Labour’s Tom Watson urges mandatory levy on gambling firms

Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, has called for a mandatory levy on gambling firms to fix the “broken” industry.

He said some companies donated “frankly insulting” amounts of money to fund addiction treatment, and the voluntary system needed to be replaced.

“The gambling market is broken and it’s up to the government to fix it,” he said in the Commons on Tuesday. “We don’t just need a voluntary patch, we need a full overhaul of the rules and regulations.”

The culture secretary, Jeremy Wright, announced that the UK’s biggest gambling firms had agreed to contribute more cash to help fund the treatment of problem gamblers.

Related: Gambling addiction is Labour’s mess – Tom Watson is right to try to fix it | Jim Orford

The Ladbrokes owner GVC, William Hill, Bet365, the Paddy Power owner Flutter Entertainment and Sky Bet will increase the voluntary levy they pay from 0.1% of annual UK revenue to 1% over the next five years. The move will increase contributions to £60m.

It was revealed in May that gambling companies had fallen short of a £10m target in voluntary donations to the leading charity GambleAware in 2018/19, with some firms giving only £1 or £5.

Delivering a statement in parliament, Wright said: “While we all want a healthy gambling industry that makes an important contribution to the economy, we also need one that does all it can to protect those that use it.”

He said he understood the argument for a mandatory levy but argued that putting this into legislation would take more than a year to complete.

He said the government reserved the right to implement a mandatory levy if the companies did not stick to their commitments.

The companies, which represent about half of the UK’s commercial gambling industry, have said they will cumulatively spend about £100m on treatment specifically.

Watson said the five companies “have shown leadership and responsibility that is sorely lacking in some parts of the industry”. However, he described the practice of firms some firms donating small sums to ensure their presence on a list of donors as “completely unacceptable and deliberately insulting to those leading players”.

He said: “After today we will still have inadequate regulation and a gambling act that is outdated and not fit for the digital age.”

It was announced last week that the first NHS gambling clinic for children was to open. There is growing concern that the rise of targeted adverts and online gaming sites is fuelling a problem among young people.

According to the Gambling Commission, about 430,000 people in the UK have a serious gambling addiction, including around 55,000 children.