My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As an occasional punter myself, I can speak with some authority in saying that I am very interested in which bookmaker is offering the best odds—naturally; that is what punters do. In many respects, online horse racing punters have never had it so good in terms of the competitiveness of the odds and offers such as “best odds guaranteed”, which means that if someone backs a horse at a particular price and its starting price is bigger than the price they backed it at, they will get the bigger price—a fantastic offer for punters. All those offers will probably cease once this Bill comes to fruition, when the cost base of bookmakers will go up. That will be a bad thing for punters, who will lose out on the returns they get from their gambling. That is an inevitable consequence of the Bill; it is no good pretending that it is not, and we should be open and honest with people about it. If they still think it is a good Bill anyway, that is fair enough, but at least we should be honest about its implications. There are no painless panaceas whereby everybody will get more money out of it; somebody has to lose, and the loser is undoubtedly going to be the punter.
Because of the competitive nature of the market and the fact that many punters have become used to betting with concessions such as “best odds guaranteed”, some online betting sites will obviously see an advantage in going somewhere else—in being unregulated, not applying for a licence, and hoping that the fact they are not advertising on Sky TV, or wherever it might be, will be overcome by their offering concessions that punters have come to love and that give them much greater value. That is clearly what the Treasury has factored into its predicted revenues. Because it has built its prediction on a tax rate of 15%, it is crucial for everybody concerned that the tax rate introduced when the Bill comes into being is not 15%, because the lower the tax rate, the less the chance of people using unregulated sites and of companies that are currently licensed and regulated becoming unlicensed and unregulated. I support the Bill in principle, but the key part of it is not this Minister’s responsibility but the relevant Treasury Minister’s. I hope she will keep his feet to the fire to make sure that what she intends is not undermined by the Treasury.