Gordon Brown is right to ask for a fair and targeted tax on the excessive profits of the gambling industry to tackle child poverty (the gambling industry is a license to print money. Correct taxing – and the fight against child poverty, August 6). This policy supports our shared goals for supplying sustainable public finances in addition to improved public health results, as well as the government’s manifesto to reduce gambling -related damage and to illuminate child poverty.
This £ 11.5 billion sector benefits enormously from VAT – exemptions and pays only 21% tax – far below the 35% -57% rates Elsewhere in West -Europe and the US. Other harmful products such as cigarettes and alcohol, on the other hand, are taxed up to 80%. At the same time, gambling leads to damage that the NHS and other services cost More than £ 1 billion A year.
The government may not be influenced by intensive lobbying and false claims of economic damage or the threat of illegal gambling from the gambling industry, which will of course resist these proposals.
Instead, prior to poverty alleviation, the government must take the opportunity in the next budget the opportunity to burden a social damage to pay a social interest.
Alex Ballinger MP
Labor, Halesowen
Dr. Beccy Cooper MP
Labor, Worthing West
Increasing taxes must go hand in glove with a step to a full advertising ban of gambling, as the government of Gordon Brown did with tobacco. The new customer stimuli are obscene. You would not get away from offering new customers a free pack of cigarettes, and gambling companies should not get away with similar cash offers.
Of course the gambling industry will resist, just like tobacco for it, but the air did not fall on our heads and other advertisers turned out to fill the gaps, as they will always be.
William Bartram
Hampton, London
The article by Gordon Brown does not mention horse races, which is a completely different form of gambling than online slots and, if his ideas are applied, a terminal death spiral of decreasing returns will introduce your own correspondent Greg Wood for years. In any case, tax casinos and slots, but excludes the only sport in which this country leads the world, not only in staging, but also in competing.
I also seem to remember that Brown Chancellor was in the Blair government that the gambling industry has regulated, so that we ensure that our seaside resorts and city centers are now home to casinos and the many gambling machine arcades that destroy our main streets – a thoroughly regrettable development at every level.
Brown’s proposals will have unintended consequences and do little to relieve poverty.
Tim Harrison
London
It is a shame that Gordon Brown does not mention that Scotland is the only place in the UK where the poverty of childhood has fallen in recent years. This is largely due to the Scottish child payment of £ 27.15 per week per child eligible families.
This does not fully limit the effect of benefits with two children, but is a good example of what small countries with limited budgets can achieve. The British government must be ashamed of not learning Scotland and acting faster in reducing child poverty.
Shelagh Young
Edinburgh
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