Things have come to a pretty pass when even Blue Peter finds itself embroiled in a TV quiz scandal. City lawyers last week were visibly distressed that their childhood favourite should be caught faking the results.

However, the whole mess of “participation television” (which has led to many programmes being taken off air) is the result, in part, say experts in the gaming field, of the police not allocating adequate resources to investigating this issue. While some of the quiz competitions may actually have been operated fraudulently, many more have been hovering close to breaking the lottery laws. And certainly there have been issues of public perception.

“Even before the latest furore, clients of ours in this field have been asking us to help them to address issues of consumer confidence,” Richard Dickinson, of Manches, says. “The public wants to be assured that it has a genuine opportunity to win a prize so we’ve been working with clients to improve transparency and go logically through the rules to ensure that the official guidelines are being implemented in practice.”

But clearly there is a problem. As Peter Wilson, of Blake Lapthorn Tarlo Lyons, points out: “Commercial lotteries are illegal in this country — Camelot has the monopoly. To operate these games legally they need to involve an element of skill. However, in many cases what is involved is nothing more than ‘pseudo-skill’.”

Understandably, investigating authorities have not yet become very agitated about this. But, come the autumn, that will change when the Gambling Commission takes up its powers as a prosecuting authority. “The rules are likely to be applied much more strictly by the commission,” Julian Harris, of Harris Hagan, says. By that time with any luck the television quiz shows will have already cleaned up their acts.

What this underlines is the far-ranging importance of the Gambling Act 2005 when it comes into force in September. Although the public debate has been dominated by the controversy about the location of the supercasino and gambling addiction, the insiders’ view is that the legislation is well founded on principles of social responsibility.

“The three tenets that underpin the Act are that it should keep crime out, that it should protect the vulnerable and the young and that gambling should be fair,” Stephen Ketteley, of Berwin Leighton Paisner, says. “Not enough credit has been given to the lengths to which the regulators will go to ensure that operators have in place the systems to identify those with gambling problems. It will be a condition of the new licences that operators follow the social responsibility code.”

Hundreds of pages of detailed regulations are being churned out about every aspect of the Act. But there is more to come. Harris says: “There is not a full set of regulations yet available, not even those covering the most critical points of all when in comes to the powers to issue new licences.”

By and large, however, the lawyers welcome the detail and thoroughness of what is being produced. “The detailed regulation can be quite helpful because it should lead to clarity,” Ketteley says. Ideally, it should mean that lawyers will not have to wait for the courts to decide what the new Act means in practice.

Even so, it is ironic that amid all the concerns about the 17 new casinos to be licensed under the new Act there could be scores still to open under the old Act. As soon as the Government’s broad plans for reform were announced — including a targeted maximum of regional casinos — there was a rush by operators to apply for certificates of consent, the first stage in the process of getting a licence, under the old rules. These would then be able to be carried over into the new regime under grandfather rights.

“It appears that with new and continuing applications there could be some 59 certificates of consent outstanding,” Wilson says. “This means that there could potentially be that number of casinos yet to be opened under the 1968 Act — if, that is, they all got licences.”

One critical issue that could be resolved this week, however, is the tax level that will apply to internet betting. As Dickinson points out, one of the aims of the new regime is to encourage law-abiding offshore operators to relocate to the United Kingdom so that consumers would be reassured that they are dealing with reputable organisations. By operating offshore they pay little (if any) tax.

To attract them to move onshore the tax regime will have to be modest. “There is widespread expectation that the Chancellor will reveal what the tax rate will be in his Budget speech,” Dickinson says. “But until the operators know the tax regime, they won’t take any decisions.”

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