Tories: Labour desperate to use bookies tax to bail out Rachel Reeves

Tuesday 17 June 2025 5:00 pm
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Tuesday 17 June 2025 4:29 pm

Shadow sport and playing minister Louie French has ripped into the Authorities over its plans for playing taxes so quickly after a sector white paper, describing them as a risk to bookies and horseracing.

The Conservative MP for Previous Bexley and Sidcup stated Labour have been “determined” to search out “simple tax rises to bail out Rachel Reeves”.

The damning feedback come after the All-Get together Parliamentary Group for Racing and Bloodstock likened Authorities plans for on-line playing duties to former Chancellor George Osborne’s inevitable “pasty tax” U-turn. 

In addition they comply with a Treasury-led session on the current Playing White Paper, which centered on the therapy of distant betting.

The APPG’s co-chair Nick Timothy stated the Authorities plans amounted to a “mad proposal”. 

French concurred, stating: “Mountain climbing playing taxes threatens to tank small bookies, horseracing and bingo halls, an enormous blow to many excessive streets and racing cities.”

The Treasury plans to vary the construction of on-line playing duties with a system that may tax bets on horse racing at an equal fee to on-line casinos. 

There are trade fears that prices might subsequently rise for bookies who function on-line, and drive punters in the direction of a betting black market.

“It might be a dying knell on prime of affordability checks,” French added, “that are already fuelling the black market, which is a lose-lose for a Authorities determined for money and fearful about drawback playing.”

Tax rises for bookies?

Metropolis AM understands that DCMS officers are aware of the issues throughout the horse racing neighborhood about one other concern, affordability checks, that depend on onerous paperwork, with the Playing Fee presently piloting a alternative for these checks.

A authorities spokesperson stated: “We recognise the large significance of horse racing to the British sporting calendar and the numerous contribution it makes to the financial system yearly.

“We now have just lately launched a session on the tax therapy of distant playing and are actively partaking with the sector, so are grateful to the APPG for his or her contributions and can take into account the report totally.”

Fellow All-Get together Parliamentary Group for Racing and Bloodstock co-chair, Labour MP Dan Carden, stated that he desires his “authorities to do the best factor and again British racing for the longer term and make it as profitable because it presumably will be”. 

BGC chief government Grainne Hurst stated: “Any tax rises now, so quickly after a white paper which price the sector over a billion in misplaced income, will solely stop development.”

Adjacently, final month plans have been shelved to liberalise guidelines on slot machines resulting from worries about susceptible clients.

It was a setback for the grownup gaming centre trade, which has been fast-growing in recent times.