SBC News Editor Ted Orme-Claye takes a look back at one of the most active weeks in the months-long debate around UK betting tax, with voices now involved including numerous bookmakers and trade bodies, horse racing, MPs and politicians from Rachel Reeves to Nigel Farage, and The Sun newspaper.

The UK debate over betting tax heated up this week with parliamentary hearings and the escalation of a campaign by one of the country’s most widely read newspapers, which has drawn the attention of Nigel Farage, one of its most divisive politicians.

Rachel Reeves, the Labour government’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, is expected to announce increases to gaming duty in some form on 26 November when she unveils the Autumn Budget – the package of spending and fiscal policies which the government will implement over the coming year.

Bookmakers and the racing industry have gone into campaign overdrive on this, particularly the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) and the British Horseracing Authority (BHA). The Sun, a UK print and online tabloid with millions of readers, has put itself firmly behind both industries with its ‘Save our Bets’ campaign.

So too has Farage, MP for Clacton, leader of the populist Reform UK party, former leader of UKIP, grandson of a William Hill board member, and the bookies’ favourite to become the next Prime Minister as his party benefits from a leap in favourable polling.

“As Clacton MP, I will do all I can to support our pier and local arcades,” Farage wrote in the Sun this week, referencing data cited by Bacta, the UK amusements and arcade trade body, and his constituency’s relationship with this industry as a seaside town.

He continued: “Offering fun to millions! We can’t have that, can we? This is the modern puritanism of the middle-class Labour Party who believe working people – their traditional voters – cannot be trusted to have a bet or a pint without turning into addicts.

“Of course there are a small number of problem gamblers. But a betting tax hike will do nothing to help them. It will just punish millions of ordinary ­punters, who will get worse odds.”

Farage backs BGC talking points

Farage and Reform UK weighing in on the side of betting, gaming and racing shouldn’t be too much of a surprise.

While Reform UK’s main political talking point is immigration – to the point where many pundits and voters often struggle to highlight many other Reform UK policies – the party, like Farage’s previous party UKIP, has a libertarian streak, at least on some issues.

Farage has often been pictured drinking a pint down a local pub and enjoying a cigarette, and an old UKIP policy was to reverse the 2007 ban on indoor smoking introduced by Tony Blair’s Labour government back in 2007. Protecting a punt falls in line with Farage’s self-adopted image, as seen in his comments in The Sun.

With the political profile of Reform UK and Farage rising by the day, the BGC and others seem to have taken note. Earlier this year, the trade body’s CEO, Grainne Hurst, met with Farage at the party’s conference.

This of course shouldn’t be seen as the BGC endorsing Farage and Reform UK, but it is a clear indicator that the trade body recognises the party’s growing political influence.

Meanwhile, there are parallels between Farage’s words in The Sun and Hurst’s comments to the Treasury Select Committee earlier this week – where she met a somewhat chilly reception from Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs.

Reeves told MPs that “we simply shouldn’t be sending players towards the black market”, reiterating an old BGC argument against over-regulation and taxation

“The industry has a lot of regulations in place voluntarily and the white paper to raise those standards,” she said. “We track behavioural triggers, late night play, chasing losses, so we make sure players are staying within the regulated space.”

In his op-ed for The Sun, Farage shared a similar view, saying: “it will encourage the flight of betting money towards foreign-based and black-market bookies – another blow to an industry that puts billions into the British economy.”

It is important to stress that I am not calling the BGC and Reform political allies here. By meeting Reform earlier this year, Hurst was simply doing her job of building relations with all segments of British politics, having also met previously with Conservative leader and horse racing ally Kemi Badenoch. It is still noteworthy though how strongly Farage has taken up the industry cause.

Why The Sun? And what do the sportsbooks think?

The Sun, like Reform, takes a broadly populist angle in its modern form, though the paper has backed Labour in the past, as in 1997. The paper actually prides itself on its political and public influence and its ‘Save our Bets’ campaign is the latest in a long history of political campaigning.

The campaign, and Farage’s inclusion in it, does seem to indicate a growing closeness between the paper and the burgeoning Reform movement. However, The Sun is likely to have far deeper motives, with the company having a big stake in betting itself.

Not only is horse racing news a staple of its sports coverage, but the paper also operates two gaming platforms in its own right – Sun Bingo and the online casino Sun Vegas. It also has a lucrative affiliate programme and regularly runs advertisements for bookmakers. Betting is a big revenue stream for the outlet.

Moving back to horse racing, the sport is particularly concerned about tax increases and the BHA has initiated a campaign, #AxeTheRacingTax, and went as far as to call a strike on 10 September.

The Sun putting itself in racing’s corner in this debate should not be too much of a surprise, and while the racing strike was controversial with bookmakers, figures from some have welcomed the newspapers’ involvement in the campaign.

“You know, I think The Sun obviously wants us to have a debate about it, but I think it’s about time,” said Steve Hawkes, Flutter UK and Ireland’s Chief Reputation and External Affairs Officer, and former Deputy Political Editor at The Sun, appearing on Talk TV yesterday.

“For so much of this year, most of the debate around betting in gaming and gambling has been given by people who don’t like it. What’s been reassuring from the start of the day is to see the voice of, you know, your viewers, of the working-class reader and our customer, which has been overlooked for too long.”

The government turning to betting for tax revenue is nothing new – Hawkes noted on TalkTV that Jeremy Hunt, the last Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer, also considered doing the same thing.

The prospect of Reeves and Keir Starmer doing so has led to a far more extensive backlash and lobbying than expected, however. With operators having suffered from less than stellar PR in recent years, the government may be viewing taxing operators as an easy win.

It also seems that tax rises are coming, with Reeves having stated at the Labour conference that operators should ‘pay their fair share”. Also, to be fair to the government, it has a tough job of revitalising the economy on its hands after years of economic hits, and the money required for public services needs to come from somewhere.

Meanwhile, although the Treasury Select Committee does not directly formulate policy, its reception to the BGC’s arguments on Wednesday may indicate that politicians have grown tired of the black market line.

The suddenness and extent of The Sun’s campaign, with the paper dedicating front pages to it this week, may also indicate that Labour’s plans will not be met with as broad support as the party hoped. The inclusion of the increasingly loud political voice of Farage in this campaign would also suggest the topic will not go away after the budget next month.

On Talk TV, Hawkes summarised a viewpoint likely felt by many bookmakers right now:

“I presume the Labour government, and the Treasury would be thinking, ‘well, who could be hit without getting much of a backlash’, and they’ve seen today that obviously there is a portion of the population that will speak out about it and we’ll react – but I think that’s our job. is to be factual, to give the facts and say, ‘look, this will have an impact’.

“And it’s good to see because we’ve been in The Sun today and we’re talking about this and I’m sure this will continue in good old fashioned Sun style for the next few weeks, and hopefully there can be a debate about it. Because as I say at the moment, it’s been too one-sided.”