Ms Sue Rossiter:

While that would be a useful exercise, the sharing of personal data is prohibited under European data protection legislation. In Denmark, information on people who self-exclude is held by the Danish regulator. Anybody who applies to open a new account is checked against the self-excluded list. The Netherlands is also proposing to legislate for this. A number of other regulators, who are aware of the difficulties with information being held only by operators, are intending to go down this route. If there is to be universal self-exclusion the list should be held by a regulator or someone appointed by him or her to do so, thus allowing us to get round the European data protection regulations.