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The opening salvo of the case by US states against Meta’s social media platforms for allegedly harming children included a fascinating description of their business model. The modus operandi of the Facebook and Instagram giant, prosecutors argued, could essentially be reduced to four stages: hook users, hold their attention, harvest their data, and hide the harms.

A Meta witness had reinforced the state’s “hide” case by being unwilling to disclose how many users had taken advantage of the so-called “protection” measures. The alleged unintended consequence was of course harm, and Meta agreed to pay up to $18bn (£13.3bn) to settle the claims.

This model seems eerily similar to the online gambling business. The adverts, free bonuses and spins are the hook. The repeated direct marketing and further offers are the hold. The use of algorithms and behavioural data is the harvest. The unwillingness to disclose how operators define and act on gambling risk, the “safer gambling” rhetoric, and the pretence that all is well, are the hide. The known consequence is the increasingly well-documented harm.

This similarity is no coincidence. Documents uncovered in earlier California litigation against Meta show a senior Meta data scientist warning that the drive to keep users returning could make its products more addictive, saying “think slot machines”.

Recent research shows how the harvest is allowed to continue despite the oversight of the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), with nearly nine out of 10 British-licensed online gambling operators reportedly failing to comply with basic data law.

As with so many of the problems of the modern gambling market, we can trace the origins back to the Gambling Act 2005. The 2001 Budd report was the basis for the Act, which came into force in 2007 just as the first iPhones were being released. Budd recommended online gambling operators should maintain an onshore presence, including servers and registration in Britain, but these essential provisions failed to make it into the Act. It is doubtful those omissions would have been made without any sector lobbying.

This provided a valuable loophole gift to the gambling sector. It allowed companies to stay offshore and avoid UK taxes in “white-listed” locations such as Gibraltar and the Isle of Man while offering “white-label” sub-licences to questionable operators. These jurisdictions granted licences that allowed companies to enter markets with minimal scrutiny.

A recent report by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) says that illegal gambling has grown to rival the legal market in some countries, creating significant money laundering and terrorist financing risks. Another investigative report highlights the jurisdictions that support such transnational licensing.

Even licensed companies can find their products reaching British consumers through unlicensed operators. In July, a British licence holder, Evolution, agreed to pay almost £5m after its games were found to be used on unlicensed websites accessible here.

It also still infects our top tier football, with half of the Premier League clubs having sponsorship or advertising deals with unlicensed gambling companies. The unlicenced site Stake sponsors Everton FC, and Sunderland FC has signed a multi-year deal with the unlicensed crypto casino Shuffle. Stake and Shuffle are not legally available here.

Other illicit sites operate with near-impunity, ripping off the branding of companies such as Tesco and Barclays, as well as the faces of celebrities such as Lewis Hamilton and Tyson Fury without their consent.

Recent reporting suggests the GB licensed operator Bally’s, whose proposed acquisition of William Hill owner Evoke would make it a major high-street player, continues to benefit from millions of dollars from a previously sold Japanese facing business, serving a market where online casinos are illegal.

Earlier this year, the managing director of the Bally’s-owned operator Gamesys, Kane Purdy, was appointed as Chair of the trade body the Betting and Gaming Council which works with the government’s Illegal Gambling Task Force.

When we seek to crack down on British-facing illicit gambling, the history of acceptance of this behaviour by our licensees weakens our credibility and authority.

There are so many actual unintended consequences of the 2005 Act. Yet opponents of gambling reform invoke theoretical unintended consequences to argue against change. One of the objectives of the Act is that gambling should be “fair and open” – not that it should hook, hold, harvest, hide and harm.

There is an urgent need to get politics right on social media, crypto and AI. On gambling we let liberalisation and vested interests have priority over common sense and the public good twenty years ago. Under Andy Burnham, Labour has an opportunity to correct the mistakes. The Prime Minister’s planned reform of the “Aim to Permit” rule will be very welcome.

(Credit: Adobe Stock)

Ministers are currently considering their response to a consultation on the details of the guaranteed hours contract part of the Employment Rights Act, but have already expressed a preference to narrow the right to workers contracted for less than 20 hours – this threshold does not meet Labour’s 2024 manifesto commitment to “everyone”.

The right to a contract that guarantees the hours you normally work is a matter of basic fairness and security. Many of our members are regularly working hours that aren’t guaranteed in their contract, which has a massive impact on their lives. The right has the potential to provide much greater security for millions of low-paid workers and must apply to everyone, up to and including full-time workers. We absolutely cannot have loopholes that make this meaningless.

We need an economy with better jobs and higher living standards, where more people have money to spend, giving a much-needed boost to our high streets. Good employers have nothing to fear from these rights, which will help to prevent them from being undercut by employers who exploit workers on insecure contracts.

A legal right to a guaranteed hours contract will simply require employers to properly plan staffing and shifts in advance. Workers who want a zero-hours or flexible contract will still be able to have one. They will just have a right to more secure hours if they want them.

We don’t accept the scaremongering from those who wrongly claim that decent employment rights will cost jobs. We heard similar arguments when the minimum wage was introduced. They were wrong then and they’re wrong now.

Usdaw’s consultation response includes legal rights to:

• A guaranteed hours contract for all workers with a contract of up to 48 hours, calculated over a 12-week reference period.
• Fair notice of shifts of at least 4 weeks, so that everyone can plan their lives around work.
• Compensation, equivalent to the workers’ actual wage, if shifts are cancelled with less than 7 days’ notice.

Hypothetical illustration of the consequences of the government’s preferred 20-hour threshold loophole:

Jane is contracted to 21 hours a week, Amina 18 hours. Both actually work at least 30 hours every week, providing essential income to help make ends meet, particularly in the cost of living crisis. However, before the law comes into effect, their employer suddenly stops giving extra hours to Amina, to avoid having to put them in her contract, which she wants. The hours are now given to Jane and her colleagues on contracts over 20 hours because they can’t access the new right. If everyone is entitled to a guaranteed hours contract, the employer would have no incentive to treat people differently based on the number of hours they are contracted to work.

Read Usdaw’s full response to the consultation here.

Sign the petition to protect all workers from insecure contracts here.

View the government consultation on ending one-sided flexibility here.

Read Labour’s 2024 manifesto here – Page 5 – zero hours contracts and one-sided flexibility.

Robert Hayward, Lord Hayward, is a member of the House of Lords.

The story of equal rights in Britain is usually told through landmark votes, famous campaigners and great changes in the law. Political progress also depends on people who work more quietly. Those who shape arguments, persuade their own side and make once-unthinkable positions gradually seem the norm. My friend Paul Barnes, who died recently, was one of those people.

Paul played an integral part in an extraordinary period of Conservative history. He was involved from the beginning of the Tory Campaign for Homosexual Equality, TORCHE, which succeeded the Conservative Group for Homosexual Equality in 1992, and served as its chairman from 1993 until 1997.

The name was important. Paul was not arguing for tolerance or special treatment, but for equality.

At the time, this was far from an easy case to make within the Conservative Party of the early 1990s. Gay men still faced a higher age of consent and gay people could not serve openly in the Armed Forces. Section 28 remained on the statute book and same-sex relationships had no legal recognition. Adoption by gay couples and equal marriage seemed remote ambitions.

Paul was exceptionally well equipped for the task at hand. A gifted public affairs professional, he understood that political change depends not simply on having the better argument, but on judgement, timing, relationships and an instinct for how people can be persuaded. He knew how institutions worked and, crucially, how to frame an argument in a way that allowed people to change their minds.

The case he made for equality was therefore rooted firmly in Conservative principles: individual liberty, privacy, personal responsibility and equality before the law. He was not asking Conservatives to abandon their beliefs, but to apply them consistently.

That approach mattered during the parliamentary battle over the age of consent in 1994.

Parliament reduced the age of consent for gay men from 21 to 18, while rejecting equality at 16. Paul and TORCHE continued to argue for the principle that eventually prevailed. He took a similar approach to the exclusion of gay people from the Armed Forces, challenging the contradiction of decriminalising homosexuality within the services while continuing to dismiss gay personnel.

Lobbying, briefing, conversation and persuasion – these will examples of the painstaking political work which was required. Paul understood that changing minds often meant continuing to talk to people with whom you profoundly disagreed.

His contribution was, of course, part of a much larger movement. Many other organisations and campaigners played decisive roles in transforming Britain, and Paul would never have claimed otherwise. Movements need people working from within institutions as well as pressure from outside them, and Paul was particularly skilled at that form of advocacy.

He was persuasive without being hectoring, determined without becoming doctrinaire, and political without allowing politics to consume every relationship. He was also warm, funny, loyal and immensely good company. Those qualities were not incidental to his effectiveness, but were a part of it.

The Britain in which Paul died is profoundly different from the one in which he began campaigning. People serve openly in the Armed Forces, Section 28 is gone, the age of consent is equal and same-sex couples marry and raise families with protections earlier generations could scarcely have imagined. For me, one of the happiest parts of Paul’s story is that he lived to enjoy the freedoms he had spent so many years campaigning for, not least in marrying his wonderful husband, Carlos, whom he adored.

To younger people, those freedoms may seem entirely ordinary. I hope they do, because making equality ordinary was the point.

Paul helped make that happen. Britain is a freer country because people like him were prepared to make difficult arguments before they became easy ones. His recent death is a great loss to those of us who knew and loved him, and I shall miss him enormously.

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According to sources familiar with the discussions, British officials said at a meeting in July Burnham would not launch a “clamp down” on social media in tech, with Burnham focused on economic growth. 

The diplomats said Burnham was aware of the British reliance on US tech firms for growth, as seen in the UK’s response to the Defence Investment Plan. British Ambassador to the US Christian Turner sought to reassure US diplomats that any changes from recent legislation would likely not happen quickly, with the Online Safety Act taking nearly a decade from concept to implementation. 

In spite of the meeting, earlier this week PoliticsHome reported that British officials were hauled in to the US embassy on Monday and dressed down over the Online Safety Act, along with their plans to ban under-16s from social media and prioritise public broadcasters’ prominence online. 

At the earlier meeting in July, it is understood Under Secretary of State Sarah Rogers warned the UK against overregulating AI, saying chatbots would become “lobotomized” if overregulated, and that users would assume they were government propaganda. 

The officials said that anti-tech big tech politicians were “not on the same page” as Burnham, comparing him to vice-president JD Vance due to his focus on marginalised communities.

A UK government source told PoliticsHome that the major risks from AI crossed borders, and therefore engaging with international partners was of the upmost importance. 

Separately, the UK’s Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Collins also held talks with the US Office for Science and Technology Policy about reviving the UK’s Tech Prosperity Deal with the US. 

When the deal was initially signed in September last year, Sir Keir Starmer highlighted the deal as “a generational step change in our relationship with the US” during Donald Trump’s state visit. However, the deal was ultimately suspended by Washington months later, with officials saying the UK had made insufficient progress in lowering trade barriers. 

As of yet, publicly, no progress has been made in restarting the deal, but privately PoliticsHome understands discussions are ongoing. A UK government source said that the UK would continue to engage on issues like the Tech Prosperity Deal in the near future. 

A UK government spokesperson said: “As close allies, UK and US officials meet regularly to discuss shared priorities. We are committed to ensuring that our trade and security continues to deliver real benefits for hardworking people on both sides of the Atlantic.”

The US State Department was contacted for comment.

Roz Savage was elected as the Liberal Democrat MP for South Cotswolds in 2024 (Credit: Andrew Matthews/PA Images/Alamy)

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In a new essay shared exclusively with PoliticsHome, South Cotswolds MP Roz Savage argued that liberals must “rediscover” their “insurgent spirit”, rather than being “the polite custodians of a system that leaves people feeling powerless”.

The essay, Liberalism Alive, has been published just days before the Lib Dem conference in Brighton this weekend, where members will debate a new strategy document aimed at expanding the party’s support in a fractured political landscape.

While Savage does not directly name party leader Ed Davey or call for a change of leadership, her warning comes as pressure has grown on Davey to articulate a more distinct political offer to voters. 

A Lib Dem spokesperson insisted the party is a “serious national force” which is “fighting to change politics so that we can change our country”.

In a recent sit-down interview with The House magazine, Davey said local election results showed that the party was “expanding” across the country under his leadership and in “its strongest position in over a century”. He also defended his use of stunts, saying: “I don’t think we’d have as many MPs, frankly, as we do if we hadn’t done the visuals that we did last election.”

In her essay, published by the progressive think tank Compass, Savage said liberalism should not be pitched to voters as “a comfortable midpoint between left and right” and that her party should avoid being seen as “nicer technocrats with slightly better policies”.

Instead, she argued, liberals should seek to answer more fundamental questions about how to create a society in which people can “flourish”.

The MP wrote: “If liberalism’s historic mission is to challenge concentrations of power and expand people’s practical freedom, we also have to ask how well we have lived up to it. Because if liberalism has so much to offer this moment, we have to address the elephant in the room: why are we as a party struggling for relevance at precisely the moment when so many people feel powerless?

“We cannot blame the populists, the media or an electorate that has somehow failed to appreciate our wisdom. We need to take a long hard look at ourselves too.”

According to Savage, the Lib Dems have not successfully woven their policy offering into a compelling narrative for the public.

“Ask people what Britain would look and feel like after ten years of Liberal Democrat government and many would struggle to answer,” she wrote.

“That is not because our individual policies are not good. Many are remarkably popular. The problem is that they do not add up, in the public imagination, to a coherent picture of the country we are trying to create.

“We have sometimes made a virtue of being reasonable, practical and evidence-led. Those are qualities I value, but competence is not a destination.

“Politics also requires imagination: the ability to help people see a different future and believe that it might actually be possible. But that vision also needs coherence. Voters need to know, with crystal clarity, what we stand for and who we stand with.”

The essay sets out Savage’s vision for how liberalism can offer fresh answers to “a country in urgent need of a new direction”.

The MP argued that devolution should form a key component of that new direction, but she said devolution must go “beyond politicians”. 

“Moving power from politicians in Westminster to politicians in a town hall is not, by itself, empowering citizens,” she wrote. “It may simply change the postcode of the people making the decisions. Genuine devolution must go further.

“Councils should themselves devolve: to neighbourhoods, parishes, community organisations, schools, cooperatives, community land trusts, and sometimes directly to randomly selected citizens asked to deliberate on particularly difficult questions.”

Savage also warned that AI and the growing influence of the world’s big tech firms could represent the “next concentration of power” away from citizens.

“Technology could liberate enormous amounts of human capacity,” the MP wrote. “It could transform medicine, education and scientific discovery. It could remove drudgery from working life.

“Or it could hand a handful of already powerful corporations unprecedented influence over how the rest of us live, work and think. Left to drift, that is exactly what will happen. That is simply what concentrated power does when nobody chooses otherwise. It is a choice, and perhaps only for a short while longer will it remain ours to make.”

Liberals have struggled, Savage added, in a world where the benefits and costs of globalisation were “distributed unevenly”.

She wrote: “Populists are very good at telling people that their power has been taken away. Where they go wrong is telling them who took it: the migrant, the minority, the civil servant, the judge, the international court, whichever convenient enemy fits the story.

“Liberals need a better answer. We should say: yes, too much power has been taken away from you. But look upwards, not sideways.

“Look at an economy in which wealth and ownership have become increasingly concentrated. Look at monopolies and corporations more powerful than many governments. Look at decisions sucked upwards from communities into Whitehall. Look at political systems in which millions of votes barely affect the outcome. Look at technology companies acquiring unprecedented power over information, work and public discourse.

“The answer is not to find another group with even less power and blame them. It is to redistribute power again.

“That requires liberalism to rediscover its insurgent spirit. We should not be the polite custodians of a system that leaves people feeling powerless.”

A Lib Dem spokesperson told PoliticsHome: “Roz is right that the two old parties have left people feeling powerless after decades of failure and neglect. Everything feels so much harder than it used to be because our country is being held back by a failed political system.

“With record numbers of MPs and more councils led than the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats are a serious national force. At all levels of government, we are fighting to change politics so that we can change our country. Liberal Democrats are leading from the front on the big issues facing people across our country right now – from the cost of living crisis to the barriers holding our world-class businesses back.“