Responding to former Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s call for a gambling industry levy to fund tackling child poverty, Green Peer Natalie Bennett said:
“Having been at the heart of the New Labour government, which unleashed the toxic, destructive gambling industry that we have today with the 2005 Gambling Act, it is good to see Gordon Brown now calling for fair taxation of the massive cash cow.
“And excellent that he is calling for that to money to be used to end the two-child benefit cap, a policy deliberately causing child poverty that is astonishingly still in place a year into this Labour government.
“But a tax is only the start. We cannot allow predatory firms to continue to fill our high streets and our computer screens, to barrage us with a flood of advertising, acting as a tax on desperation, doing enormous damage to individuals and communities, particularly the poorest communities.”