Arguing malicious misinformation is distorting gambling policy, Dan Waugh has criticised Lord Foster alongside the Gambling Commission and the current state of gambling-related research, which Waugh believes has “never been poorer”.
Lord Foster has faced renewed criticism after repeating disputed claims about children and gambling during a House of Lords debate.
Regulus Partners’ Dan Waugh accused the out-of-touch Liberal Democrat peer of telling the House of Lords “five things that are untrue about children and gambling” in just 30 seconds, describing his comments as “a corruption” of the Gambling Commission’s Young People and Gambling Survey.
Waugh said Foster’s repeated claim that “80,000 children in Britain [are] addicted to gambling” amounted to a misuse of official statistics, arguing the figure was based on “the self-reported behaviours of 25 schoolchildren”, many of whom “reported no harms from gambling”.
He argued Foster could not claim ignorance, writing: “The possibility must therefore be considered that Lord Foster knew that what he told his fellow peers was not strictly accurate.”
It’s an accusation that will surprise few: Foster has turned to anti-gambling like a zealous convert who has found god.
And Waugh’s criticism also extended to the Gambling Commission and its former CEO Andrew Rhodes, whose warning of referrals to the Office for Statistics Regulation had been “exposed as a paper tiger”.
Waugh further claimed the regulator had “fatally undermined its ability to hold others to account” through its own handling of statistics and research.
He also questioned the decision to establish the new £10m-a-year national gambling harms research centre at the University of Glasgow, describing the institution as “a hotbed for anti-gambling activism”.
Concluding, Waugh warned that “misinformation is a lousy basis for sound policy”, adding that unless standards improve, “the very laws that govern the operation of the licensed market are at risk of subversion”.
Promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?
Dan Waugh said… “The possibility must therefore be considered that Lord Foster knew that what he told his fellow peers was not strictly accurate…
Originally published on Coinslot on August 24, 2026. Republished with permission.