Gaming Machines

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 11:45 am on 17 May 2018.

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Photo of Tracey Crouch Tracey Crouch The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport 11:45, 17 May 2018

It was remiss of me not to acknowledge the hon. Gentleman’s work on this cross-party campaign and I do apologise for that. I thank him for mentioning the work of Dr Henrietta Bowden-Jones, because having that kind of clinical expertise and real insight into the effect of addictions has been enormously helpful.

As I said earlier, we have ruled out a statutory levy at this point, but not forever. We have seen from the voluntary levy a 16% increase in the amount of money going into research, education and treatment, and we hope that from the measures that we introduce today, we will reduce the harm and that we will therefore see a significant rebalancing of the income from the levy with the treatment and the services.

On the hon. Gentleman’s final point, I had the pleasure of speaking with the Minister from the Scottish Government, and I have assured her that we are very happy to work closely together in respect of the devolved legislation that may or may not be required.