Photograph: Maddie Red Photography/Alamy
The boss of the UK’s main betting and gaming lobby group has told MPs that there is no “social ill with gambling” as she warned against imposing higher taxes on the sector in the November budget.
Grainne Hurst, the chief executive of the Betting and Gaming Council, repeatedly made the statement to parliament’s Treasury select committee on Tuesday, where she also claimed that higher taxes would result in thousands of job losses and push punters into using hidden market services.
Hurst made the comments as part of the gambling industry’s lobbying against calls to increase taxes on the sector – including on products seen as the most risky for creating problem gamblers, such as online casinos and the betting machines that fill high street adult gaming centres (AGCs).
During an at-times testy session, the committee member John Glen said to Hurst: “This issue has become pertinent in the run-up to a budget because people and government [are] frustrated that the taxation of something that does have a significant social ill for those individuals isn’t properly addressed in our tax system.”
Hurst responded: “I would disagree that there are social ills as a result of it. I think that it is properly taxed in the system … Our argument is that if you increase further any additional taxes on the industry … it will put jobs at risk, will put shops at risk, will put sports sponsorship at risk.”
The committee’s chair, Meg Hillier, then checked that she had understood Hurst’s position correctly and asked: “Do you think there are any social ills associated with gambling?” The lobbyist replied: “No.”
She later added that the industry does “everything that it possibly can in order to mitigate any harms that may be caused by our products”.
Earlier, the committee heard evidence from a panel of experts who all argued that taxes should be increased on the riskiest gambling products, while maintaining lower taxes on more benign forms of betting such as punting on horse racing and playing bingo.
Stewart Kenny, a founder of the bookmaker Paddy Power, now retired, said that he regretted “some of the things I did” while working in the sector but that he had resigned from the group’s board in 2016 after 29 years because he did not believe the company was protecting problem gamblers enough.
“When you open an account to have a bet on the next general election or Manchester United to win the Premiership … within 24 hours [bookmakers] send you free spins in the casino, to the online slots,” he told the committee. “It is rather like going into a bar for your first drink and having a shandy and the barman … says: ‘Why not have a triple strength brandy on the house?’
“So if we can disincentivise the bookmakers from sucking people from the least addictive product to the most addictive product, that I think is the most important [objective].”
The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, is under huge scrutiny about what measures she will announce in her budget next month, with many observers expecting a range of tax rises.
Taxing the betting industry has been floated as an area where the Treasury could raise significant revenue, but the industry has been fighting the proposals.
Last week Betfred said it would close all 1,287 of its high street betting shops if Reeves raised taxes on the gambling industry, while earlier this month the company behind William Hill said it was considering closing up to 200 betting shops if the chancellor raised taxes. The industry has also argued that higher tax rates would mean lower revenues collected from the sector.
Kenny – along with fellow experts Theo Bertram, the director of the Social Market Foundation, and Carsten Jung, the interim associate director for economic policy at the Institute for Public Policy Research – told MPs the government could “significantly increase taxes on online gambling and increase revenue”.
After the meeting, Hillier said the chancellor had a difficult balancing act in deciding how betting should be taxed.
She added: “While I accept parts of the gambling industry make an economic and cultural contribution to the UK, I am frankly flabbergasted that representatives from the betting sector could not accept that certain forms of gambling, such as highly addictive online casino games, cause social harm for some people.
“I don’t believe that is a defensible position.”
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