'We're simply not being listened to' - BHA says concerns over affordability checks are being 'brushed off' by government

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A senior official at the BHA has described a meeting last week with UK government officials as "testing" and "challenging", and aired fears that the racing and betting industry's repeated warnings over the damage that would be wrought by the formal introduction of affordability checks are falling on deaf ears. 

Speaking on the latest edition of the BHA's own podcast, the authority's director of communications and corporate affairs Greg Swift refused to go into specifics of the latest round of discussions, which were attended by gambling minister Baroness Twycross and which took place against the pressing deadline of this Thursday's board meeting at the Gambling Commission.

Top of the agenda is expected to be whether to green light the controversial checks, despite the fact that none of the data from the pilot schemes has been made public, and evidence emerging that the use of three different credit reference agencies (CRAs) has led to differing results for the same individual punter. 

"I will say that meeting was testing; it was challenging," said Swift. "That’s partly because we were much more forthright and forward-leaning than we tend to be in these negotiations. That’s partly driven because we’re clearly on a very tight timeframe here. 

"But it’s also driven by the fact that we do have a growing sense of frustration that we’re simply not being listened to; that there’s only one side of this argument that’s being accepted, and that all the protestations both we and the betting industry make, are simply being brushed off."

The BHA and the wider racing industry was able to trumpet a significant measure of its relationship with the Labour government when betting on the sport was exempted from tax rises imposed on the rest of the gambling sector in last November's budget. 

But with the deadline of the May 7 Gambling Commission board meeting looming, the BHA's attempts to warn of the financial hit that racing and the betting industry will suffer do not appear to have received such a favourable hearing, although Swift did point to two strands of argument which have gained some purchase with certain officials in government. 

Greg Swift: the BHA's director of communications and corporate affairs

Swift said: "If the decision is taken on Thursday to introduce these checks, and then those checks are implemented as have currently been tested, the reality of that is a £900 million per year loss to the betting industry and £250m lost in the first five years to the British horseracing industry. 

"But it’s also £300m a year lost to the Exchequer in reduced tax yield. That’s when the ears prick up. That’s when the government thinks 'hang on'. The other figures are a little abstract. 

"The other point that is beginning to cut through to some people in government is the lack of public scrutiny of what is about to take place. The incoming [Labour] government has said that it will follow through on the process which the last government started, so we assume [that means] secondary legislation. 

"And yet for the single biggest part of the white paper and the most important part – the most contentious part – which is affordability checks, the government has handed all responsibility for implementation of that to an 'unelected quango' in the Gambling Commission. 

"And there is no parliamentary scrutiny of a decision that will impact two multi-billion pound industries that employ scores of thousands of people across the country, and which support the country’s second-biggest sport."

The BHA's chief executive Brant Dunshea warned last week that government was "sleepwalking into disaster" if they failed to press the pause button in the implementation of affordability checks after the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the Gambling Commission declined to answer a series of questions put to them by the Racing Post. 

Read more . . .

Punters slam 'intrusive and invasive' affordability checks and threaten to walk away amid requests for P60s and payslips 

'Sleepwalking into a disaster' - government and Gambling Commission decline to answer Racing Post questions on affordability 

Call for 'clear answers' on whether affordability checks work as Gambling Commission defends controversial measure 

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