Esther McVey MP: speeches

Speeches

• 7 Jul 2026 · Future of British Horseracing · Hansard source

  More

  It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris. It is a pleasure to see leading trainer Nicky Henderson here today. That should indicate how important this debate is to the racing industry. I congratulate my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) on securing this debate. I should make clear at the outset that my husband is a board member of the Racecourse Association and chairman of the National Horseracing College. Previous speakers have set out the importance of the horseracing industry to the economy, tax receipts and jobs, not to mention its importance to local communities and to sporting excellence in the UK. This sport is genuinely world-leading, and we should all be immensely proud of it. I do not actually think the Government need persuading of the case; they already understand it. That can be seen from last year’s Budget, when the Chancellor exempted horseracing from her increases in gambling taxes, something that was welcomed by the horseracing industry following its “Axe the Racing Tax” campaign. I do not fear this Government deliberately seeking to destroy or undermine horseracing in the UK, but I very much fear them doing so inadvertently through ignorance. I am not asking them to do something to support horseracing. Instead, I am urging them not to do two things in particular that would decimate horseracing in the UK if they went ahead. My first request is that the Government direct the completely hopeless Gambling Commission to abandon any form of financial risk assessment or affordability checks in relation to the betting industry. The previous Government rightly said that any checks should be entirely frictionless, but the pilot that has been carried out has been a complete failure. Rather than flogging a dead horse, the Government and the Gambling Commission must abandon this policy. Despite the claim that financial checks are not being carried out—merely showing the incompetence of the Gambling Commission, which is made up of people who know nothing about gambling and do not even understand their own policies—those checks are already driving punters in their droves to the black market. Roughly 10% of gambling in the UK is now carried out on the black market, and that is growing rapidly, all due to the Government’s tax policies and the Gambling Commission’s regulatory policies, which mean that the regulated sector cannot compete with the black market. That is, of course, bad for player protection, and it is also devastating for the horseracing industry, which relies on the betting industry and punters for much of its income.