Gibraltar’s Gambling Commissioner Andrew Lyman has raised serious doubts about whether Andy Burnham can revoke the ‘aim to permit’ rule without a sweeping overhaul of UK gambling legislation.
The ‘aim to permit’ principle is a cornerstone of the 2005 Gambling Act, and Lyman believes removing it is far more legally complex than the new Prime Minister may have anticipated.
Lyman served at the UK Gambling Commission in the immediate aftermath of the 2005 Act and recalls the considerable parliamentary time and policy work required to deliver that legislation.
He has been unequivocal in his assessment of the difficulty involved, stating plainly: “I don’t think there could be a clever workaround.”
Lyman expanded on that view, warning that revisiting local authority obligations under the principle would inevitably force a broader reckoning with the entire regulatory framework.
He said: “If you’re visiting the section around local authorities and them being governed by their aim to permit, then surely you’re having to look at the whole aim to permit cornerstone from the point of view of the Gambling Commission as well.”
He concluded that such a process “could actually result in a very substantial change to the nature of gambling regulation in the UK,” a prospect that has alarmed the retail gambling industry.
Tim Miller, speaking at iGB Live last month, reinforced this view by explaining that aim to permit is not a standalone concept that can be easily extracted from the existing Act.
Miller told NEXT.io: “Some of the campaigners will say aim to permit means that you’ve just got to allow anything to happen. What the legislation says is aim to permit, subject to three licensing objectives of keeping crime out of gambling, making sure gambling is safe, and that vulnerable people are protected from harm.”
Alex Ballinger MP had recently called for a new gambling act during a Social Market Foundation policy presentation, where the think tank also urged the government to adopt a 40% machine gaming duty.
Lyman noted that as soon as a debate about changing a fundamental principle of primary legislation begins, groups including Peers for Gambling Reform and the Gambling Reform APPG will inevitably agitate for a full review of the Gambling Act.
Burnham’s announcement is expected to “send a ripple through DCMS and the Gambling Commission,” according to Lyman, who suspects the regulator received no prior notice of the policy shift.
The recent move of Sarah Fox from DCMS to replace Tim Miller in overseeing policy at the UK Gambling Commission could, Lyman suggests, now be viewed in a new context.
He floated the possibility that her appointment came because the policy shift had already been “flagged as a potential change in government risk appetite towards gambling.”
The workload created by removing aim to permit rules would place a significant burden on a regulator that does not appear close to appointing a new permanent CEO or chair.
Lyman recalled the 2001 Budd Report that preceded and shaped the original gambling act, suggesting a similar exercise would likely be necessary before any meaningful legislative review could proceed.
For an industry caught off guard by an administration perceived as broadly anti-gambling, that lengthy timeline may offer some limited reassurance.
Lyman said: “It could be some months possibly if there’s a fundamental review of the whole gambling act, years before you see any meaningful implementation.”
The announcement also carries political risk for Burnham, who had little lead-in time to stress-test his proposals and plot out their practical implications before making them public.
Lyman questioned whether politicians might “eventually come to a view that this is a fundamental change to the approach to gambling” and whether they might seek to “water it down in some way, or will they try and find some alternative way.”
One possible compromise Lyman acknowledged, though dismissed as deeply unsatisfactory, would be to remove aim to permit solely from local authorities while leaving the principle intact within the Gambling Act itself.
He described such an outcome as a “fudge,” referencing a shelved 2005 policy requiring new retail betting venues to demonstrate “unstimulated demand for that particular shop” as an example of policies that look credible on paper but prove unworkable in practice.
With the announcement made during the government’s summer recess, the knotty details of implementation are only now beginning to concern Number 10.
