Gambling industry kingpins are fuming about reports that the chancellor, John Healey, is considering increasing taxes on high-street slot machines in his first budget.
The influential Social Market Foundation thinktank, the most vocal advocate for a rise in machine games duty (MGD), from 20% to 40%, thinks the measure could raise between £275m and £460m [$364m and $609m] annually, on top of the roughly £610m [$808m] collected last year.
Its proposal is likely to meet with sympathy from Andy Burnham, a vocal and repeated critic of slot machines, who has already moved to tighten licensing laws so that gambling firms find it harder to open up new shops.
