Ministers are today announcing a crackdown on a “lottery loophole” which meant that under-18s were still able to gamble. A cross-party group of MPs has been campaigning to prevent the National Lottery “exploiting” vulnerable 16 and 17-year-olds.
They claimed that allowing youngsters to buy lottery tickets, scratch cards and play online games acted as a gateway to much harder forms of gambling.
The Mirror revealed last month that the Government was planning to close the loophole alongside a wide-ranging review of gambling laws.
It will now be illegal for any of the 40,000 shops which sell any National Lottery products to under-18s to do so from October.
Read more on mirror.co.uk