Gambling Commission's Acting Chief Welcomes Phil Walker and Concedes "Teething Issues" at the National Lottery

Sarah Gardner used Allwyn's player protection conference to welcome the National Lottery's interim chief executive, five weeks after two MPs asked the regulator what it knew about him. She also warned that the Lottery's standing is "a high wire act where one wrong step can cause big problems".

• Sarah Gardner, acting chief executive of the Gambling Commission, told Allwyn's second Participant Protection Conference on 1 October that she was "looking forward to working with" Phil Walker, the interim chief executive two MPs had questioned in August
• She said the new player protections Allwyn built into the National Lottery's online channels had brought "teething issues", but that the commitment to player protection, and the progress so far, "is real"
• Gardner said the National Lottery raised £1.7 billion for good causes over the last 12 months of published data, and cited the regulator's own survey, in which 31% of participants said they had played it in the previous four weeks
• She warned that the Lottery's status as a national institution means "one wrong step can cause big problems", and that the Commission expects it to be "at the forefront" of best practice on player protection
• The speech did not address the illegal market or the new gaming machine rules the Commission published two days earlier

The Regulator's First Public Word on Walker Was a Welcome

The Gambling Commission published on 2 October the text of a speech Sarah Gardner delivered the previous day at the Allwyn Participant Protection Conference in London, noting that it is the speech "as drafted and may slightly differ from the delivered version".

Gardner opened by addressing Allwyn UK's new leadership. "Somebody else who I know is pleased to be here today and working on The National Lottery overall is of course the new Interim Chief Executive at Allwyn, Phil Walker. Phil, I'm looking forward to working with you in your new role," she said. She also thanked Andria Vidler, who stepped down as chief executive in August, saying that "for all the challenges that were encountered, Andria was always committed to transparent and collaborative engagement with me and with the Commission as a whole".

The welcome matters because of what came before it. On 26 August the Guardian reported a letter from Labour's Dawn Butler and the Conservative Iain Duncan Smith to the Commission, saying they were "deeply concerned" about Walker's appointment. They cited the formal warning the Commission issued on Walker's personal management licence in 2024 over his time at William Hill, and his seat at City Gaming, owner of the Game Nation arcades. The Commission said only that it does not publicly comment on an operator's personnel decisions.

Progress, With Caveats Allwyn Left Out

Most of the speech was about the "Digital Cutover", the platform migration Allwyn completed at the start of the year, which Gardner called "the largest tech upgrade of The National Lottery in its history". She called the introduction of Powerball "a clear sign of Allwyn's ambition to innovate The National Lottery in order to raise Returns to Good Causes". Over the last 12 months of published data, she said, the Lottery raised £1.7 billion for good causes.

Gardner said Allwyn had "successfully embedded new protections for every single player of The National Lottery who plays online or through the App", and was working with retailers to strengthen support for players at risk of harm. Then she added a qualification. "There have been teething issues," she said, and "sometimes a step forward might be followed by a step back", but "the commitment, and the progress that has followed so far, to player protection is real".

Allwyn's own account of the conference, published the same day, says Gardner "noted that Allwyn UK's commitment to strengthen participant protection as part of its bid to operate The National Lottery is now being delivered and progressing". It does not mention the teething issues. It lists the protections Allwyn has introduced, including a £50 first-deposit limit for new online customers and an enhanced interventions programme for potentially at-risk customers.

Low Risk, High Scrutiny

Gardner cited the Commission's Gambling Survey for Great Britain (GSGB), in whose 2025 annual report the National Lottery was the most common gambling activity: 31% of all participants said they had played it in the last four weeks, against 11% for its scratchcards and 6% for its online instant win games. She said the survey consistently shows the Lottery to be "one of the lowest risk gambling products anyone can play", but that "doesn't mean risks don't exist and that protections aren't needed".

Her argument for why protection still matters was about reputation. The Lottery's status as a national institution "brings with it the need to live up to higher standards and the reality of greater scrutiny. In essence it's a high wire act where one wrong step can cause big problems," she said, adding that "trust forfeited is never easy to win back". The Commission expects Allwyn and the Lottery "to be at the forefront in terms of determining and demonstrating best practice when it comes to protecting players".

Gardner, the Commission's deputy chief executive, became acting chief executive when Andrew Rhodes stepped back ahead of leaving on 30 April; in February the Commission said it would "shortly begin the process of recruiting a Chief Executive for an interim period", and it has not announced an appointment. She shared the role in 2021 too, after Neil McArthur left. Ruth Evans took over as chair on 30 September. In 2021 the Commission hired an interim chief executive so that an incoming chair could appoint a permanent one. Until an appointment is made, an acting chief executive is regulating an operator run by an interim one.

The Welcome Is Not an Answer to the MPs

Greeting an operator's new chief executive by name at the operator's own event is ordinary diplomacy, not a ruling on the questions Butler and Duncan Smith asked. But it appears to be the Commission's first public remark about Walker beyond declining to comment, and it says nothing about what consideration, if any, was given to his regulatory history. For a licence the Commission itself awarded and supervises, declining to comment on personnel is a harder position to hold than it would be for a commercial operator, and a warm welcome will not make the letter go away.

"Teething Issues" Is the Regulator's Phrase, Not Allwyn's

The most informative sentence in the speech is the one Allwyn's summary leaves out. Gardner did not say what the teething issues were, whether they affected players, or whether they bear on the enforcement action the Commission opened over Allwyn's missed February 2025 implementation deadline, which a Commission spokesperson told InterGame in March had "not yet concluded". Mentioning problems at an event celebrating progress suggests the regulator wants them on the record. Until the Commission publishes an outcome on that case, the phrase is a signal rather than a finding.

Gardner's message to Allwyn was that a low-risk product still needs high standards because trust is easier to lose than to win. The same test applies to a regulator that has yet to say what, if anything, it weighed when the man now running the Lottery was appointed.