The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has released new details on the remit of the UK’s Illegal Gambling Taskforce, five months after its creation.

Back in January, Gambling Minister Baroness Twycross made a landmark announcement that the government has set up a specialised unit to wage war on the black market in the UK. Not much else was known about the operations of this taskforce, until now.

Three key objectives

Those assigned to the taskforce will work towards lessening the influence of illegal gambling by tackling three distinctive objectives – preventing payments from and to black market operators, taking down offshore online marketing, and enhancing cross-agency enforcement to crack down on illegal remote and land-based gambling.

All three objectives will be handled by a separate Taskforce sub-group, which will assess the progress made and propose follow-up amendments.

Enforcement powers still on the cards

The DCMS added that from the outset, the Taskforce and its sub-groups will not hold any power to direct or intervene in the work of the UK Gambling Commission (GC), although this could evolve with time as new priorities and challenges are identified, and any intended change is first agreed among all members.

Structure of the taskforce

Members of the Taskforce will include gambling industry stakeholders, policy experts, tech and fintech providers, GC and other government officials, and trade body representatives. It will be chaired by Baroness Twycross, while Ben Dean, DCMS Director for Sport and Gambling, has been named as Co-Chair.  

Duration of the taskforce’s remit will span across 12 months, at the end of which members will take a decision whether to renew it. Taskforce operatives will conduct biannual meetings, while sub-groups ‘are recommended’ to convene on a quarterly basis. 

Meetings will be conducted under Chatham House rules, where sources of information will remain anonymous.

Work planning and administrative duties will be handled by DCMS officials acting as the Taskforce Secretariat, which will be responsible for arranging meetings, circulating papers, and coordinating taskforce-sanctioned actions.

The taskforce comes at a time of prolific global expansion for the black market, with market analyst firm Gaming Compliance International revealing that illegal gambling operators are now attracting a combined $5.9trn (£4.36trn) in unregulated wagers – higher than the GDP of almost any country in the world.

The GC, meanwhile, is also stepping up activities against illegal gambling, backed by an additional £26m in funding – which will in turn be backed by the UK”s new gambling tax framework. Just last week the regulator put out a job advert for a new Head of Illegal Markets.