John Healey is facing a bingo backlash after his tax raid on gambling put nearly 80 halls and 1,200 jobs at risk.
The Chancellor used this week’s Budget to raise levies on slot machines in an attempted clampdown on ‘gambling harm’ and so-called adult gaming centres that often open 24 hours a day.
He said the money raised by hiking machine games duty (MGD) from 20 per cent to 25 per cent will be used to help ‘retail, hospitality and leisure’ firms.
But despite repeated warnings before the Budget that such a move would also hit bingo operators, the Chancellor pressed ahead, sparking fury within the industry.
‘The mood is very, very bad today,’ said Nicole Garrett, chief executive of the Bingo Association. ‘People are really disappointed.’
A woman plays on the slot machines at Mecca Bingo
She said the tax raid – which is due to raise £145million a year – will leave 77 of the country’s 239 bingo halls loss-making as slot machines help raise revenues.
‘That will inevitably mean closures,’ said Ms Garrett, adding that as many as 1,200 jobs are at risk.
Rank Group, which owns Mecca Bingo as well as Grosvenor Casinos, said the tax hike would cost it £9million.
It said it was now ‘undertaking mitigating actions’ – which could include closures and job losses.
The Treasury’s decision to lump bingo clubs in with sites that cause ‘gambling harm’ in order to raise money to support rival leisure activities has rubbed salt into the industry’s wounds.
One industry executive told the Daily Mail: ‘It exposes the anti-gambling snobbery that is rife within Labour and a snootiness about what working class people should spend their money on. Seemingly the government now gets to decide what is good leisure and bad leisure.’
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Slot machines are a key revenue raiser at bingo halls across the country as well as in struggling pubs, working men’s clubs and seaside arcades.
Industry insiders compare playing on the slot machines at a bingo club to buying popcorn at the cinema.
Speaking ahead of the Budget, Buzz Bingo chief executive Dominic Mansour said ‘having a go on the machines is often a fun interlude for players between bingo games’ but ‘not something people do for hours on end’.
And he warned a rise in machine games duty to 25 per cent ‘would leave around a third of our estate loss-making’.
That suggests around 25 of its near-80 bingo halls are now under threat.
Ms Garrett said the decision by former Chancellor Rachel Reeves to abolish the 10 per cent duty on bingo had raised hopes that Treasury understood ‘our contribution to society’.
She said to now be seen as a problem that should be taxed, with the money used to support seemingly more worthy leisure activities, was ‘a bit of an insult to the people that enjoy bingo’.
‘It’s a strange change of direction that we’re no longer considered part of that sort of contribution to society and the high street,’ she said.
‘Every bingo club I go in to, the staff know their customers by name. There are people in there who are older, if they didn’t come into their bingo club, they might not see anyone else that day or that week. So, it’s a lifeline for people that are socially isolated.
‘And I made really clear in the run up to the Budget, that an increase to MGD would mean clubs closing. You cannot increase MGD without hurting the bingo sector. But unfortunately, they’ve decided on this occasion that a number of bingo club closures would be acceptable.’
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