Lotteries left out of former UK ex-PM Gordon Brown’s calls for gambling tax hike
Gordon Brown, a former UK Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer, has called for taxes on the country’s hugely valuable gambling industry to be hiked.
Similar calls have been echoing around the political sphere over the past month or so, coming ahead of incumbent Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, announcing the Autumn Budget in either October or November.
In a recent op-ed for The Guardian, Brown asserted that the government could raise ‘billions’ by taxing the UK gambling sector. This money, in Brown’s vision, could be targeted towards alleviating the impacts of child poverty, an issue he has been deeply involved in campaigning on since leaving Number 10 Downing Street back in 2010.
“It’s clear that we can identify sources of revenues to fight the war against child poverty,” Brown wrote. “The first step is raising billions by taxing the extraordinarily profitable gambling and betting industry, without affecting lotteries or bingo.”
Brown’s viewpoint is largely informed by research carried out by two think tanks, the Social Market Foundation (SMF) and the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), the former of which is a long-time member of the gambling law reform movement in the UK.
The SMF has been vocal in calling for a general betting duty of 25% across all products. The IPPR, meanwhile, has published a report arguing that £3bn could be raised by increasing gambling taxes to pay for a scrapping the two-child limit on means-tested benefits and the household benefit cap.
This has, as expected, earned the ire of the Betting and Gaming Council (BGC), the UK trade body for bookmakers and casinos. The organisation has criticised the IPPR’s proposals as ‘economically reckless’ and ‘financially misleading’.
Brown, and other policymakers, seem convinced of the benefits though. Brown is no longer an MP, but many sitting Labour MPs are increasingly of the opinion that taxes on betting need to be raised, and the majority of MPs on the All Party Parliamentary Group for Gambling Reform are from the Labour Party.
“Excluding the lottery, betting and gaming was an £11.5bn sector last year that incurred only £2.5bn in tax,” Brown explained the rationale for his proposal in The Guardian.
“As much as £3bn extra can be raised from taxing it properly. Remote gaming duty (effectively the tax on online slots games) is about 35% in the Netherlands, 40% in Austria, 50% in Pennsylvania and 57% in tax haven Delaware, two of the few US states where it is legal.
“Yet the same activity is taxed at just 21% in the UK, raising only £1bn.”
The fact that lotteries are excluded from Brown’s ideal vision of the IPPR proposals further hammers home the fact that most politicians (or former politicians in Brown’s case) see a distinction between lotteries and other forms of gaming.
Lotteries are generally seen as posing less risks than other products,such as sports betting but particularly casino gaming, and especially slots.
This attitude has been reflected in regulatory decisions too, such as a distinction recently made by the UK Gambling Commission (UKGC) when it updated its rules around how enforcement action against licence holders will be determined.
https://lotterydaily.com/2025/08/08/highlighted/gordon-brown-gambling/