New minister takes over the gambling brief at DCMS
Vicky Foxcroft MP has been appointed the UK’s new minister responsible for gambling, taking over the brief from Baroness Fiona Twycross at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). The Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) confirmed the appointment on August 12, congratulating Foxcroft in a statement from chief executive Grainne Hurst. DCMS had not issued its own announcement at the time the BGC statement went out.
Twycross had held the gambling brief since 2024, overseeing the shift to a mandatory statutory levy on operators and the early stages of an illegal gambling taskforce set up to cut off payments to black-market sites. Foxcroft inherits both, along with an open consultation on banning unlicensed operators from sponsoring sport.
Who is Vicky Foxcroft
Foxcroft has represented Lewisham North as a Labour MP since 2015. She served as a shadow DCMS minister in 2019 and has built a parliamentary record on gambling reform without previously holding the ministerial brief directly.
In 2018 she proposed banning credit card betting and giving banks the power to block online gambling transactions for people trying to control their spending, a measure the government later adopted. In June 2025 she tabled an early day motion calling for reform of the “aim to permit” rule, which limits a council’s ability to refuse a betting shop or gaming venue licence on the grounds of local need. She has also called for a ban on gambling advertising during live sports broadcasts and backed the 1% statutory levy that came into force in November 2024.
“I believe the law on gambling should be approached from a public health perspective to protect the vulnerable and particularly children and young people, but to allow others who choose to do so to gamble safely,” Foxcroft has said of her approach to gambling policy.
She has previously described problem gambling as an “epidemic,” a framing that puts her closer to the public-health wing of the Labour party on gambling reform than some of her DCMS predecessors.
Industry reaction
The BGC, which represents the UK’s licensed betting and gaming operators, welcomed the appointment while flagging the cumulative weight of recent regulation on the sector.
“I would like to congratulate Vicky Foxcroft MP on her appointment as Minister responsible for gambling,” said BGC chief executive Grainne Hurst. “We look forward to working with her to champion Britain’s casinos, betting shops and online betting, gaming and bingo businesses.”
The BGC has previously pointed to the statutory levy, tax rises and the “aim to permit” debate as part of a broader set of cost and compliance pressures on licensed operators, even as it has backed action against illegal gambling. Foxcroft’s record suggests she is unlikely to slow that regulatory pace.
What Foxcroft inherits
The new minister takes on a brief with several live workstreams. The statutory levy, which redirects gambling research, prevention and treatment funding away from the operator-led GambleAware model, is still being rolled out. The illegal gambling taskforce is in its early enforcement phase. DCMS is also consulting on whether to bar unlicensed operators from sports sponsorship deals, a gap that has let offshore sites advertise through UK sport despite holding no UK Gambling Commission licence. The levy sits inside a wider tax and enforcement picture that has already reshaped how the UK market operates, detailed in this outlet’s look at UK gambling tax, UKGC data and workforce trends.
How Foxcroft balances that agenda against industry concerns about compounding costs will shape the next phase of UK gambling policy. Her voting and campaigning record gives an early signal of where she is likely to land, but the position of a backbench MP is not the same as running a department. The coming months, particularly how DCMS handles the sponsorship consultation and the pace of levy enforcement, will show whether her approach in office matches her record in parliament.
Source: Betting and Gaming Council
