Another quango, another “right on” take: as writing in the New Statesman, executive director Harry Quilter-Pinner of the IPPR says government should hollow out the gambling trade in order to…you know….help…and stuff. In this instance, that help comes in the shape of taxing the arse out of the industry. The only problem here is when that tax decimates an industry that is literally propping up the UK high street economy and employing local people, what solution do they have for the massive sink-hole their proposals create in the when those gaming and gambling businesses disappear?

A piece in this week’s edition of the New Statesman has seen the incredibly posh director of one oh-so-progressive charity call for doubling the rate of both remote and machine gaming duty.  

Harry Quilter-Pinner (he/him) heads up the Institute for Public Policy Research, which bills itself as an “independent charity working towards a fairer, greener, and more prosperous society.”

Now, don’t let the fact that Harry looks about four years old and carries the name of a man who carves spoons on his allotment in Walthamstow fool you: he’s a real expert on business and how it relates to public finance…having literally had no other job outside of the IPPR since he graduated from York University. 

To that end, writing in a publication whose leanings align slightly to the left of Pravda, Quilter-Pinner said a massive hike in gambling tax equated to a “fiscal ace up the sleeve” for government, one which could “generate enough revenue to scrap the two-child limit and lift children out of poverty.” 

The executive director said that gambling trade should be taxed on equivalent levels to other “harmful industries” like booze and tobacco: thus the public purse can be filled in order to “offset [its] social cost.”

Setting both MGD and RGD at 41 per cent would, the sage HQP argued, net Rachel Reeves an additional tidy sum of up to £2.4bn a year. 

Of course, the IPPR chief neglected to mention the latest maths which suggest that scrapping the government’s commitment to its wildly implausible and incredibly unpopular net-zero carbon emission target would save more than ten times as much.  

So all in all, it’s a very good piece. Written by a very well informed author. Go and read it. What? No really. We’re serious – you will be so much more better informed… about the ill-informed.