Sadiq Khan’s four-year-old promise to strip gambling adverts from the Tube network is no closer to happening, but London’s boroughs have decided they’re not going to just sit around waiting for Whitehall to catch up. A new Gambling Commission report laying out just how much of the capital is betting has reignited pressure on the Mayor and London Assembly Member Krupesh Hirani has now launched a London-wide action group aimed at tackling gambling harm using whatever powers boroughs already have, rather than the ones they’re still waiting on.
A Pledge Still Going Nowhere
Khan promised back in 2021 to bring in an ‘ethical advertising policy’ for Transport for London that would stop casinos and betting sites advertising across the network, following the same logic that saw fast food adverts banned from Tube and bus sites in 2019. Councils including Barnet, Brent, Enfield, Hackney and Lewisham have all thrown their weight behind the Coalition to End Gambling Ads, pushing Khan to follow through. The ban itself, though, remains paused, with City Hall saying it needs the Government to agree a definition of ‘harmful gambling’ before it can act without facing legal challenges from advertisers.
TfL, for what it’s worth, has taken in close to £5 million from gambling advertising between 2018 and 2023, which complicates the question of how much appetite there really is to move quickly on this. The timing of Hirani’s announcement wasn’t a coincidence. New figures from the Gambling Commission show that half of adults in London have gambled in the past 12 months, with 37% having done so in just the last four weeks, both notably higher than most of the rest of the country. London’s gambling harm rate now sits at 5.6%, against a Great Britain average of 2.9%.
London: ‘The Frontline of the Nation’s Gambling Crisis’
Hirani, Labour’s health spokesman on the London Assembly, described the capital as ‘the frontline of the nation’s gambling crisis’, pointing to deprivation, the cost of living and housing costs as reasons more Londoners are turning to betting. “We cannot sit back while communities pay the price,” he said. Rather than wait any longer for a national steer, Hirani has set up a London-wide group to coordinate boroughs on gambling harm using the powers they already have. He pointed to the Mayor’s 2019 fast food ad ban as the model to follow.
Whilst that might be the case, he also explained why gambling has proven harder to tackle in the same way, saying,
The Mayor has successfully managed to ban fast food ads on TfL. He’s able to do that because there’s verified health guidance from Government. The same advice does not exist for gambling.
He added that the ask of the Government is straightforward enough, adding,
Our ask to Government is to create that guidance that the Mayor can hold up to companies who will inevitably oppose the measure.
Gambling Adverts to Remain for Now
A spokesperson for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport said there are currently no plans to legislate for national advertising restrictions, though the Government ‘recognises that more work needs to be done to ensure that gambling advertising is appropriate, responsible, and does not exacerbate harm’. Until that guidance actually arrives, gambling adverts look set to remain a familiar sight on the Underground for a good while yet.