Badenoch Warns Gambling Tax Rises Risk ‘Doom Loop’
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has waded into the debate over gambling taxation, warning that further increases to gambling duties risk pushing licensed operators out of business and driving customers towards unregulated sites. The comments, made in an interview with The Sun, come as attention turns to the first Autumn Budget under new Chancellor John Healey and to whether the Treasury will raise Machine Games Duty (MGD), the tax applied to gaming machines in betting shops and arcades.
What’s actually changed
Nothing has been decided yet – this is a political intervention rather than a policy announcement.
Badenoch accused the Labour government of putting UK gambling into a “tax doom loop,” warning that further duty rises would push legitimate operators out of business and drive punters toward the black market.
Her central complaint is that the cycle is self-defeating:
“Labour are in the tax doom loop. They raise taxes, businesses close, less money comes in, and so they have to raise taxes even further,” she said, adding “What they’re doing is just cannibalising business.”
Badenoch urged the government to resist pushing punters towards the black market, warning that “the good companies will go out of business” should tax rises continue.
The remarks land against a backdrop of real financial pressure on the sector:
the warning follows a run of retail closures and job cuts across the sector, which operators have linked to higher national insurance costs and last year’s rise in Remote Gaming Duty from 21% to 40%.
Speculation now centres on whether Machine Games Duty will be the next lever the Treasury pulls.
Rumours that the Chancellor could trigger a tax raid on MGD in the upcoming announcement have not sat well with the industry, prompting outcries from figures including Betfred founder Fred Done and Entain chief executive Stella David.
The comments add political weight to industry lobbying ahead of the Autumn Budget, with operators including Entain, Flutter Entertainment and Super Group’s Betway watching closely for any further changes to gambling duty rates.
What it means for you
For most players, none of this changes anything about your account today – there is no new deposit rule, stake limit or licence condition attached to this story. But tax policy has a habit of showing up indirectly in the player experience: operators facing higher duty bills have previously responded by trimming promotional spend, closing loss-making shops, or reassessing loyalty and VIP schemes, all of which can affect the offers and shop access you see as a customer. If MGD does rise in the Budget, that pressure would fall specifically on betting-shop machines rather than online slots, so anyone who plays mainly in a physical bookmaker is more directly exposed than an online-only player.
It’s also worth understanding the political context you’ll likely see referenced in coverage this autumn: this isn’t the first time Badenoch has used a Budget run-up to champion the sector.
She previously joined The Sun’s Save Our Bets campaign ahead of last year’s Budget, when she accused then-Prime Minister Keir Starmer and then-Chancellor Rachel Reeves of turning Britain into a “nanny state.”
She has also backed Shadow Gambling Minister Louie French’s characterisation of the last Conservative government’s approach to the Gambling Act Review as “balanced and business-friendly.”
The bigger picture
This intervention sits alongside a broader tug-of-war between the Treasury’s revenue needs and an industry that has already absorbed significant cost increases from last year’s Remote Gaming Duty rise, plus the compliance overheads of the White Paper reforms – stake limits, affordability checks and the statutory levy among them.
The pattern echoes 2025, when Badenoch’s party positioned itself as an ally of horse racing specifically during betting tax discussions ahead of Rachel Reeves’ November Budget.
Whether the government heeds the warning is another matter – industry lobbying on tax has had a mixed record of late, and ministers have shown more appetite for revenue-raising than for sector concessions. What happens with MGD in the Autumn Budget will be the clearest signal yet of how much weight this kind of pressure actually carries in Westminster, and whether further retail closures follow.
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