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Finance Bill

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his kind words. I cannot answer his question; perhaps when the Minister responds, she will explain why there has been such a big increase in gross profits tax when everybody thought that the Government were going to give a helping hand to bingo clubs at this time. The impression is that what the Government have given away with one hand they have recovered with the other, because the bingo clubs say categorically that they are paying more tax now than before the Budget and that they are going to pay much more tax; I have a brief to hand from the Gala Coral Group. We could say, "Well, the Government have a big public sector borrowing deficit, and we must find the money to reduce our public borrowing from somewhere," but it seems to me that we are not going to make a big dent in that just by taxing the old ladies down at the bingo club; that is not going to bring in £175 billion. It seems strange that after all the pressure applied in campaigning against double taxation, we have been hit with this increase in the gross profits tax, and the bingo clubs are worse off. The only argument the Government have got is, "Everybody is worse off. We are paying more for alcohol and tobacco and so forth, as duties on them have gone up, so why not bingo?" The important comparison, however, comes in what the hon. Member for Dundee, East said about the rates of gaming duty in clause 19. He said that the first £1.9 million is at 15 per cent. and the next £1.3 million is at 20 per cent. The bingo clubs will get nowhere near that. The online gaming and gambling companies will do so, however. I was told a few weeks ago—I will not mention any names—that the daily turnover of one of these online gaming organisations is £50 million. That is the turnover from internet betting in one day, yet we are absolutely nailing down bingo clubs with their soft form of gambling.