Bookmakers continue to receive mixed signals around taxation from the Labour government as the Autumn budget edges ever closer, writes SBC News’ Editor, Ted Orme-Claye.
In the midst of the Labour Party 2025 conference in Liverpool, which started on Sunday 28 September and will conclude tomorrow, Wednesday 2 October. As usual the four day event has seen speeches from key figures in the governing party.
Yesterday PM Keir Starmer took to the stage, and most significantly for businesses across various industries, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, discussed fiscal policy, and hinted at future tax raises ahead of the budget announcement on 26 November.
“Our second must be about building a renewed economy for a renewed Britain,” Reeves said yesterday. “A renewed economy that works for working people and rewards their contribution.
“A renewed economy where we reject austerity and support our public services. A renewed economy that supports investment, that gets inflation and borrowing down, and where we build growth in every part of Britain. I will make my choices at that budget.”
Gambling leadership is forced once more to read the tea leaves of Labour economic plans and fiscal expenditure. It has been clear for some time that Reeves has put a potential raise in gambling taxes on the table – how this will play out and what numbers will be involved is anyone’s guess.
“I’m a Chancellor that has set up the review of gambling taxes, no other Chancellor has done that, because I do think there is a case for gambling firms to pay more,” Reeves said in an interview with Politics UK at the conference.
“I’ve talked to a number of businesses from all sectors of the economy including the gaming sector. On a personal level I’ve never betted in my life on anything, but they make an important contribution to the economy, but they should pay their fair share of taxes, and we’ll make sure that happens.”
WATCH: Rachel Reeves hints she will raise gambling taxes in the Autumn Budget
“They should pay their fair share of taxes and we’ll make sure that happens” pic.twitter.com/bpeRXcJIWR
— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) September 29, 2025
With online gross gambling yield (GGY) for Q2 alone standing at £1.49bn, it’s no surprise that UK gambling carries a tax target for Labour ministers, aware that raising public finances are needed for investment projects and the promise that “the books will be balanced”, leaving no options on borrowing for an inflation sensitive government.
Last year’s narrative was to plug a ‘£25bn Tory blackhole’, this year Starmer and Reeves eye delivering a party pledge by ending the two child benefit cap, an issue that has haunted the cabinet as the elephant in the room on public policy.
Joining the dots
Reeves has not yet fully committed to abolishing the two-child benefit cap, but faces huge pressure from backbenchers and advisors to deliver and overturn a policy deemed as “cruel austerity” by the Party’s grassroots.
This is seen as a key way to ease the financial burden on working families and alleviate the disturbingly high levels of childhood poverty seen in the UK, the world’s sixth largest economy by GDP.
According to 101 Labour MPs the answer is simple – gambling licences can carry the burden, with huge revenue streams and profit margins detailed by PLCs in their interim results, why even bother with a consultation process.
Gambling reformists within Labour ranks will view a tax increase as a swift justice on an industry that has escaped stringent judgements denied by the Gambling Review – No advertising ban, the Premier League’s inaction on football sponsorships, – a mandate designed by a soft-touch Conservative government.
Not everyone in Labour is on board, however. As mentioned above, Reeves has still not fully committed to a scrapping of the two child benefits – a policy that carries overwhelming support by the public – nor the idea that merging the three types of gaming duty into one 21% rate should be done to pay for it.
There are also those within the party who disagree with the notion that taxing gambling is a silver bullet to childhood poverty. Fiona Twycross, Labour’s Gambling Minister, put this plainly while addressing the Social Market Foundation (SMF), a thinktank and one of the biggest proponents of gambling tax changes.
“I’m not convinced we should be putting them in the same pot where you get a very easy answer to what is actually a very complex issue,” she said.
“I know many of you in the room will disagree with the sector when they talk about the black market and the risk of the black and gray market, but actually these are real risks.
“We have to take things in the round. We have to look at what the implications are of raising taxes, and what level of taxes is a safe level to raise them to where you won’t push consumers into the black market.”
Voting with your wallet
However, while Tycross seems unconvinced that taxing gambling is the answer to childhood poverty in the UK, she still didn’t rule out changing the way the sector is taxed.
During her discussion with the SMF she described cracking down on childhood poverty and taxing gambling as ‘two perfectly reasonable things for the government to look at’, just not two things that should be put in ‘the same pot’.
Labour is facing not just macroeconomic pressure but also political ones, both from the backbenches who want to see gambling taxed, and also externally from its rivals. The Conservative Party may be in the worst shape it’s ever been in, but Reform UK is gaining a lot of momentum in the polls.
Interestingly, despite being a generally fiscally conservative party, Reform UK has included scrapping the two child benefit cap in its policies. This may make it even more pertinent for Labour to do the same as it risks losing voters in some of its core regions, like the North and Midlands of England, to Nigel Farage’s right-wing party.
And to top it all off, as stated countless times by now, the party wants to invest. Big time. And this will need to be paid for somehow. Gambling may be a drop in the multi-billion pound ocean Labour needs, but it is a drop nonetheless.
Ultimately, many people vote with their pocket. Labour may be hoping that if it has secured enough economic good fortune when the next election comes around, many of the voters it is losing to Reform will return to the fold. If taxing gambling helps pay for this, then the party will do it.
In my opinion, betting companies should not take it as a given that they will be taxed heavily to pay for Labour’s crusade against the UK’s childhood poverty epidemic, and certainly not the level some like the Liberal Democrats think the industry should.
But come the budget on 26 November, operators need to be prepared to foot more of a bill, along with many other businesses and consumers across the country.
UK Gambling can only reflect on a poor platform of debate and representation for a tax effective sector. A different path could have been taken as another judgement looms in a decade of regulatory transformations.
Bookmakers continue to receive mixed signals around taxation from the Labour government as the Autumn budget edges ever closer, writes SBC News’ Editor, Ted Orme-Claye. In the midst of the Labour Party 2025 conference in Liverpool, which started on Sunday 28 September and will conclude tomorrow, Wednesday 2 October. As usual the four day event …