The Social Market Foundation, the ‘non-partisan’ think tank pushing John Healey to double Machine Games Duty in next week’s Budget, has been caught privately admitting that jobs will be hit by its proposals and the upsides of its tax hikes lack evidence. Catch up, lads…
A draft of its report, accidentally published with the staff’s internal comments still attached, shows SMF top brass conceding the tax would close venues, cost jobs, and hit bingo halls and seaside arcades. Their own director asked whether the jobs claims were overly optimistic…
The report, “Addressing the Harm”, calls for duty on Category B machines to double from 20% to 40%. SMF claims this would raise up to £458 million and somehow create jobs – their campaign is backed by Gordon Brown. SMF director Theo Bertram is a former SpAd to the gambling-obsessed ex-PM…
The draft says operators “may choose to close certain locations” and that “this could lead to job losses in the sector” before insisting the losses would be “more than offset” elsewhere. Bertram wrote in the margin:
“Is this overly optimistic? What’s the basis for the confidence that they will find jobs elsewhere?”
SMF Chief economist Gideon Salutin replied:
“You’re right, this does not guarantee the employee will find a job elsewhere, but it does show that employment across the country will grow. I believe the wording’s right here”
The report itself admits “we do not currently know how operators would respond to a tax increase.” The industry says 600 betting shops will have shut and 5,000 jobs will be gone by the end of 2026 after last year’s online tax rise. PaddyPower owner Flutter has just today axed 1,400…
SMF says limiting the hike to Category B machines would protect pubs. Asked whether it would still hit bingo and seaside arcades, Salutin replied: “Yes it would hit them”. Left out of the summary of the report…
On the much-disputed relationship between gambling and its supposed ‘harms’, Bertram warned colleagues “we need to be careful that we don’t overstate causality – the harms are associated”. Asked whether a causal link between machines and gambling-related crime was backed by the research, Salutin admitted: “Unclear, so I’ve changed it to correlation”. The £2.33 billion ‘harm’ figure survived anyway…
A line accusing the government of protecting gambling firms was flagged by Bertram as “maybe too strong for a HMT audience”. Salutin: “altered”. One reader in mind…
When Bertram warned the industry would point out the higher rate is already 25%, Salutin replied that it “brought in 500,000 last year. Neither James, me, nor Aveek can figure out where that 500,000 could have come from”. These are the experts telling the Chancellor how to tax the sector…
As for punters moving from supervised shops to the black market, Salutin waved it away as “a bogeyman”. Chump alert…
Read the draft report below:
Robert Jenrick on the Today programme:
“Can you now give a guarantee to your listeners this morning that no BBC presenter in the future will be exposed as a paedophile, as a number have been in the recent past? No, of course you can’t…”