One of the Gaming Board's duties is to advise the Home Secretary on developments in gaming and lotteries so that the law can respond to change. The world-wide growth of gambling on the Internet is an issue which has been arousing great interest and causing concern amongst all involved in the gambling industries, whether governments, regulators, trade associations, operators or those organisations which deal with problem gamblers. The Board has decided that it should launch a study of the issue and then provide advice to the Home Secretary during the first half of next year. It will welcome the comments and views of interested parties, and this note is being provided as background to an invitation to contribute to the Board's deliberations.

As the Board said in its most recent Annual Report, a large number of sites on the Internet contain references to gaming and gambling. Most of these are simply informative, giving details of such things as gambling opportunities and companies, or the results of races and lotteries. But an increasing number offer the means to gamble. These can be divided into two kinds:

• sites which offer an entry via the Internet to terrestrial gambling. These are often just alternatives to other means of entry such as the post or telephone, using the Internet simply as a communications tool. Examples are football pools entries and credit betting on horse racing;

• interactive gaming run exclusively on the Internet, in particular sites which offer virtual casino and slot machine gaming and interactive lotteries.

It is this last category, and in particular the ability of British citizens to gain access from their homes to unregulated, unlicensed and untaxed or low tax gaming, which is the particular focus of the Board's study, but any >>