There’s renewed optimism for stability within the UK gambling sector, as the appointment of Stephanie Peacock to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport as a step on the path to certainty for the sector moving forward.
It also increases the inevitability that she will become the new gambling minister, as the department awaits its brief for the next steps forward for gambling.
There is widespread belief that the department will remain on course with plans to implement white paper changes that had previously been proposed. There is also hope for the changes to the land based sector which were widely lauded but had been shelved amidst plans for the general election.
Off the back of the ‘uncertainty’ of the election, Neil Roarty, Head of Relations at ClickOut Media, emphasised that Peacock may well be the stable hand the industry needs.
He said: “While general elections always throw up uncertainty, the new gambling minister, Stephanie Peacock, has already been invested in the industry as shadow minister for Sport, Gambling and Media for the past 10 months. She is unlikely to bring about a 180-degree change in direction just to ‘make her mark’.
“However, it’s still a wait-and-see game, as both she and Lisa Nandy, secretary of state for DCMS, may have clear goals for the sector that don’t necessarily overlap with the work already undertaken by the previous party.
“One thing that’s interesting to note is that the last proper gambling legislation back in 2005 was introduced under a landslide-winning Labour government. That might play a factor, but either way, it seems likely that Peacock will see through some of the changes established in this year’s white paper with both parties keen on reform on public health grounds.”
Leading the department is Lisa Nandy, MP for Wigan, who has been appointed as Secretary of Culture, Media and Sport under the first senior cabinet of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.
Whilst Nandy brings a decorated CV to the role, her appointment was forced after shadow secretary Thangam Debbonaire lost her seat to Bristol West constituency to the Green Party.
Nandy succeeds former Conservative MP Lucy Frazer as DCMS state secretary, who was among the 250 Tory ministers to lose their constituencies.
MP for Wigan since 2010, Nandy is recognized as one of the Labour Party’s longest-serving ministers, who served under the premiership of PM Gordon Brown as an undersecretary of the Cabinet Office.
