As I write this, in early February, the general UK news media have once again “played a blinder” in misleading the great British public as to what is going with regard to  the UK Government’s gambling policy. I was actually listening to BBC Radio 4 news one evening last week as they suddenly announced, with breathless urgency, that they had just discovered that, surprise surprise, “the UK Government was not going to proceed  with the (so-called) Supercasino” – as if this was a stunning new development that no-one expected! Anyone who had been following events since Gordon Brown took over with even half an eye to this issue already knew this, of course, and was also aware of the second half of this “breaking news story” that the UK Government was going ahead with allowing the 8 so-called “large” and the 8 so-called “small” casinos planned under the 2005 Gambling Act which, of course, finally came fully into force only last September. It has all been so much of an open secret to anyone remotely in the know that the only interesting matter has been when the final announcement stating that “the appropriate Order would imminently be laid before Parliament” would come.
This is actually the third time it has been trailed. Industry leaders were told both by Ministers and by civil servants it would happen in late November/early December last year, then again that it would be in January almost as soon as Parliament resumed, and now it may be the week after Parliament’s imminent “half-term holiday”. There is still a slight risk – but I hope it is only slight – that the Order for the 16 would be defeated; no doubt the anti-gambling “crusade” of the Editor of the Daily Mail will have yet another outing, evangelical churches, Methodists and the Salvation Army will get lots of airtime and column-inches and no-one much will refer to the very detailed Prevalence Study showing no increase in problem gambling at all.
 My inside political sources tell me the reason for all the delays is that a different Government Department, not DCMS but DCLG, haven’t yet come up with a “package” as a sop to both Manchester (previously, readers will recall, declared the “winning” location for the supercasino, by the Government’s own Casino Advisory Panel) or for Blackpool which desperately needs regeneration. So, it’s a further stage in this pantomime which also now resembles a “merry-go-round”.
One matter which will be clarified is whether the supposedly pro-business Opposition will join the Daily Mail again. I very much fear they will. Since last summer a new junior Opposition spokesman has been going around telling people in the industry that the Opposition is now not against the industry. He only became an MP in 2005 so is very inexperienced. Now is the acid test. If his Leader and his Shadow Secretary of State vote against the plans for the new 16, he is going to look particularly silly as all his warm words will have been shown up as so much hot air. I hope I’m proved wrong and the Opposition either support the Order for the new 16 or at least abstain – but I have severe doubts – by the time you are reading this we may know.
On another subject, another matter has been further clarified in the last few days as I write this. The UK Court of Appeal has confirmed the earlier lower court decision and rejected the appeal of Mr. Derek Kelly of “the Gutshot Club”. If I were a tabloid Editor I would headline this story “Fatal Gunshot for the Gutshot”! Mr. Kelly had hoped to overturn the long-established view of UK law on poker. He wanted the Courts to say that poker was entirely a game of skill (so he could by-pass decades of legal precedent). Pretty well every UK Gambling lawyer was sure he’d fail. It’s now clear he has failed. In the UK, unlike many other jurisdictions, there’s no “predominance test”. If a game is “mixed chance and skill” its regarded in UK law as if it were “all chance” and that’s the category poker has always been in. It still is, as we all thought. At least the UK courts, unlike political parties in Government or out of it, can be consistent…!

 Nick Hawkins is a Barrister specialising in Gambling and Leisure law. In his 13 years in Parliament previously, he held roles in Government and Opposition, including Shadow Solicitor-General and Shadow Sports Minister. He is now Legal Director for a gaming company.

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