconomic crisis deepened and sterling plummeted in the early days of her Premiership. Truss, who Dugher labelled as the “most libertarian Prime Minister the UK has ever had in modern times”, has branded herself as pro-capitalist, anti-state and low-tax figure, somewhat at odds to the proposed changes to gambling regulation. Truss appointed Michelle Donelan as Culture Secretary to replace Nadine Dorries in her first cabinet, with Damian Collins remaining as Gambling Minister. Dugher revealed he had recently spoken to both Donelan and Collins regarding the white paper. Dugher said: “They still want to put together a package of reforms and they want to put together a white paper. Their aim is to do it before Christmas, which means you want to move pretty quick. “It means essentially having a draft white paper by the beginning of next month,” he added. Dugher also noted that he expects the white paper to be somewhat different than the version previously delivered by Philp, a point Sir Iain Duncan Smith recently raised at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham. Dugher continued: “I think the white paper will be very different in some respects to proposals that were worked on by [Philp and Dorries]. I think this government has slightly different views.” The former Labour MP went on to reinforce his and the industry’s desire to finally deliver the white paper as he reflected on the tumultuous period in recent years. He said: “We’ve been working with five different government ministers, so this is quite complicated. It does take a little while to get up to speed and also ministers have different views as well wanting to revisit things. “We want the government to get on with this. We want a white paper and this constant uncertainty is really bad for business,” he concluded.