The sector, the customer, the thousands of employees and also make it a safer environment. “I genuinely believe a well-regulated sector, by and in harmony with, the Gambling Commission will benefit everyone. “The answer to your enquiry is quite simple – I actually support the gambling sector and think on the whole the current direction of travel with the government white paper and consultations being held by the Gambling Commission, if enacted, will have the opposite intended consequence and drive more and more people to the black market,” he said. Whittaker said the hospitality he received had never influenced his views on gambling. “If their arguments were convincing they wouldn’t get too hung up on lavishing MPs with gifts.” Matt Zarb-Cousin of the campaign group Clean Up Gambling said: “The gambling lobby clearly needs to lure MPs with hospitality to get them into the groove of defending the industry.

“You’d hope they’d see that the industry profits they are trying to protect mean little compared with the thousands of lives ruined every year.” “MPs who take thousands of pounds of gambling industry hospitality only to then go and publicly lobby against life-saving reforms need to meet with the families who’ve lost loved ones to gambling,” she said. MPs’ receipt of gifts from the industry drew criticism from Liz Ritchie, who co-founded Gambling with Lives, a charity that supports families bereaved by gambling-related suicide, after her son Jack took his own life after becoming addicted to gambling. The gambling industry has increased its spending on hospitality and benefits for parliamentarians tenfold in recent years, amid a prolonged review that resulted earlier this year in government proposals to reform regulations governing the £10bn-a-year sector. Whittaker said his views had not been influenced by the gifts and payments.

The amount includes trips to Cheltenham racecourse, courtesy of SkyBet and the BGC, and a £5,000 fee from the BGC for eight hours’ work presenting two seminars. The Madonna tickets, worth £2,148, take the amount of hospitality and payments that Whittaker has received from the gambling industry so far this year to £8,278, the parliamentary register of members’ interests shows.

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