By Gavin Mackintosh-
The Uk Gambling Commission has admitted that it does not have discrimination in its licensing policies. The shocking admission comes the gambling regulator publishes tighter laws to ensure fair practices among online operators in the gambling industry.
Among its tighter rules announced today are stated improvements in its complaints and disputes handling procedures. It proposes time limits for complaint handling and escalation. That’s in relation to gambling, not discrimination, which the Commission told The Eye Of Media.Com was ”outside its legal remit”.
When The Gambling Commission was asked why it had no anti discrimination laws in place, a spokesperson for the Commission said:
”We are not experts in the field of discrimination which is a legal minefield. We only deal with matters relating to licensing. If the Equality and Human Rights Commission contact us and ask us to review any particular area, we will do so”.
EXISTING MALPRACTICE
Evidence of malpractice by a number of casinos and online operators has led to the Commission issuing large fines against culpable operators. None of the infringements are known to have been connected to any form of discrimination. However, the imposition of fines against these license operators provides evidence of serious failings. In the case of Rank Group, fined £500,000 by the Gambling Commission after for malpractice, some of their bosses have shown a complete absence of any ethics of moral code.
Instead of discouraging a distraught gambler who had squandered a £1m winnings they had recently won from gambling, one of its managers tried to reinstate the gambler back into his old gambling ways. Conscience and morality does not enter the equation with many people when money is in the mix. The Rank Group paid the fine, but left its reputation in tartars.
The regulator stipulates requirements for fair practices and the orderly processing of complaints. Yet, in the absence of policies that safeguard protected groups against racial, sexual, or gender discrimination, the notion of fairness used is none existent. The commission are not expected to need specific instructions to include discrimination in their policies, it could appear like they need spoon feeding not to automatically apply all existing laws that can affect their field.
Where racial and sexual discrimination has been shown to exist and persist in many organisations, wisdom calls for the implementation of anti discrimination laws across the board. Organisations without discrimination laws are tacitly sending a wrong message. The message is ‘we don’t care about discrimination, if you want us to care then prove you have been a victim of discrimination’.
The recent allegations of racism and sexual bullying against Sir Phillip Green is only a snippet of what generally occurs. Only more recently were the explicit racist utterances on a Raynair flight by a white male against an elderly disabled black woman. In this case, apart from race, there were multiple issues of gender, age , and disability. Instances like this could easily have happened , and does sometimes happen at casinos.
Instances of gender discrimination can also be exemplified without end. Gender pay gaps in various organisations have been well documented.
SHORTCOMINGS
Society is still riddled by prejudice and discrimination across the board, which could come from any group to another. A positive approach to contributing to society will clearly be to demonstrate institutional good will for inclusion. Every responsible organisation should embody a clearly written policy and guidelines against discrimination.
On a day when the government has gone out campaigning against hate crime, it is worth noting that the Gambling Commission which is an arm of government have no policies against hate crime. Neither do a lot of other organisations.
The alternative is to accept the logical deduction that they permit discrimination by creating a loophole And if they argue that discrimination needs to be evidenced before it is addressed, then their policies are complicit and not preventative.