Social Market Foundation (SMF), a renowned U.K. public policy think-tank, recently released a new paper indicating that the British public’s sentiment towards gambling may be hardening, meaning that the reforms laid out in the recent white paper may not meet much resistance.
The paper, titled, A bitter taste…Exploring the political constraints on public health policies, was said to represent “a review of polling evidence and interviews with policymakers involved in implementing significant public health policies for smoking, drinking, obesity, and gambling.”
Data was aggregated from several sources from as far back as 2015, including Redfield & Wilton, Savanta ComRes, Populus, Ipsos MORI, YouGov and others.
As reported by SBC News, one key takeaway outlined in the report was that “public opinion doesn’t seem to be the primary obstacle to interventionist public health policies,” given that most of the topics receive “at least plurality support.”
Regarding gambling specifically, the SMF referenced a U.K. Gambling Commission (UKGC) survey from 2019 that posited that “82% of respondents believe there are excessive opportunities for gambling, and 62% feel that gambling should be discouraged,” per SBC.
The UKGC survey also noted that 29 percent of respondents felt that a comprehensive ban on gambling would be best.
In its report, the SMF asserted that the “existing regulatory and societal consensus is deemed unsuitable,” with part of the reason being that “those attempting to regulate gambling are frequently (and mistakenly) labeled as ‘prohibitionists,’” per SBC.
Moving forward, the SMF laid out two potential pathways for future policy development—a “Building ‘scoreboard momentum’” plan, which emphasizes the measures most likely to pass, as well as a “two steps forward, one step back” plan, which is more ambitious by taking on multiple issues at one time and planning for at least some pushback as a result.
