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Following our week in Lisbon for SBC Summit 2025, the iGaming Daily team returns to our usual offering and today we are back discussing UK affairs, reviewing the gambling pledges made at the Liberal Democrat Party Conference. In Bournemouth, the party proudly proclaimed to the media its position as Britain's third largest party whilst also unveiling a proposal for a 42 % tax charge on remote gambling activities. The Lib Dems insisted that they have no ideology on gambling but pledged to adopt the toughest stance possible, framing gambling regulation as a matter of public health. Welcome back to our gaming daily, supported by Optimove, the creator of positionless marketing and the number one player engagement platform. I'm Charlie Horner, and today I'm joined by none other than the two Ted's, editor at large, Ted Menmure, and editor of SPC News, Ted Omklay. Ted Menmure, how are doing today? Restful weekend? Yes, indeed. Coming back from Lisbon. were hurt but fully recharged for today. And Ted O'See, I'm sure there's nothing you would rather be doing for Stay Back after the event than talking about the Lib Dem Party Conference. No, to be fair, I think this, all these political developments around gambling, there haven't been some of the more, some of the most interesting things going on in the UK. Certainly there's, especially with all the other like political developments in the UK, otherwise, you know, following last year's election. I there's lots of different factors at play. It's an interesting one to be following. Yeah, I I mentioned at the top of the show that the Lib Dems now are sort of out and proud. They've got 72 MPs. They're the biggest, third biggest party. They've probably got a little bit more relevance than the Conservative Party considering some of the woes that they are having. But yeah, one of the big policy proposals that the Lib Dems have... have given at their party conference this year is raising taxes on gambling from 21 to 42 percent. Obviously we've got the budget coming up. But how realistic is such a sharp tax hike and what do think it would mean for the UK gambling market? Ted Menmio will come to you first. Look, in terms of the outlook of the tax hike, that's on everyone's agenda stands. I think kind of a doubling up from 21 to 42 really kind of puts the brakes on any growth. in the UK market, especially for online gambling. However, I think that if you talk to leadership now, this is kind of being factored in. This is kind of the projection. Taxes are going to increase. It's where they land and at what level. uh 42 will be a real bite and it will carry significant consequences. I think in Wipesout pretty much the whole kind of mid-range operates for the UK. And it will kind of kill competition at the top level. So you'd probably be looking at about two to three year adjustment for that just to kind uh of make it back on the obiter terms for the industry. In terms of how realistic is it that the Lib Dems will pull through with this? Well, look, as you said in your introduction, they are the third largest party and it's really down to our audiences or their own personal take of. What does that mean in the scope of British politics? I'll see any anything to add on to that? Yeah, no, I think Ted's kind of hit the nail on the head there. I think what this would do in the event this was introduced would make Britain look incredibly similar to say the situation in Italy, where it's only really, you know, it's a market for the biggest players. The huge firms are bringing hundreds of millions, if not billions in revenue that can weather tax storms for whom it would still be a profitable endeavor to be in the UK. It would certainly wipe out a more of the SME side of the British betting industry. Even if those firms had particularly sound products and so on that might help them win some more niche customers or whatever over some of the bigger companies, their tax burden would just be a bit too much to bear. So yeah, I think I agree with Teddy. It be something that would take the industry at least a couple of years to get over. Not to mention also just sort of the knock on effect on other industries. We'd probably see a lot of backlash from horse racing over this as we already have done about the speculation around the pool betting duty game merged with remote and general betting duty. Sports would also be affected by such a large increase in online betting duty tax. I'm sure there'd be some opinions from them as well. Then yeah, regarding the realisticness of it, like I said, they are the third largest party in the House of Commons. But Labour very clearly has its own agenda on this. m Like I said, most widely-towered one is a merger of, the Labour would do, is a merger of the three different types of betting duty. And they've also been quite m assertive in saying that's still not a concrete decision. m The Treasury put out a statement on the day we had those racing strikes we talked about m a few episodes ago where they said, you know, at the moment this is just speculation, people should try and go into things with a clear head and so on. So Labour clearly has its own thing going on. So whether or not the Lib Dems could get across a doubling of remote gaming duty, I think would probably depend on how they fare in the next election and whether they could find their way into government. That in itself is, it is potentially a possibility of a Labour-Lib Dem coalition, particularly given how the reform have replaced the Conservatives as the main dry wing party according to opinion polls. Yeah, for the most part, I'd say policies promoted by the Lib Dems around gambling should be more taken, I think, as indicative of what the biggest political talking points are at the moment around the industry and less about this is a genuine real consequence we could face just because in comparison to others, they're not as big of a political force, despite their 72 MPs. Obviously, fair play to them for that. Yeah, absolutely. Look, I said at the top of show, Ted O'See, that the Lib Dems have apparently no ideology on gambling, but one of their MPs, Max Wilkinson, has said that the industry has said a free pass for too long. That maybe sounds like, if not ideology, then at least an agenda. What does he mean by this? I think what he's referring to there is the prevalence of gambling harming the UK and societal impacts. He was referring a lot about the slot machines in particular, I think, which is something that Obviously has been in a lot of politicians sites for quite a while. I we can talk about that going back to the 2019 changes to the FOBT, FOBT machines in betting shops with the increasing stakes on slots on those. That area of gambling is often seen as having quite a big detrimental societal impacts by a lot of reform advocates and studies do show that it is the area of gambling where you're more likely to incur the most losses, where people are more likely to incur addiction problems and things like that. So that's not You know, these, these assetations aren't without reason. think, yeah, the main thing is referring to it as a free pass is the idea that the industry has been getting away with some negative practices basically that are impacting the customer and particularly vulnerable customers. think that's the prevailing viewpoint there. Sure. And, you know, with the Lib Dems under the leadership of that Davey, we've We've heard a lot from them about health and social care. We've also seen Ed Davey less talking about policy to get attention, but more sort of bungee jumping and bouncing around on water slides and trampolines and stuff. So Ted M, could you explain the Lib Dems' stance on gambling, maybe since the gambling review over the last couple of years and what's been the key points in their agenda of this? If we rewind back to when Boris Johnson had pulled the gambling review in his manifesto, Kind of the reaction as you'd expect from Labour and opposition was quite big about what agenda they'd take and I think that was under kind of Corbyn. And I think actually if you kind of view the Lib Dems, they've always kind of been on the sidelines of what is happening, especially with this debate surrounding gambling. They do recognize like the economic contribution of gambling. There's also kind of this contrast in what it is to be kind of the Liberal Party and to govern a vice sector. Again, you could look at the kind of drugs policies that probably have more looser ones than the Labour and Conservative parties because that is kind of the beacon of being a Lib Dem party. But they have taken actually quite a rigorous stance against gambling and its kind of social harms and even applied terms as, know, glue to pay principles to the industry. It's a very, don't, I think even across its ranks, gambling has caused a lot of divisions for the ministers. look, we've had the Labour Party come out and say that there are potentially tax rises on the way for gambling. Gordon Brown being one of the most vociferous of those voices. This is another party coming out and putting its arguments for tax hikes and further reforms. Should the wider industry just be worried generally about the political consensus forming around gambling, this negative perception that the industry should be paying more taxes, et cetera. Ted, I'll see what do you think? Yeah, I think people should probably tread with caution. think it is looking as much as what I've said here so far today, I do think it is looking increasingly likely like that taxes will be increased in the autumn budget. The government has had quite an ambitious infrastructure investments project going on. Obviously, the economic growth has been the mixed bag for the past couple of years in general. National debt is still very high. They've got a big hole in public finances to fill basically, as has been widely discussed in the media. Gambling won't exactly... Anyone out there who thinks that a gambling tax rise would just be able to fill up, sort out all the government's financial woes is obviously kidding themselves. It's only a drop in... It's one drop in a much wider ocean of public finances. But it's a drop nonetheless that they'd be able to secure and one that would be quite easy to sell to the public. It's one that they could frame as being, especially in the context of a lot of these discussions we just had about gambling harm and societal impacts and gambling and so on, one that could frame with like, right, we're targeting this industry as well as raising the money from it a bit. We're kind of clamping down on them. And it would probably also score the governments some points with a lot of their backbenchers, many of whom are taking a bit more of a confrontational approach to gambling. bulk of the old party parliamentary group on gambling reform, even though it's led by Ian Duncan Smith, a conservative, the majority of MPs in our Labour. So I think that there's a couple of reasons as to why this is looking a bit more likely for the government, why Labour would want to do this. Then Ted, did you want to add something there? I think, look, oh when we get that decision and we have time to kind of reflect, especially on I mean, it's going be down in November. So again, there's still time. ah I think it's been a period of high anxieties and now we're going to, there's kind of a fatigue about this discussion, this debate. And I think that when we review it, ah it's really going to kind of shed light on how the industry represented itself, how it discussed taxes. Because I think at one point it would have had to come up in the agenda of everyone. you know, at the close of the decade, there would be an increase on gambling taxes in the UK and how that debate was handled and what platform within the, just what a poor platform it was for everyone involved. Ted, Ted, we'll take a quick break and we'll come back and we'll continue this conversation afterwards. Welcome back to iGaming Daily. Today we are discussing the liberal Democrats approach to gambling reform in the UK. Now, Ted, Ted M. Politicians, they often say gambling has to be treated as a public health issue. How has the Lib Dem framing of this differed from maybe the Labour Party or the Conservative government before those rhetoric? Well, again, I think here the Lib Dems have decided with the Labour view and that view that gambling should be handled by the NHS. Again, this goes back to this statement today that there won't rise as many funds for that and that they believe that the best way trans-public gambling is via the NHS taking control. So I don't think it kind of sways that different to the Labour government or the Conservative party. Now, again, going back to this, have we really debated and really analysed these decisions that we've taken on in the past two years? And when we talk about kind of the public health or disorder in gambling, are we really tackling kind of those big subject matters, right? 1 % of people being affected, but also the classification of risk. Now, I don't understand why no one in the industry or no kind of stakeholders said, look, the real issue here has always been for me, slots, your higher risk games and how you kind of categorize them and what do you know, how could you maybe tax them at a higher rate? Should they be the kind of the point of reflection? for generating more cash out the industry. That could be kind of tabled. I think many people would have accepted that. uh There's been no creativity discussions on taxes. That's an area that I think the industry should look at. And do you think that's because maybe there's a lack of import from the industry? Is there lack of maybe industry expertise within the parliamentary benches? uh I think. ah After what is a four-year gambling review, ah I think many of the industry thought that last year that kind of avoided the tax increase on the first budget of Rachel Reeves, then it came back via the think tanks. And I think that even with the state of the economy, it's so different to 2005, that taxes were always going to be there. And I think that the gambling industry should have had a plan B or a plan C for how do you address this subject matter and how that subject matter will evolve from here to the end of the decade. Now, Ted OC, we've spent so much time talking about taxes recently that we've almost forgotten about one of the other most controversial measures that's been touted in the UK recently. So afford affordability checks. Do the Lib Dems propose anything? meaningfully different than what we've seen in the white paper before or the discussions that we've had? Not particularly, just the thing that I read was they want a commitment to enforcing affordability across the industry which I did think from them is obviously I wouldn't describe it as like an unrealistic aim but it's just sort of one where it's quite an easy one for the government to say well we're not bothered about that we've already done that. You know, because the Gambinat review white paper, one of the flagship measures of that was the introduction of these finance risk checks, which establish thresholds when customers should be, more of like, yeah, looked in their financial background, looked into it, set up a, like a planned infrastructure for it using open banking to facilitate that data sharing, um, without customers, you know, having to hand over, directly hand over pay slips and bank statements to operators, which is something a lot of people weren't particularly keen on. So yeah, I think that's quite a good, you know, a good one for the government to say, well, no, we've already got that sorted. That we're working on that one. Obviously, in the Lib Dems perspective, it might be that the system has not gone, the proposed system, the plans under the gambling review have not gone far enough. Maybe, yeah, maybe that's the sort of area they'd have. the one that was actually more striking for me was they're continuing to target marketing and advertising quite heavily, particularly sponsorship. I think I wasn't at all surprised to see that one mentioned in their policy statement because Max Wilkinson himself was quite a vocal MP throughout the legislature based on the football governance bill calling for new amendments to be written into that, putting in a requirement for football clubs to minimize gambling exposure, think. And basically just the wording was targeting sponsorships. And that was rejected by the DCMS under Lisa Nandy for basically because they said the football governance bill is not trying to do that. You know, gambling is a gambling act review. The football governance bill is football finances. We need to keep those separate. So, but that was interesting. thought that that was then included in their policy document. It's interesting, but also unsurprising. Look, international listeners might be hearing our discussion today and thinking, well, The Liberal Democrat Party, is quite hands on and restrictive for a Liberal Party. Ted M, have we lost any sense of sort Liberal ideology when it comes to gambling? is there anyone else sort of out there in the political scene, maybe with a different view? think for the UK, that's a great question. In terms of the ideology of gambling and the governance of gambling, I think so. I think yes. I don't think that we can apply these kind free economic kind of principles to this is how you govern gambling that were kind of set in 2005. However, you know, this could come by the industry back. mean, if all of a sudden, you know, the UK market, which is still very relevant in rich marketplace kind of opens itself up. year and year to kind of black market encroachment, then you can kind of look back at the Gammond review and just say, look, the outcome of that will be failure. oh There is uh high, high risk element of getting this right beyond just ideology. Ted, I'll say, have you got anything that you'd like to jump on the back of? Yeah, I mean, well, one of this interesting, I think it's almost like the Liberal Democrats anticipated this criticism because they said this in their in their statement was that they're looking, like said, traditionally, a liberal approach to something would be a hands-off approach, wouldn't it, when we tend to describe things like that. And yeah, the idea of like personal freedom, personal responsibility and so on. The Lib Dems almost seem to have anticipated some criticisms and they might get ideologically around this where they said that their idea is personal freedom from debt and personal freedom from harm. think it's also, think, maybe a bit of a part of a wider trend that we've seen the party become a bit more influenced by some sort of centre left ideas more so over the past few years and certainly from differently from when they were under Nick Clegg, know, who was a lot more centrist and was more in line with the Conservative Party. Ted, can you just say Nigel? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don't want to say it in my statement, I Ted, I know you need Willow, What, Nigel? I mean, yeah, that's the, I was going to get on to this for the obviously the other massive elephant in the room. We've got a lot to evaluate here is reform UK and what their policy areas on this are. Obviously for the most part, for most part for people, just like the man on the street reform UK is just going to come across as a single issue immigration party. Let's be real. How often do we ever hear anything from them other than that? The thing that we do forget though is that you reform UK and it's a kind of predecessor UKIT. we're always kind of underpinned by big libertarian leaning and very, much. He's been his old image was I'm a bloke who likes to pine down the pub and I want to be able to cigarette when I'm my pine down the pub and you all you liberals are trying to stop me doing that sort of thing. So I'd imagine he's probably got quite a similar viewpoint on gambling as with the rest of the party. But I mean, this is never this isn't really something I've ever seen them make any statement on. say for the most part, the things you hear from reform are more to do with immigration, aren't they? Yeah, yeah. I mean, We laugh, but reform are increasingly being taken seriously by much of the media and UK polling at the moment shows that the momentum is growing for that party. So I think it's worth just mentioning that as well. leading the opinion polls, aren't they? The ones I checked this morning had them above Labour. Yeah, indeed. we're not even halfway through this current parliament and... things can change, but yeah, at the moment they are leading the polls. So it's worth noting that there are differing viewpoints out there. you know, all roads are leading towards November the 26th. I'm sure it's both in both of your diaries with a big circle around it. The budget day, it is looming and the industry is at a crossroads. So what are the tea leaves telling us about the upcoming decisions? Just as a bit of a closer really. Ted Menmure, how about you go first? I think, look, I still think there's one final twist, but I think that in the eyes of leadership, the boards, uh all key stakeholders, we're in damage limitation time and we're hoping for the least worst possible outcome. It's a very negative time for UK gambling. Ted, I'll see you doom and gloom. Do you see? Yeah, I anticipate that's anticipated to be tax rises. I anticipate the debate around public health, gambling is a public health issue, the lobbying for like more powers for local government and things like that to also continue and to be taken to and to be taken increasingly seriously. I Kirstan has even said that he would. He was going to look at giving more powers to local councils and things like that to prevent venues from being opened up. said that in PMQs the other week. So yeah, even aside from taxation, there's lots of different issues affecting the industry. em And yeah, it's something that strategists and so on are going to have to keep well in mind. Okay. Well, that's a great place to leave it. uh Ted from Amur, Ted OC, thanks very much for coming on the show and taking the time out. And to the listeners, if you want to get a full view of what happened at the Lib Dem Conference from a gambling perspective, we'll leave the link to Ted's report in the show notes. But for now, thank you very much for listening to iGaming Daily and please do join us again tomorrow for all the latest news from the global gambling sector.