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Finance Bill

My hon. Friend makes a helpful contribution, which illustrates the two key points that I want to make today. First, now is not the time to increase tax further on the industry through raising the amusement machine licence duty. Secondly, it is ironic that a fair amount of the Exchequer's tax revenue, which it already, and no doubt willingly, takes from the industry is under threat because the businesses are threatened. The concerns that my hon. Friend expressed are reflected in early-day motion 840, which 155 Members from all parties have signed. The British Amusement Catering Trade Association has assessed that, since the introduction of the Gambling Act, revenues have collapsed by an average of 21 per cent. year on year. The amendment aims to ensure that the trend in collapsing revenues has a chance of being reversed by the Government well before the planned review into the impact of the Gambling Act, which is likely to be long drawn out. That review is currently planned to start in 2009. It could take many months— perhaps longer—so we will probably not see any action until 2010. As the hon. Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman) said in a recent Adjournment debate:"““We cannot afford to wait for a six-month review, or even a three-month review. My constituents' businesses are going under now. We need to send a signal now.””—[Official Report, 22 February 2008; Vol. 472, c. 744.]" If the Committee supports the amendment, we would send that signal, which businesses need to give them hope that they can keep going until their problems are properly tackled. Without the changes that the amendment proposes, the risk to Treasury revenues is significant. However, let me be clear: for Conservative Members, it is more important that those tax revenues are based on economic success and jobs. I am worried that, by the time we who raise our concerns tonight are proved right, it will be too late to protect those gaming arcade businesses and bingo halls, which are also affected by the changes that the Gambling Act introduced, and they will be lost. Unfortunately, the reality is that many of those businesses, which are the lifeblood of many of our most loved seaside and coastal towns, are under pressure and are going to the wall. I am talking not only about gaming arcades that form the very identity of places such as Margate, Blackpool, Portsmouth, Hastings, Great Yarmouth and Ramsgate—I could continue—but about family businesses that have been passed down from generation to generation. Such businesses are the lifeblood of their local economies and are often committed to those economies, alongside providing employment, too. They deserve to be supported by the Government. Instead, they are being undermined. The Government will not take note of their cries for help, even though the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, who has responsibility for gambling, admitted only in February that there was a ““serious problem””. Ministers seem more concerned with saving face than with saving jobs and supporting local communities. My amendment challenges that most damaging attitude. Gaming arcade businesses are being asked to compete with betting shops and casinos with one hand tied behind their back. The stakes and prizes of their machines cannot compete, and such businesses cannot have the number of machines that they need to stay profitable. My amendment aims to challenge that by removing the excessive control over the number of B3 machines to which an establishment is limited, and allowing up to 20 per cent. of any establishment's machines to be B3 machines. Without my amendment, there is a danger that the Treasury's tax revenues will fall, not just because of lost amusement machine licence duty but from lost employment taxes from long-standing, often family-run, businesses. My concern is that such businesses are under so much pressure that many are in danger of going to the wall, as we have heard. My amendment seeks to prevent a lose-lose situation—in which everybody loses, not just, most importantly, the businesses concerned, but the Exchequer.