BGC chief rejects MPs' push for higher UK machine gaming duty

Grainne Hurst, chief executive of the Betting and Gaming Council, has described a cross-party push to raise Machine Games Duty as "deeply misguided", according to SBC News.

The intervention came after Labour MP Alex Ballinger announced on Friday that 90 fellow MPs had put their names to a letter urging the government to lift duty on Category B gaming machines to 40%.

Speculation has grown that Chancellor John Healey could double Machine Games Duty in the forthcoming Autumn Budget, a move the gambling trade sees as the latest in a run of tax pressures on the sector.

Responding on LinkedIn, Hurst said MPs were entitled to worry about communities and high streets, but argued that piling further tax onto betting shops and casinos was the wrong way to protect them.

She pointed to the more than 600 betting shops that have shut or announced closure since increases to Remote Gaming Duty and General Betting Duty were unveiled in last year's Autumn Budget, framing the figure as evidence the risk is already materialising rather than theoretical.

Citing modelling from Ernst & Young, Hurst said a rise in Machine Games Duty to 40% could put as many as 16,000 jobs at risk, shutter roughly 1,500 betting shops and 34 casinos, and still leave the Treasury around £124m worse off overall.

She urged the MPs behind the letter to weigh the knock-on effects for the neighbourhoods they say they want to defend, warning that each closure means fewer jobs and another vacant shopfront on the high street.

"We should be backing British jobs and businesses, not taxing them out of existence," Hurst said.

Bacta, which represents the amusements and low-stake gaming sector, added its own warning the same day, tying its lobbying to VisitEngland's campaign encouraging more domestic holidaymakers to visit coastal resorts.

Bacta's director of communications, Allaster Gair, said the government "must avoid the self-harm that an increase in MGD will cause", pointing to a tourism industry he said supports more than two million jobs and hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses, generating £127bn a year for the economy.

The interventions from the BGC and Bacta add to a broader lobbying effort from the UK gambling industry, with several major operators already warning of closures and job losses tied to prospective tax rises.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has previously signalled his own unease with the presence of high street betting shops, leaving uncertain whether the industry's campaign will shift the Treasury's thinking.

With the Autumn Budget now nine days away, the sector faces a narrow window to make its case before any decision on Machine Games Duty is set.