Speeches by Yang.

“I acknowledge that you are stating that you believe the previous panel over-exaggerated the harms caused by gambling, but within the industry we have heard about horseracing, and betting at physical shops, and we have heard about online gambling. Do you see different kinds of harm in the different sectors, or do you ju…”

“Just to go a bit deeper, Dr Bertram, how would increasing taxation on online gambling decrease the social harms? What would be the mechanism, in terms of the price or market response?”

“Was it a different business from Entain, which owns that business now?”

“Mr Jung, your organisation, the IPPR, has said that gambling is undertaxed. Last year, the effective levy across the whole gambling industry was 22%. Could you set out why you think that rate is too low?”

“Are you saying that although that inquiry was in 2017, when you were working there, the behaviour was from a historical period?”

“You are both former employees of the gambling group Entain and were both working there in 2017 when it paid almost £600 million to settle an HMRC bribery inquiry. A number of the executives who served alongside you currently face criminal charges including bribery, fraud, cheating the public revenue and tax evasion. Ha…”

“Given all the different research you have mentioned, have you found that there are different kinds of problem gambling in different parts of your industry?”

“Is your statement that because it is fun it does not cause social harm?”

“I will state that the 22% comes from adding up all of the different gambling and game-related duties together and dividing by the revenues. But we will leave that, as it is quite a technical conversation. Moving to Ms Hurst, we heard from the previous panel about the different harms from different parts of the gambling…”

“The different duties that you have just mentioned, such as the remote gaming duty and so on, are the taxes that are taken into account in this calculation. You are saying that there is a difference between the 22% effective rate, based on all those different gaming and gambling duties, and what you are claiming is the …”

“We heard from the previous panel how the effective average betting levy across the industry as a whole was 22% last year. The industry is exempted from VAT. UK corporation tax is 25%, and the industry is effectively paying less than that. Why is the industry paying so little?”

“Thank you, Mr Kenny. You have been very clear.”

“Mr Kenny, you have had a long career in the gambling industry, having co-founded Paddy Power several decades ago, and you have seen the growth of the industry. Do you also believe that different parts of the industry have different levels of harm? Do you think that there are some parts of the industry that are riper fo…”

“As somebody who has run a gambling company, do you think that other managers in the industry now would react in the way that you described? Would they be less likely to put on those products if taxes were higher?”

“Dr Bertram, your organisation, the Social Market Foundation, also believes that gambling is undertaxed. You have made an estimate of the harm that gambling does through problem gambling. Would raising tax on gambling lower the social harms associated, and if so, how?”

“I have heard from local residents, as well as local refugee charities in Reading, who are all calling for the use of hotels to house asylum seekers to end as soon as possible. That practice began five years ago as a result of the previous Government’s irresponsible build-up of the backlog of claims. Will the Leader of …”

“Is there a world in which we need more of that extreme case modelling to be better supervisors, better regulators?”

“You mentioned the liability-driven investment crisis that happened in late 2022. Have we—has the FPC—learned the right lessons from that crisis?”

“When you talk about the increased risk premia of UK gilts, how much of that is still down to the damage done by the 2022 Truss Budget that you mentioned, and how much is down to fresh factors since then?”

“Professor Blyth, you mentioned in your questionnaire that you have been particularly interested in the complex dynamics of the gilt market—a particular interest that I think we all now share in the UK. Could you speak a little about what you see as the main vulnerabilities in the gilt market, and whether you think that…”