Chairman's Blog: British racing's 'sick man of Europe' danger
By Dr Jim Walker, ROA Chairman
In early July, online headlines featured a story titled ‘Germany to ban sick leave’. Of course, the reality was less sensational.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz had announced that self-certified sick leave was to be banned and that only applications for leave accompanied by a doctor’s note would be granted in future.
This did not come as a surprise to me. In May, I had attended a roundtable in London where a prominent industrialist told us that German industry was shedding 30,000 jobs per month and that, in addition to six weeks paid annual leave, the average German worker took 23 days sick leave per year. Not only that, often they would arrange their ‘sick days’ weeks in advance. The good intentions of naïve politicians had descended into farce.
The point of this tale is that what seemed like a responsible, trust-based policy on sick leave – self-certification – that might have worked a treat the 1960s, 70s and 80s is no longer fit for purpose. Times have changed. Which brings us to the Gambling Commission.
Despite the fact that the years-long trial of ‘frictionless’ affordability checks has been a disaster, that credit ratings checks differ widely depending on which rating company is asked, and that the existence of a burgeoning gambling black market is known and well-documented, the bureaucrats who are employed by this quango (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation) are going to press ahead regardless with plans to assess individuals’ income status in relation to their gambling activity. The intention is to save people from themselves.
This is what happens when government decides there is a problem that needs fixing. The initial thoughts might be well-intentioned, but the minute an agency is created to deal with the ‘problem’, all calculations change. The need to justify the organisation’s existence becomes the paramount goal. Imagine a quango being established which, after due consideration of its mandate, turned round and said, “There is a gambling problem for some people, but the kind of checks we are able to run will neither solve the problem nor produce outcomes that would be deemed desirable.” It would have just signed its own death warrant.
That is the problem with government interference. The outcomes are often the reverse of what was intended, the proposals and fixes do more harm than good and, in the worst cases, they end up killing the goose that lays the eggs in the first place!
There is still some time to try and stop the self-harm that the Gambling Commission’s assault on punters will produce. Broadcaster Matt Chapman is correctly leading a call to challenge the competence of this so-called ‘regulator’ at the High Court. That is the best course of action the sport can take.
What we do not need is to be in the same position as Chancellor Merz, frantically trying to put the genie back in the bottle that resulted from legislation passed by his predecessors in government. It is always much better to not make the mistake in the first place than having to try to rectify it later.
In the June Leader column, I tried to set out the mistakes the Commission was making – my apologies for covering some of the same ground so soon, but the affordability checks to which the commissioners are committed are an existential threat to racing itself and will hurt the people they claim to care about more than anyone else, because we do not live in the pre-2000 analogue world anymore.
The black market for gambling – often played through cryptocurrencies – is a reality and growing fast. The Hong Kong Jockey Club is leading the way at an international level in trying to establish just how large and destructive it is becoming. Sadly, the Gambling Commission refuses to even acknowledge the threat.
If the worst comes to the worst, i.e. government tax revenue begins to fall as punters play elsewhere, I would not be surprised if Andy Burnham – already a proponent of banning gambling advertising in sport – looks around for new sources of income. Exemption from VAT has been a godsend to racehorse owners but given the sales figures and record amounts spent on bloodstock, it is not too far-fetched to imagine a government in deep financial distress trying to close a loophole that, in its eyes, will largely affect the ‘rich’.
Nothing is safe or sacrosanct in this era of bigger and bigger government. Everyone in the industry needs to lobby hard and pull together to not just oppose affordability checks but to axe the Gambling Commission.