Allwyn Picks a New National Lottery Chief — and Lawmakers Want Answers
Allwyn UK has named Phil Walker, the former head of William Hill's UK and Ireland operations, as its interim chief executive starting 7 September 2026, replacing Andria Vidler. The move has prompted swift cross-party concern: Labour MP Dawn Butler and Conservative MP Iain Duncan Smith have written to the Gambling Commission saying they are "deeply concerned" about Walker running the National Lottery, according to The Guardian.
At the centre of the scrutiny is Walker's regulatory record. In 2024, the Gambling Commission — the UK's official regulator for gambling businesses — imposed a personal sanction on him over what it called "widespread and alarming" failures to enforce money laundering and terrorist financing controls at William Hill. The Commission's public register records a decision dated 24 May 2024 against Philip Keith Walker, linked to Hillside (UK Gaming). The sanction involved a payment in lieu of a financial penalty (meaning Walker paid a sum instead of facing a formal fine), plus Commission costs and a public statement. That action followed a record £19.2m fine levied against William Hill in 2023 for broader gambling-related failures.
Walker also holds a boardroom position with Game Nation, the UK's third-largest chain of adult gaming centres, or AGCs. These are high-street venues packed with slot machines — often called "slot farms" — and most stay open around the clock. The sector has drawn sustained political criticism. Andy Burnham, as mayor of Greater Manchester, accused the AGC sector of "targeting some of the most vulnerable in our communities" and pushed to tighten the licensing rules that let it expand.
Campaigner Jackie Olden, whose terminally ill mother lost thousands of pounds to Merkur (the AGC sector's second-largest company), has publicly questioned Walker's suitability to lead the lottery. Her intervention connects the appointment to wider public-health concerns about gambling harm that have shadowed the AGC industry for years.
The scale of what Walker would oversee is considerable. Allwyn holds the licence to operate the National Lottery until 2034. The contract is often described as the UK's largest public sector arrangement, generating £6.5bn in revenue over ten years and played regularly by roughly 20 million people. Walker's appointment puts an executive with a formal regulatory sanction on his record at the top of an institution with that kind of reach.
The letter from Butler and Duncan Smith poses a direct question to the Gambling Commission: whether a personal sanction it imposed in 2024 is relevant to judging the same person's fitness to lead the National Lottery's operating company two years later. The Commission's public register documents the 2024 action but, by its format, does not indicate whether such sanctions carry ongoing weight in licensing decisions. In effect, the MPs are asking the regulator to clarify where that line falls.
The broader context here is the tension between commercial gambling expertise and the public-trust mandate the National Lottery carries. Walker's career spans senior leadership at one of the UK's largest betting operators and a governance role in the AGC sector — exactly the parts of the gambling market that have faced the most regulatory and political pressure in recent years. His appointment by Allwyn signals a clear preference for deep industry experience. But that same record also gives his critics the material they are now using to challenge the appointment. The Gambling Commission's response will likely need to address not only Walker's individual fitness, but the consistency of its own regulatory stance across the gambling sector.
