WESTMINSTER MPs and parties benefitted from over £100,000 in gifts and donations from the gambling industry in the past year.
A Sunday National analysis of the latest register of MPs’ interests as well as Electoral Commission data shows that a total of £100,404 was spent – from expensive trips and exclusive tickets to “campaigning support”, the majority of which went to the Labour Party.
It comes amid concerns about the close relationship between the industry and elected officials, particularly with the ongoing investigation by The Metropolitan Police and the Gambling Commission into the alleged use of inside information to bet on the date of the General Election.
So far, one Labour and five Conservatives have been caught up in the inquiry, with reports suggesting the figure could be 15 parliamentary candidates and officials, although the gambling watchdog has not confirmed the numbers involved.
It also comes as Westminster’s Gambling Act Review white paper – which recommended an overhaul of UK gambling regulation – has stalled since first being published last year.
Labour’s general election manifesto was welcomed by bookmakers recently after it promised to work with the gambling industry on the reforms, a move that SNP MP candidate Ronnie Cowan said made him “genuinely shocked” – describing it as a “softer option”.
The Betting and Gaming Council (BGC) – a powerful industry group led by former Labour MP Michael Dugher – was the largest individual spender in the past year, with over £26,000 paid out on corporate hospitality and gifts for MPs.
This included:
- Two VIP tickets to the FA Cup final for Tory MP candidate James Daly, worth £3348.
- Five VIP tickets to see Madonna (worth £1074 each) at the O2, divided between Labour MP candidate Mark Tami, Tory MP candidate Craig Whittacker and former Labour minister Rosie Winterton.
- Two tickets to the Dublin Racing Festival for Tory MP candidate Damian Collins, including flights and accommodation, worth £1249.
- One ticket plus hospitality to the England v Wales Six Nations rugby match for former Labour MP Kevin Brennan, work £1295 – A £30 bottle of wine as a Christmas gift for shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves.
- SNP MP candidate Pete Wishart accepted tickets for a concert, worth £1099.
BGC also paid Whittacker £5000 for presenting two seminars and a reported total of 8 hours of work.
To note, BGC also employed Tory MP candidate Laurence Robertson as an adviser until June 2023. He was paid £2000 for 10 hours of work a month, equivalent to £24,000 a year.
Kindred (London) Limited – an online casino, online poker, online bingo and sports betting company – has spent £3600 on tickets for MPs to attend Cheltenham racecourse.
Meanwhile, Tory MP Philip Davies got a new £500-an-hour job in April as a consultant for Merkur Gaming, which is a company behind slot machines in hundreds of high streets across the UK.
Gambling companies Genting Casinos (above), Flutter Entertainment, Sports Information Services and Entain Holdings – which owns Ladbrokes Coral – have also gifted tickets with hospitality for exclusive events to MPs.
This adds to the thousands of pounds also paid by racing track firms – including the Arena Racing Company and Ascot Authority – to entertain MPs.
Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves (below), meanwhile, counts not one but two major donations from former senior figures in the gambling industry.
The wages of staff employed by MPs are normally paid via the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (IPSA), which regulates expenses and business costs.
But private companies and wealthy individuals can fund additional staff, helping MPs to expand their teams and build their public profile.
Goulden, the former chairman of gambling giant Gamesys, also gave a further £10,000 to the Labour Party directly in March this year.
Reeves received a further £10,100 for “campaigning support” from Lord Bernard Donoghue, the former chairman of The Starting Price Regulatory Commission (SPRC) – a body responsible for the integrity and accuracy of the starting price, which is used in the settlement of bets on British horseracing.
Reeves recently came down hard on the Conservative candidates accused of betting on the general election date.
She said that if they were in the Labour party, "they would have been suspended by now" and that “this shows it's one rule for Conservatives and another for everyone else.”
Shortly after those comments were made, Labour MP candidate Kevin Craig admitted to betting against himself in the General Election and was subsequently suspended from the party.
Interestingly, Craig paid £1934 to help purchase Reeves’ website domain in May.
Lord Jon Mendelsohn, who is chairman of online gambling giant 888 holdings, also donated £16,000 to Dan Norris – a former MP and current Labour mayor of the West of England.
Mendelsohn previously served as a key policy advisor to the New Labour government under prime minister Tony Blair.
Ronnie Cowan (below), the SNP candidate for Inverclyde & Renfrewshire, used to sit on the Gambling Related Harm All Party Parliamentary Group at Westminster and described the gambling industry’s relationship with politics as “tight” and “unhealthy”.
“The gambling lobby is incredibly strong,” he said.
“When you’re a newly elected MP, I can guarantee you that they are one of the first groups to contact you to try and build a close working relationship, which obviously is to help them carry out their business unhindered or unfettered by the scrutiny that it should deserve.”
Cowan added: “They're very active at Westminster. They've got MP’s who they openly pay to be advocates for them, which I think is incredibly unhealthy.”
Addressing the gifts and corporate hospitality the industry dishes out to MPs, Cowan said there is a “possibility that [the industry] will want something back for that”.
“When push comes to shove, getting something back might just be your silence. Don't vote on something, abstain on something – it’s very hard to prove all this,” he added.
“But if they're working with people and hosting them at concerts and sporting events, I think it makes it harder for individual MPs to hold themselves up to the scrutiny that their constituents should demand of them.”
It’s been over a year since the Gambling Act Review white paper was published in April last year, which signalled a new direction for the industry and promised to overhaul gambling regulation in the UK forever – and set to shake up online casino and horse racing in particular.
“I really thought we were going to get there before Parliament got dissolved,” Cowan said.
“We were making good progress, the Conservative MP who was in charge of it – Stuart Andrew – he got it and understood it.”
With this in mind, Cowan said he was “genuinely shocked” to see Labour’s commitment in their general election to get the industry more involved in the legislation.
“It’s about making gambling as safe as it possibly can. The internet, the speed of the gambling, the amount people can gamble, the lack of investment into helping support,” he said.
“The white paper addressed a lot of those issues. It did not really go near advertising. It talked about a levy. It talked about help and support. It talked about the industry's relationship and what it had to do.”
Cowan said that Tony Blair’s New Labour bringing in the 2005 Gambling Act created the “Wild West”.
“And then two years later, we got the iPhone and everything changed,” he added.
“We all know we're looking at a Labour government coming to power. So what we need is strong opposition and say, hold on, you signed up to this.
“We have to hold the industry to account because the industry has proved that they're incapable of doing it or we wouldn't be in the mess we’re in now.”
A spokesperson for the Betting and Gaming Council said: “In constituencies across the country BGC members support the jobs of 110,000 people – on hard-pressed high streets through betting shops, in hospitality and tourism via casinos and bingo, as well a large and growing number of tech jobs in the online sector.
“Any hospitality or contracts were consistent with the parliamentary rules and are fully declared and transparent.
“Each month in Britain around 22.5m adults have a bet and the most recent NHS Health Survey for England estimated that 0.4 per cent of the adult population are problem gamblers.”
A UK Labour spokesperson said: “Everything has been declared transparently and in the normal way.”
