Black market gambling

Following yesterday's blog post, I bring more news from the dumpster fire of Select Committees. The Treasury Select Committee has published its report on gambling taxes. Its key recommendation is that "Remote Gaming Duty and Machine Gaming Duty (Standard and Higher rates) are always set at a higher rate than Gaming Duty". Since the highest band for land-based casino Gaming Duty is 50%, this implies a rate of at least 51% for fruit machines and online betting which would destroy bingo halls, arcades and much of the bookmaking industry. (Current rates are 15-25%).

 

Can this really be what they're suggesting? The committee mentions the fact that "when the gross gaming yield at a UK-based casino passes certain thresholds, the Gaming Duty (GD) those casinos face ranges from 15% up to 50% on any additional profit", so they seem to be aware that 50% is the maximum Gaming Duty for land-based gambling. 

 

The committee has fallen for the guff spouted by anti-gambling campaigners at the recent oral evidence sessions (which I wrote about at the time). The report says, for example...

 

Mr Kenny, the retired co-founder of Paddy Power, confirmed this approach by industry, noting that “[W]hen I campaigned for the gambling industry, I always used to talk about black markets and job losses. We saw it again when the FOBT [Fixed Odds Betting Terminal] legislation was brought in: “Oh, this will close all the shops,” but it didn’t. It is a bit of scaremongering.”

 

But it wasn't. Britain lost a third of its betting shops after the FOBT stake limits were dropped. No one said it would close all of them, but anti-gambling activists wrongly predicted that it would close only a few of them. 

 

If the committee allows this rewriting of history, it makes you wonder whether the negative consequences of higher taxes will be similarly memory-holed in the future. 

 

The committee cites a fairly recent study to support its belief that the industry is crying wolf. 

 

However, a recent paper in the Harm Reduction Journal noted research arguing that “[ … ] narratives advancing a threat of black-market provision of gambling [are] a form of ‘regulatory resistance’. Regulatory resistance is characterised by industry-led argumentation, often using industry-generated evidence, and arguments that reduced regulation can ‘protect’ the industry from the black market.” 

 

The authors of that paper are actually quoting some British academics who have seen which way the wind is blowing and are treating gambling like a "public health" issue. Their study is one of many that makes the apparently shocking discovery that people will use arguments favourable to their cause when seeking to persuade others (sample line: "Focus on so-called ”black markets” is part of a wider industry “playbook” whereby companies deploy strategies to resist regulation and to undermine public health initiatives." Blah, blah, blah.) 

 

The authors of the Harm Reduction Journal are of a similar mind, but they make an important statement that the committee appears to have missed.  

 

Our best attempt to estimate the maximum ‘bearable’ rate of taxation produced an estimate lying around the 30% threshold, which is nearly the double of what was predicated by previous studies (e.g., 15% [13]).

 

In other words, the authors of the study the committee is citing say that the 'bearable' rate of tax is much lower than the committee is proposing while other studies suggest that gambling taxes may already be too high.

 

Finally, the committee publish a graph apparently showing no correlation between gaming duty rates and 'black market' gambling. It is not clear what the selection criteria was for this, but there are obviously a lot of countries missing. Moreover, it's not just gaming duty but the overall tax burden that really matters.

 

 

The vertical axis stops at 40%, which is below the committee's recommended tax rate, and two countries with higher tax rates are conspicuously absent. France and the Netherlands were both mentioned in the unfathomably influential Social Market Foundation report  (which the committee cites) as countries to emulate. As the SMF says, "the Netherlands is changing its remote tax rate from 30.5% to 37.8% in 2025...  And France has a remote sports betting rate of 55% – increased to over 59% in 2025."

 

How are those two nations getting on? The situation in the Netherlands has been such a fiasco that the head of the SMF begged the committee to ignore it. The Dutch now do half their gambling on the black market, according to the Netherlands Gambling Authority. Meanwhile in France... 

 

France’s Illegal Gambling Market Surpasses Regulated Sector as Calls for Reform Grow  

 

France’s illegal online gambling market has overtaken the regulated sector for the first time, according to new data from the Association française des jeux en ligne (AFJEL). The group estimates 5.4 million players now use unlicensed websites generating about €2 billion in gross gaming revenue (GGR) in 2025 — a 25% increase since 2023.

 

Great success!

 

Still, these are only real world case studies from near neighbours who have done more or less exactly what the Treasury Select Committee wants. What could we possibly have to learn from them?

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Chris van Tulleken and the slippery slope

 

I suspect that if more people saw what goes on in Select Committee meetings there would be an armed insurrection. I've watched two recently, one from Canada where some insufferable politicians want to put cancer warnings on alcohol, and one in Britain where the Health and Social Care Select Committee is holding an inquiry into "food and weight management". 

 

This is how political pygmies distract themselves from the real business of government. Outside, prisoners are released by accident, the national debt is approaching three trillion pounds and the NHS consumes record funding to no great effect. Inside, politicians talk to idiotic nanny statists about "ultra-processed food".

 

Economic growth has been essentially non-existent for years and the price of food has risen by 37% since 2020. And yet the Select Committee wants to tax food and ban advertising. To an outsider, this seems like a form of madness or a conspiracy against the public. It only starts to make sense when you realise that they all read the same things and listen to the same people. The Health Select Committee has had two days of hearings. Every single person who "gave evidence" is a zealot or a professional activist. There were three people from Jamie Oliver's front group Bite Back, two who used to work at the tiny pressure group Action on Sugar, two from the devious Food Foundation and one of the clowns from Nesta. None of the food industry's millions of satisfied customers appear to have been invited.

 

 

I didn't recognise any of the MPs and it was impossible tell which parties they represented because they all hold the same statist views. So did the witnesses, of course. This all gives the politicians the illusion of consensus which will only be shattered when their policies are implemented and the public becomes aware of them (look at the backlash against the ban on drink refills, for example, which is a far more modest measure than anything discussed by this committee).

 

The star turn was Chris van Tulleken. Several MPs said how impressed they were by his ridiculous, error strewn book. One of the few positive things that can be said about van Tulleken is that he is upfront about what he wants. He brought along a pack of cigarettes, some wholegrain bread and a can of baked beans, products which he admits are "not entirely equivalent" but equivalent enough for him to want to do to food everything that has been done to tobacco.  

 

The prof confirms that the slippery slope is very real. pic.twitter.com/LoqwzGZ7HY

— Christopher Snowdon (@cjsnowdon) November 6, 2025

 

He also made the important admission that health warnings are not really about giving people useful information but about demonising certain products so that more regulation and taxes can be applied to them. Again, the model is - quite explicitly and despite decades of slippery slope denial - tobacco. What will it take for the food industry to wake from its slumber?

 

Van Tulleken says the quiet part out loud. He wants warning labels on food because it will start a cascade of taxes and regulation. #slipperyslope pic.twitter.com/4XVdtwraSp

— Christopher Snowdon (@cjsnowdon) November 5, 2025

 

When asked if there are any food brands that would be allowed to advertise under his regime, van Tulleken struggled to think of any. He even claimed that "very credible nutrition academics" think that all food advertising should be prohibited. 

 

“We should just not advertise food.” pic.twitter.com/1EEerV7gtF

— Christopher Snowdon (@cjsnowdon) November 6, 2025

Opinion differs on what drives van Tulleken's increasingly demented campaign against brown bread. Some say he is a grifter trying to sell copies of his book. Others say he is an attention seeker. My view has always been that he has an unhealthy relationship with food and suffers from orthorexia nervosa. He casually mentions in his book that he has been known to make himself vomit so he can eat more food, i.e. he has (or has had) bulimia, but seems to think that this is perfectly normal.

Giving evidence, he admits that he has the self-control of a six year old when it comes to ice cream. The video below is telling in several ways, not least in that he assumes that his experience is universal and that it is the fault of Big Food for making food too delicious. He reckons that ice cream, which has been around for centuries, is tasty because it is "engineered using brain scanners".

 

Professor Van Tulleken bravely opening up about his eating disorder. pic.twitter.com/m8OwkBgjUb

— Christopher Snowdon (@cjsnowdon) November 6, 2025

 

Even if he were less wrong about the science and policy, this is not someone MPs should be listening to.

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Dewi Evans' unpublished letter to Private Eye

Private Eye's M.D. (Phil Hammond) is obsessed with the Lucy Letby case and has now published more than 30 lengthy (by Private Eye's standards) articles about it. They are getting rather repetitive so you'd think the magazine would be interested in some fresh content from someone who has an intimate knowledge of the case.

And yet when Dewi Evans, one of the key prosecution witnesses whom Hammond has bitterly attacked, wrote a letter to Private Eye, the editor chose not to publish it, although it did print a weird letter about the case from someone who inferred something from the way someone said something. Dr Evans has shared his letter with me and it is published below with his permission.

 

17 October 2025 

Letters
Private Eye

The Editor

I am at a loss to understand Dr Phil Hammond’s excitable article in this week’s edition of The Eye, which relate to events surrounding the collapse and death of the infant known as Baby C.

The clinical facts are straightforward. Baby C was a tiny baby who was responding satisfactorily to treatment for pneumonia until his unexpected collapse. My preliminary report dated 7 Nov 2017 noted that “I have concerns regarding the unexpected collapse of [Baby C] at around 23.00 hr on 13 June 2015”. I added that “I would advise scrutinising the staffing present at the time”. Lucy Letby’s name as a ‘suspect’ was not known to me at the time, and there was no record of her presence in the infant’s clinical notes.

Cheshire Police’s attention to detail confirmed that the infant’s collapse occurred when in Lucy Letby’s presence, after the baby’s designated nurse had gone for a break. Lucy Letby’s involvement was noted in more detail in evidence given at the Thirlwall Inquiry [9 October 2024].

An x-ray taken 36 hours before the baby’s collapse noted a large ‘gas bubble’ in the stomach. The cause of the bubble has been the source of considerable discussion. Irrespective of its cause its presence cannot explain his collapse. Several clinical markers during the 36 hours after the x-ray was taken noted an encouraging improvement in his condition. His heart and breathing rates were within the normal range for a baby of his size. His oxygen saturations were in the high 90s. His oxygen requirements were falling, being just 25% just before his collapse. Encouragingly, he was deemed well enough to be taken out of his incubator for ‘skin to skin’ contact with his mother on the afternoon of his collapse and the day before.

An injection of air into the stomach would compromise the breathing of a tiny baby, quickly destabilising him. An injection of air directly into the bloodstream would be even more catastrophic. Whilst one cannot exclude the former the latter explanation is a more likely explanation for his collapse. One cannot rule out the possibility of his suffering from a combination of both. Either is indicative of inflicted injury, where the perpetrator would know that their action would place a vulnerable baby in harm’s way. This evidence led to the jury finding Lucy Letby guilty of the baby’s murder.

It's regrettable that Dr Hammond made no effort to get in touch with me prior to publishing his article. If he cares to get in touch with Cheshire Police, the CPS, or the Prosecution team, I am sure they would confirm the sequence of events I have described above, thus setting the record straight.

Sincerely

Dewi Evans

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See you in Hell, European Alcohol Policy Alliance!

Some excellent news from Brussels where the European Commission is pulling funding from more NGOs...

 

Eurocare announces closure of its Brussels office amid funding difficulties

The Board of Eurocare have announced that due to constraints on its funding it will no longer be able to maintain an office in Brussels and will be letting go its paid staff members from the end of the year. 

 

Eurocare AKA the European Alcohol Policy Alliance is a major part of the global temperance network established by Derek Rutherford. It has been kept afloat by unwitting taxpayers for years and is currently run by Florence Berteletti who used to run the Smoke Free Partnership (no slippery slope, eh?). Hopefully she is now out of a job and the Smoke Free Partnership will also be closed down because, as Politico reports... 

 

The Commission confirmed in July that it would be scrapping its operating grants — cash that goes toward daily overhead costs like staff salaries — for all health NGOs, despite signaling to many organizations that it would continue to fund them this year.

 

Haha! Afuera! 

 

Although Eurocare claims to be "funded by a combination of membership fees and EU grants", it seems to have had only two donors last year: the European Commission and a Norwegian temperance group - and the Norwegian temperance group was overwhelmingly funded by the Norwegian government. The European Public Health Alliance has already bitten the dust after losing its EU grant (and everybody falling out with each other in its toxic workplace). The rest of these tax-spongers wowsers won't be far behind. 

 

In the UK, Alcohol Concern vanished as soon as its Department of Health grants were withdrawn and ASH have said that they would have to look at shutting down if their own DHSC grants were pulled. Isn't it strange that organisations which supposedly fight for popular causes can't survive on donations from the public? It's almost as if the general public don't consider lobbying for illiberal, killjoy policies to be a good cause at all!

 

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The big lies of ASH

 

ASH News

Hazel Cheeseman, the head of Britain's most dishonest pressure group ASH, has taken to the pages of The Grocer to tell small retailers what is good for them. You might think that owners of convenience stores know their business and customers better than someone who has only ever worked in public affairs, but the say-anything, do-anything prohibitionists at ASH have long maintained that selling cigarettes is holding corner shops back. Cheeseman writes...

 

Big Tobacco is out in force telling retailers what to think about impending changes to the law. 

 

And the pot is out in force calling the kettle black. 

 

As you may have heard, the government is phasing out the sale of tobacco to the next generation, which means by 2027 no one born before 2009 can be legally sold tobacco.

 

We’ve all seen the articles and the adverts from tobacco manufacturers painting a picture of doom over these proposed changes. And behind the scenes, no doubt, there are countless emails, letters, and visits from company reps pushing the same message: that stronger tobacco regulation spells disaster for business.

 

But the real burden on retailers isn’t regulation – it’s reliance on tobacco itself. Cigarettes might bring in footfall, but they deliver some of the lowest margins in retail, often just 6%. Smokers are quick, transactional customers; they buy their pack and leave.

 

About 80% of the price of a pack of cigarettes is tax. The retailer obviously doesn't get a share of that. But if a pack of cigarettes is £15, a 6% share is 90p. Not bad for a quick transaction. Since the actual product only costs about £3, the pre-tax profit margin is 30%. If ASH wants retailers to have a bigger post-tax profit margin, it should call for tobacco duty to be cut. 

 

By contrast, the same customers who quit smoking or switch to legal vapes tend to buy more, such as food to go, coffee, groceries and snacks. Every time that happens, both retailer and customer are better off. 

 

Ex-smokers obviously spend their money on other things. The problem for small retailers is that people can buy 'food to go', coffee, groceries and snacks in lots of places whereas smokers go specifically to local corner shops to buy their snouts. Most corner shops don't sell hot food and coffee at all. 

 

In any case, retailers are not so much worried about people quitting smoking as they are about smokers evading tobacco duty (and, in the future, bypassing the ridiculous generational ban) by buying cigarettes on the illicit market.

 

When display bans and plain packaging were first introduced, the same scare stories were rolled out. Yet the evidence tells a different story. ASH’s retailer survey, conducted by an independent market research firm with 900 small retailers, found 74% said the display ban had no negative impact or even helped their business, and 75% said the same about plain packs. Retailers adapted and carried on trading successfully.

 

Neither of these stupid policies had an impact on the smoking rate, although the display ban did make it easier for retailers to sell illicit cigarettes. That was good news for some shops but presumably not for the legitimate businessmen who read The Grocer and who are losing a lot of money to a black market that ASH barely acknowledges the existence of.

 

The illicit trade myth

 

At ASH we are not remotely complacent about the illegal tobacco market. 

 

Yes you are. You have to be to do your corrupt job.

 

It brings crime into our communities, undermines legitimate trade and keeps people smoking. Illicit trade is a real issue – but it’s not caused by sensible regulation. In fact, illicit tobacco consumption has dropped by almost 90% since 2000-01, even as tax and regulation have tightened. 

 

If you believe that, you will be believe literally anything. Legal cigarette sales nearly halved between 2021 and 2024. The black market is quite obviously big and getting bigger. 

 

The best way to end the illicit trade in tobacco, possibly the only way, is to end the demand for tobacco.

 

Indeed it is the only way. But the Tobacco and Vapes Bill doesn't tackle demand. It is all about controlling supply, and we know what happens when supply is artificially restricted while demand remains high. The UK is already a cautionary tale, but Australia, with its even higher tobacco taxes and total ban on vapes, is the ultimate shipwreck that the rest of the world can use as a lighthouse. 

 

On the same day that Cheeseman's article was published, The Australian published this... 

 

Tobacco taxes backfire as black market cripples retail giants

 

Australia’s two biggest supermarket chains have recorded a collapse in tobacco sales, blaming Labor’s aggressive tax hikes and the booming black market for hollowing out legitimate trade.

 

Coles and Woolworths both reported more than 50 per cent declines in tobacco revenue over the past year – the sharpest fall on record – with the retailers saying cigarettes were priced so high that smokers have turned to untaxed, criminally supplied alternatives.

 

Amazingly, these retailers have not been selling enough coffee and 'food to go' to make up the shortfall. 

 

Woolworths revealed a 51.1 per cent plunge in sales for the first quarter, while Coles reported a 57 per cent decline, saying tobacco products now made up less than 2 per cent of total sales.

 

“New tobacco legislation and growth in the illicit market led to a 57 per cent decline in tobacco sales compared to the prior corresponding period with tobacco sales this quarter now less than 2 per cent of total sales,” Coles noted in its first-quarter trading update.

 

Nothing to see here, eh Hazel? 

 

Woolworths chief executive Amanda Bardwell said the decline in tobacco sales was “accelerating” when asked about the plunging figures during her full-year results announcement. “We’re still navigating some near-term challenges, particularly the material reduction in tobacco sales,” she said. 

“It’s been well-discussed by others, but the decline in tobacco sales is accelerating and the current regulatory settings, and continued illegal sales, is evident in our performance.”

The collapse follows The Australian’s investigation into the black market, which revealed convenience stores recorded a $2bn collapse in legal tobacco sales.

 

It is frankly shameful that politicians and the British media have avoided mentioning the real world fiasco that has been unfolding in Australia while the Tobacco and Vapes Bill has been rolling through Parliament. The government pays more attention to the fabulist propaganda of ASH than to what is actually happening in another country.

 

 

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Desperate gamblers?

  

I'm not sure why the Lords were talking about gambling this week, but it seems that they were because Natalie "brain fade" Bennett treated the House to her thoughts.

 

85% of people gamble hoping for a big win. What makes you think they are desperate? Ever dreamed of winning the lottery and planning how you would spend it? The same survey found 72% gamble because it is fun. The moral panic around gambling is getting absurd. pic.twitter.com/H7SrlKnpk2

— Chris Fawcett (@chrisgambler247) October 30, 2025

 

Bennett is appalled that the most common reason given by gamblers for their gambling is to win a lot of money. She interprets this as a sign of "desperation" and describes gambling - which the state is "allowing"[!] - as a "tax on desperation". For some reason she failed to mention the second most common reason reported in the Gambling Survey for Great Britain...

 

Gambling ‘for the chance to win big money’ and ‘because it’s fun’ remain the most popular reasons given as to why respondents gambled.

 

The same survey found that 48% of Brits gambled in the past 4 weeks, two-thirds of whom played the National Lottery. What other reason could someone have to play the lottery than winning big money? That is the whole point of lotteries. It is how the government markets the lottery (other forms of gambling cannot induce punters with the explicit promise of big wins but the state exempts itself from this restriction, as it does from so many other rules). It is the hope of a big win that makes the National Lottery fun, despite it having the worst odds you'll ever come across.

 

 

Meanwhile, left-wing think tanks in Derek Webb's orbit are demanding higher taxes on gambling in the full knowledge that this will lead to punters being given "poorer odds" and a "poorer deal". And yet somehow this will not damage the gambling industry and won't draw gamblers to the black market.  I've written about them for The Critic.
 

 

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Look Back in Anger: The Conservatives and the nanny state

I was on a panel at the Tory conference earlier this month discussing the nanny state with two (pretty sound) Conservative MPs. Much of it was given over to how dreadful the Tories were in office, and why not? Now let the healing begin. 

 

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