WIREDGOV

IEA reacts to Government's decision to drop the stakes of Fixed Odds Betting Terminals to £2

Commenting on the Government’s decision to drop the stakes of Fixed Odd Betting Terminals to £2, Christopher Snowdon, Head of Lifestyle Economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs, said:

“Today’s announcement shows that you can get anything banned in this country if you whine for long enough. Make no mistake, reducing the stake to £2 amounts to a ban. The machines will be taken out of bookmakers and players will move online where are no limits on stakes or prizes. Hundreds of bookmakers will close, thousands of jobs will be lost and the horse-racing industry will lose millions of pounds in subsidies. Taxpayers will then have to fork out £400 million to fill the gap in the treasury’s balance sheet. 

“For what? To deal with a moral panic over something that accounts for just 14 per cent of Britain’s gambling expenditure. There has never been any evidence to support this campaign. The government is weak and cowardly to have given into it.”

Notes to editors: 

For media enquiries please contact Stephanie Lis, Director of Communications: slis@iea.org.uk or 0207 799 8909 or 07766 221 268

The mission of the Institute of Economic Affairs is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems and seeks to provide analysis in order to improve the public understanding of economics.

The IEA is a registered educational charity and independent of all political parties.