Conservative candidates who bet on the election have received a total of £73,000 in earnings, donations and hospitality linked to the gambling industry since 2019, i can reveal.
Sir Philip Davies, Kevin Hollinrake and Craig Williams have disclosed contributions worth £72,860 from betting firms and their directors, analysis of the register of members’ financial interests found.
They also accepted another £7,501 in tickets and hospitality to events such as the Grand National and Royal Ascot from the horse-racing industry, which is largely funded by gambling.
Former Conservative leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith has warned a gambling culture within parliament is being encouraged by “inducements”, such as free bets and hospitality offered by bookmakers.
i found nine former MPs have registered donations to charities related to winnings from free bets provided by gambling firms since 2018.
Families bereaved by gambling-related suicide said politicians were being “bombarded” with lobbying from the sector and called for tougher regulations to “clean up politics”.
There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by candidates or gambling firms around financial contributions, but campaigners said it raises questions about MPs’ relationships with the betting industry.
Sir Philip, Mr Hollinrake and Mr Williams are among a number of Tory and Labour figures who have become embroiled in a gambling row that has overshadowed the election and triggered separate investigations by the Met Police and the Gambling Commission.
Mr Williams, who was Rishi Sunak’s closest Commons aide, has apologised for placing a £100 bet on a July election just three days before 4 July was named as the date by the Prime Minister.
He said he has been contacted by the Gambling Commission, the industry regulator, as part of its investigation.
If he had knowledge of the election date when he placed the bet this could be considered cheating under the Gambling Act, which is illegal – but Mr Williams denies any criminal wrongdoing. He has since been dropped as a Conservative candidate and is running as an independent.
Mr Williams accepted a £2,500 donation from Lord Spencer of Alresford, which was registered in February. The billionaire businessman is a director and shareholder of UK Tote Group, the owner of the Tote, a large pool betting firm.
Sir Philip, the Conservative candidate for Shipley, has been accused of placing an £8,000 bet that he would lose his seat on 4 July. He refused to comment on the claims this week but admitted he had bet on himself to lose in the 2005 election.
The GB News host, who is married to Cabinet minister Esther McVey, has registered more than £69,000 worth of contributions from the gambling sector including two second jobs and horse racing tickets.
He began working as a consultant for Merkur Gaming UK in April, which pays £1,000 for two hours a month providing “strategic advice”.
The Merkur group is behind slot machines in hundreds of high streets across the UK and runs “adult gaming centres”.
Sir Philip was also paid £49,980 in 2020 by Entain – a large betting firm that owns Coral and Ladbrokes – for “providing advice on responsible gambling and customer service”.
Betting firms have paid for his tickets to Cheltenham festival, Wimbledon, and an England cricket match.
i previously revealed that Sir Philip was among MPs who have opposed tougher gambling regulations and received financial contributions from the industry.
Mr Hollinrake said earlier this week that he had bet on the Conservatives winning the election, but added that gambling on the result of his constituency would be “wrong”.
The business minister accepted a ticket and hospitality to an England vs Australia cricket match last July, which was worth £850 and paid for by the Betting and Gaming Council.
The trade body also gave £250 to a charity of his choice after offering him a “free bet” in May.
Parliament ‘regularly targeted’ by industry
Sir Iain, who was vice-chair of a parliamentary body on gambling reform, said he was “aware” that gambling firms offer free bets to MPs in the name of charity as one of their lobbying tactics.
He said he was “not surprised” when he heard candidates were gambling on the election, given how “hard” the industry lobbies MPs.
Sir Iain, the Conservative candidate for Chingford and Woodford Green, told i: “There are people in parliament who get regularly targeted by the gambling industry – offered all sorts of inducements and parties and all sorts of things I’m sure, tickets to this, and tickets to that.
“I take a dim view of all of that. I’ve always, always turned that down.
“The thing is, they have huge amounts of money. They chuck money at everything because they have so much money.”
He said the industry has people in parliament who “support them”.
“Like any industry, they will lobby government,” he said. “The key question is, government should be very resistant to them.”
Sir Iain said MPs should not be gambling on politics.
“It cheapens the issue,” he said. “It’s a vocation – we should treat it like that. You’re not meant to gamble on your own football game either, so it seems bizarre that we should be gambling.
“This is not a sports game. It’s about life and death and all those important things.”
‘Dire public consequences’
Liz Ritchie, co-chair of Gambling with Lives, a charity that supports families bereaved by gambling-related suicide, said gambling “has become dangerously normalised for everyone in the UK”.
Ms Ritchie, whose son Jack took his own life after developing a gambling addiction, told i: “Politicians are bombarded both by the overwhelming advertising that we all see and by gambling industry political lobbying.
“Public consequences are dire, with daily suicides and millions addicted and harmed.
“To clean up politics, sport and our high streets we need to go back to the old ‘permitted but not promoted’ way of regulating gambling.”
Rose Whiffen, senior research officer at Transparency International UK, an anti-corruption campaign group, said the acceptance of donations from gambling and horse-racing industries by MPs “raises legitimate questions” about who politicians are working for.
Sir Alistair Graham, a former chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, a standards watchdog, said there was a “clear conflict of interest” when MPs take second jobs in industries such as gambling.
“I would ban them completely,” he told i. “Being a member of parliament is a full-time job.”
A spokesperson for Betting and Gaming Council – an industry trade body whose members include Bet365, William Hill and Coral – said its members in constituencies across the UK “support the jobs of 110,000 people – on hard-pressed high streets through betting shops, in hospitality and tourism via casinos and bingo, as well a large and growing number of tech jobs in the online sector”.
They added: “Any hospitality is consistent with the parliamentary rules and is fully declared and transparent.”
Craig Williams, Kevin Hollinrake, Sir Philip Davies and the Conservative Party did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr Williams previously said he “committed a serious error of judgement, not an offence” and was “fully co-operating with routine inquiries from the Gambling Commission”, adding that he intends to clear his name.
Sir Philip previously told The Sun the bet was “nobody’s business”, adding: “I hope to win. I’m busting a gut to win. I expect to lose. In the 2005 election, I busted a gut to win. I expected to lose. I had a bet on myself to lose in the 2005 election, and my bet went down the pan.
“And if anyone’s alleging I have done anything illegal, they’re very welcome to allege it, but I’m afraid I haven’t.”
Mr Hollinrake previously told broadcasters he had bet on his party to win a parliamentary majority “some months ago”, and said “we should have a proper debate about and decide whether it’s right or wrong that people have a bet on things they are involved in”.
Entain declined to comment.
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