By Derek Webb.
The Campaign for Fairer Gambling (CFG), commissioned Howard Reed of Landman Economics to provide a report on the Impact Assessment used by the government at DCMS to justify the expansion of machines in casino and to allow betting in casino premises.
The report was mentioned in the Times, with commentary from someone suffering the lived experience of casino machine gambling harm. Regulus, a management consultant that acts for the gambling trade, responded with a blog, which was critical of the data used in the report in respect of gambling harm. This data was only on one page of a 21-page report and only mentioned in a couple of lines in the full-page conclusion.
Regulus has a habit of acting in the interests of the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) which influenced DCMS to proceed with the changes. The BGC proposed the expansion without offering any opinion as to where the potential extra tax revenue that would be lost on machines would come from. Contrastingly, the BGC is speculating daily about the possible consequences of tax increases on remote gambling. The BGC endorses taking profits away from other leisure sectors to feed machines, but opposes rational taxes being taken from gambling operator profits.
Electronic gaming, whether remote or machine, is economically negative as it has low employment relative to other leisure spend activities, and to other forms of gambling, such as table games, racecourse and over-the-counter bookmaking. There must be adequate tax rates on electronic gambling to compensate for the economic downside.
The alleged justification for the B1 expansion was that 1968 casinos were in an unfair position relative to 2005 casinos. The reality is that the 2005 Act casinos have failed. There are now only four of them and only one of them offers betting. On a recent visit to Genting Wolverhampton, a 2005 casino, I observed that on the 34 machines, there were 17 or less players at a busy time of around 30 minutes around 11 pm on a Friday. As there are no other casinos in Wolverhampton, and as casinos in neighbouring cities are allowed 20 machines, there was no evidence of unfairness.
One unfairness of the 2005 Act is that remote gambling was allowed to be operated from offshore. No gambling tax was applied until a point of consumption tax in 2015. Even then it was introduced at the very low rate of only 15%, with the gaming rate increased to 21% as of 2019. No remote gambling tax should be less than the same tax for land-based premises, so there is an urgent need to increase remote gambling taxes.
Another unfairness of the 2005 Act was allowing FOBTs (B2) gaming machines in betting shops. The maximum stake of £100 was out of all proportion to all other gaming machines. My “Stop the FOBTs” campaign was instrumental in getting that stake reduced to a £2 maximum. However, there is a legacy issue with the remaining B3 content.
The machine suppliers, BGC members mainly based in the US and Germany, wanted to still offer roulette at stakes above £2, so created a chance to bet up to £30 on roulette but only if winning a £2 bet first, with the chance for winning reduced as the roulette wagers increase. This was first regarded as illegal by the Gambling Commission (GC), but somehow minds were changed. Irrespective, it is not conducive to the prevention of harm to allow this type of content.
There are over 50,000 B3s in bingo halls, betting shops and adult gaming centres (AGCs). One control is to allow only 20% of machines in bingo and AGCs to be B3s. Sadly, GC has allowed small-sized infill unused units to count as “machines” so allowing more B3s. Also, AGCs in the BGC are claiming to be bingo venues when only having bingo available on locked-up tablet devices.
The 2024 Labour manifesto committed to reducing gambling harm. The expansion of B1 machines, whilst the B3 abuses continue contradicts this commitment. The 2019 Labour manifesto promised a new act. As an optimistic and philanthropic campaigning activist, I am confident that this will become an achievable aim.