Gambling industry faces rapid change - and racing must be agile in dealing with the consequences

Last week, the UK parliament's petitions committee "noted" the response to the petition calling for affordability checks to be scrapped.

That was a reaction to the petition having passed 10,000 signatures at the start of November. What the committee must do now is consider whether the petition should be debated in Westminster Hall having broken the 100,000-signature mark last Wednesday.

Racing's representatives will be pressing the case for that to happen, and MP Conor McGinn has also written to committee chair Cat Smith asking for it to be considered as early as possible and selected for debate with similar urgency. Ordinarily, one would expect the petitions committee to agree to the debate given the petition had reached six figures, but there are some concerns it may not.