BGC Takes Its Machine Duty Fight to the Prime Minister's Constituency With "Back Our Betting Shops"

The Betting and Gaming Council has launched a campaign built on shop workers' stories and a poll of Andy Burnham's Makerfield seat, a month before a Budget that may double Machine Games Duty. Its job figures are its own; the think tank behind the proposal says the rise would raise up to £458 million.

• The Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) launched Back Our Betting Shops on 28 September, a campaign built on the stories of shop staff and customers
• The BGC cites EY modelling that raising Machine Games Duty to 40% could put up to 16,000 jobs, nearly 1,500 betting shops and as many as 34 casinos at risk while leaving the Treasury £124 million worse off
• An Opinium poll published by the BGC found 54% of residents in Makerfield, the Prime Minister's constituency, say betting shops contribute to community life
• Chancellor John Healey presents his first Budget on Wednesday 28 October; the Treasury is reported to be modelling a doubling of the duty and has confirmed nothing
• The Social Market Foundation estimates that doubling the rate on Category B machines would raise £275 million to £458 million a year, and Paddy Power co-founder Stewart Kenny has called the industry's warnings scaremongering

The Trade Body Moves From Numbers to Names

The Betting and Gaming Council, the trade body for the regulated industry in the United Kingdom, launched Back Our Betting Shops on Monday. The campaign will "shine a light on the real people who rely on betting shops for their livelihoods", from apprentices to managers and customers, and warn of "the very real human consequences further tax increases could have", according to the announcement.

The figures behind it are the BGC's. It cites EY modelling suggesting that increasing Machine Games Duty to 40% "could put up to 16,000 jobs, nearly 1,500 betting shops and as many as 34 casinos at risk, while leaving the Treasury £124 million worse off"; a second release puts the shop figure at up to 1,470. Neither release sets out the modelling's assumptions or says which machine categories it covers. Since 2019, according to the BGC, more than 3,000 betting shops have closed with the loss of over 16,000 jobs, along with 22 casinos and 108 bingo clubs. Shops still support more than 36,000 jobs, it says, and the wider sector 109,000 jobs, £6.8 billion of gross value added and more than £4 billion a year in tax.

"Further tax increases would not just show up on a balance sheet," said BGC chief executive Grainne Hurst. "They could mean more people losing their livelihoods, more empty shopfronts and more communities losing businesses they value."

A Poll in Makerfield, and a Test Borrowed From the Prime Minister

The second release took the argument to a single seat. Polling by Opinium in Makerfield, which the BGC describes as Prime Minister Andy Burnham's constituency, found 54% of residents say betting shops contribute to local community life, including 51% of Labour voters and 59% of Reform voters, according to the trade body. Some 26% of adults had placed a sports or racing bet in the previous 12 months, and asked about local businesses generally, 34% selected job losses as a concern if higher costs forced closures, the most chosen answer. The release does not give the sample size, fieldwork dates or question wording.

Hurst tied the findings to Burnham's own language. "The Prime Minister has said policies should face a 'Makerfield test' that if they don't work for people here and don't lift them up, they shouldn't happen at all," she said.

What the Treasury Has, and Has Not, Said

Chancellor John Healey confirmed on 31 July that his first Budget will be delivered on Wednesday 28 October. The Treasury has proposed no change to Machine Games Duty, which HMRC charges on machines' net takings at 5%, 20% or 25% depending on stake and prize. The Times reported on 8 September that officials were modelling a doubling of all three bands.

The last Budget left machine duty alone. After consulting in April 2025 on merging the remote gambling taxes, the government instead raised Remote Gaming Duty from 21% to 40% from 1 April 2026 and created a 25% remote betting rate from April 2027, according to its policy paper. Operators have since cited those rises in closures and job cuts, including Betfred's 132 shop closures in July.

The other side has its own numbers. The Social Market Foundation (SMF), whose June report proposed the rise, estimates that doubling the duty to 40% on Category B machines only, leaving pub machines untouched, would raise £275 million to £458 million a year. It puts the economic losses associated with machine gaming at £2.33 billion a year against about £600 million raised by the duty now, and says 43% of the public back higher taxes on slot machines in betting shops. Those estimates are contested too: Dan Waugh of the advisory firm Regulus Partners told SBC News the SMF was misusing government estimates of costs associated with problem gambling. Stewart Kenny, the Paddy Power co-founder, has written that he "used the same script whenever tax was about to rise" when he represented bookmakers.

The Campaign Is Addressed to Downing Street, Not to the Treasury's Models

The Makerfield poll is the more revealing release. The BGC is not trying to win the elasticity argument here; it is trying to make a machine duty rise politically expensive for a Prime Minister who has made his own constituency the measure of his policies. A majority valuing the shops while only about a quarter bet on sport or racing is exactly the finding a campaign built on community rather than customers needs. But without a sample size or question wording it is a campaign statistic, not evidence a Treasury official can weigh, and "contribute to community life" is a softer claim than support for leaving the tax alone. Kemi Badenoch's intervention last week made the duty a party dividing line; this campaign tries to make it an argument inside the governing party.

Both Sides' Headline Numbers Come From Parties With a Stake

EY's figure says a 40% rate leaves the Treasury £124 million worse off; the SMF says a 40% rate on Category B machines raises up to £458 million. Both cannot be right, and the gap lies in assumptions neither side has fully published: how much play leaves the licensed estate, how many venues close, and where money not spent on machines goes instead. It is not even clear they model the same rise. The BGC's closure count also starts in 2019, the year the maximum stake on fixed-odds betting terminals was cut to £2, the precedent Kenny uses to argue that predicted devastation did not follow. Until the Office for Budget Responsibility costs whatever the Chancellor decides, both sets of figures are advocacy.

Jobs Are the Industry's Ground Because Harm Is the Treasury's

The campaign says a great deal about workers and little about harm, and that looks deliberate. The last Budget applied the principle that the most harmful products should carry the highest rates, which is how online casino reached 40%, and the SMF is applying the same principle to machines. The BGC's answer changes the subject from the product to the premises: a shop is a job, a shopfront and a racing levy contribution. That is a legitimate argument, and the closures already under way give it force. But it leaves the SMF's central claim, that Category B machines carry some of the highest rates of harmful play, unanswered, and a Chancellor looking for revenue with a defensible rationale will notice.

Back Our Betting Shops is a well-aimed campaign with a month to run. Whether it works depends on whether Downing Street comes to see a rise the SMF calls a harm tax as, in Makerfield, a tax on the high street.