Ninety Labour MPs press Healey for a higher Machine Games Duty rate on Category B machines
Alex Ballinger and 89 colleagues have written to the Chancellor asking for a new higher rate at the Budget on 28 October, with pubs and bingo games protected. Betting and arcade trade bodies say a rise on the scale modelled by the Social Market Foundation would close venues and cost thousands of jobs.
Ninety Labour MPs have written to the Chancellor, John Healey, urging him to introduce a new higher rate of Machine Games Duty for Category B machines in the Budget on 28 October. The letter, dated 16 October, was led by Alex Ballinger, the Labour MP for Halesowen and co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Gambling Reform, who published it on Friday.
The MPs describe a higher Category B rate as “a popular, targeted and proportionate way to raise revenue”. Their formal request names no rate. Instead, the letter cites modelling by the Social Market Foundation under which a rate of 40 per cent could raise between £275 million and £458 million a year, allowing for significant behavioural change. It focuses on B3 machines, which permit rapid play at stakes of up to £2 and prizes of up to £500.
The letter says lower-category machines would stay unaffected, pubs would sit wholly outside the scope of a rise, and the abolition of Bingo Duty would remain protected, so the game of bingo itself stays duty-free. On adult gaming centres, it says 47 per cent are in the most deprived fifth of the country, and that the most deprived local authorities have more than six times as many per head as the least deprived. It also cites polling, attributed to the Social Market Foundation and Survation, in which 43 per cent of voters backed higher taxes on slot machines in high-street betting shops, against 11 per cent who backed a cut.
a popular, targeted and proportionate way to raise revenueLetter from 90 Labour MPs to the Chancellor, 16 October 2026, on a higher rate for Category B machines
Machine Games Duty currently has three rates, set by the cost of play and the top prize: 5 per cent, 20 per cent and 25 per cent, with Category B machines in the 20 per cent band. The MPs ask Healey to apply the same principles used at the 2025 Budget, which raised Remote Gaming Duty from 21 per cent to 40 per cent and abolished bingo duty.
The gambling industry had written to the Chancellor two days earlier. The chief executives of Entain, Flutter UK and Ireland, bet365, Bally’s Corporation, evoke and Betfred wrote on 14 October citing analysis by EY of a 40 per cent Category B rate, under which a further 690 to 1,470 betting shops and 28 to 34 casinos could close, 11,600 to 15,900 jobs could go, and the Exchequer could be left up to £124 million worse off once other tax losses are counted. The EY report itself has not been published.
Grainne Hurst, chief executive of the Betting and Gaming Council, called it “deeply misguided” to suggest that higher taxes on betting shops and casinos would protect high streets, and said more than 600 betting shops have closed or announced closure since the last Budget, with over 10,000 jobs lost or put at risk. Bacta, the trade association for Britain’s land-based gaming and amusements industry, said the proposals “would kill the British seaside and cost thousands of jobs”. Healey is due to deliver the Budget on 28 October.
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