Vicky Foxcroft is due to make her first public appearance as the UK’s gambling minister at a Labour Party conference fringe event in Liverpool, where the central question will be whether the government should pursue a new Gambling Act.
The session, titled “What Next for Gambling Reform: Time for a New Act?”, comes after Foxcroft took the gambling brief in August, as we reported. She succeeded Baroness Twycross and holds the official title of Minister for Youth, Gambling, Digital Inclusion, Civil Society and Loneliness.
Dr James Noyes, a senior fellow at the Social Market Foundation, will chair the discussion. Foxcroft will join Alex Ballinger and Dawn Butler of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Gambling Reform, alongside Charlie Buckley of More in Common UK and Will Prochaska of the Coalition to End Gambling Ads.
Ballinger first publicly called for a new gambling act in June, at a Social Market Foundation policy event. The panel is expected to cover the future of the Gambling Act 2005, advertising, prevention and treatment of gambling harm, and operators’ responsibilities. More in Common UK’s fresh polling is also expected to feature.
The line-up contains no gambling-industry representatives and no participant has publicly opposed the prospect of new primary legislation. Jordan Lea, chief executive of Deal Me Out, called the event an “echo chamber” and said Foxcroft would face considerable pressure to back a new act. Ben Keith, founder of Star Sports, said the panel did not include punters, noting Liverpool’s prominent over-the-counter sports and racing betting market.
The industry has generally argued for evidence-based regulation and warned that overly restrictive policies could send customers to unregulated alternatives. Campaigners, by contrast, maintain that incremental changes will not suffice and argue for a wholly new statutory framework.
Foxcroft’s earlier interventions point to a record of supporting tighter restrictions, though she has not publicly participated in gambling-policy discussions since becoming minister. In 2018, she described an “epidemic of problem gambling”, backed a ban on credit-card wagering and supported giving banks greater scope to block transactions by customers experiencing gambling harm.
In June 2025, she supported an Early Day Motion on high-street gambling reform. It challenged the statutory “aim to permit” principle and highlighted the difficulty councils face in resisting additional gambling venues in areas already saturated with betting shops.
The Gambling Act 2005 sets the framework for regulation in Great Britain, while the Gambling Commission provides formal statutory advice to the secretary of state under Section 26 of the act. The government’s review, launched in December 2020 amid the growth of online gambling, led to the April 2023 Gambling White Paper, whose proposals were described by Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Committee as the most significant reform since the act was introduced. Several measures were expected to require secondary legislation, while others required primary legislation.
