Key gambling reform campaigner calls for pause to controversial ‘affordability checks’

Dr James Noyes, one of the key early advocates of affordability checks for online gamblers, has joined calls for Lisa Nandy MP, the culture secretary, to instruct the Gambling Commission to “pause” the implementation of checks “until there has been adequate evaluation and scrutiny” of a pilot scheme to assess how checks might work in practice.

Noyes’ intervention in the long-running debate over affordability checks comes in an open letter sent to Nandy on Monday.

His letter echoes similar calls for a halt to the process by many senior figures in the racing industry, which fears a disproportionate impact on racing bettors with the potential to cost the industry tens of millions of pounds in income, as punters refuse to supply financial information to gambling operators and switch to the black market instead.

Noyes says in his letter than while affordability checks were “a worthy idea in principle” when first proposed in 2020, his call for checks was made on the basis that “a gambling ombudsman would be created to ensure proper treatment of consumer redress and rights”, that “checks would be non-intrusive”, and that “while preventing serious cases of harm from happening, they would not impede the majority of gamblers from engaging in a lawful activity which involves inherent risk, economic agency and their own money.”

The Commission has yet to publish a final report on the pilot and has not issued an update on its progress since the spring of 2025. Photograph: Getty Images

Noyes, a senior fellow of the Social Market Foundation (SMF) thinktank, argued for the introduction of affordability checks in SMF reports published in 2020 and 2021, and a number of his proposals were included in a subsequent government white paper on gambling reform which was published in April 2023.

The Gambling Commission launched a pilot study on what it describes as “financial risk assessments” in September 2024, to assess a two-tier system of checks to highlight possible gambling-related harm and the extent to which checks would be “frictionless”, i.e. background checks that would not require customers to supply financial information to keep betting.

The Commission has yet to publish a final report on the pilot and has not issued an update on its progress since the spring of 2025. A number of media reports in recent weeks, however, have suggested that its board could approve the introduction of checks at a meeting next month.

In his letter, Noyes says that he is “deeply concerned over a lack of transparency” regarding checks, and that he is “reading increasing reports that the pilot scheme has involved inconsistent data, unclear outcomes and unnecessary friction”. He is also “particularly alarmed by reports that checks will prove unnecessarily burdensome to horse racing bettors, to the detriment of that sport”.

The government, Noyes adds, has “a duty to listen to the [British Horseracing Authority’s] warnings and to act accordingly, in order to protect such an important part of British cultural and social life”.

Noyes is undoubtedly one of Britain’s most prominent advocates for gambling reform and the forcefulness of his intervention in the debate is both unexpected and timely, as Nandy weighs up whether to intervene and put a halt to any imminent implementation of checks.

The final paragraph of his letter concludes that “the current situation of financial risk checks is raising serious questions, which should be addressed by government before any further progress of that policy is made. I am therefore calling on the government to pay heed to the BHA’s warnings, and to pause these checks until there has been adequate evaluation and scrutiny.”