Gordon Brown: Fund child benefit reform with gambling tax raid
The former prime minister's intervention comes after Labour MPs called on Sir Keir Starmer to scrap the cap now, rather than waiting until the autumn.
Mr Brown, when serving as Sir Tony Blair's chancellor in 2001, brought in taxes on gambling companies, but abolished them on winnings.
He has now said he believed there were 'many reasons why the highly profitable betting and gaming industry should pay a fairer share towards the cost of the UK's unmet needs'.
Mr Brown added: 'Most important is that it would enable half a million children to be lifted out of poverty in this autumn's Budget, and so help to build our country for the next generation.'
Backing a report by the Institute For Public Policy Research (IPPR), he called for taxes on online casinos to rise to 50 per cent, up from 21 per cent.
The IPPR claims the move could generate the £3.2bn needed to scrap the two-child limit and cap on benefits, which it says could lift as many as 500,000 children out of poverty.
The two-child limit currently restricts child tax credit and Universal Credit (UC) to the first two children in most households.
And the benefit cap means the amount of benefits a household receives is reduced to ensure claimants do not get more than the limit.
The Government is expected to publish a child poverty strategy in autumn, and a multitude of campaign groups have said it must contain a commitment to do away with the two-child limit.
The IPPR argued that in the face of covering the costs of scrapping the policy, it felt 'fair' to ask the 'highly profitable' gambling industry to contribute more.
It suggested increasing taxes on online casinos from 21 per cent to 50 per cent, and raising those on slots and gaming machines from 20 per cent to 50 per cent.
Additionally, it proposes raising general betting duty on non-racing bets from 15 per cent to 25 per cent which it said would bring other sports in line with the rates paid by racing.
Henry Parkes, the principal economist and head of quantitative research at IPPR, said: 'The gambling industry is highly profitable, yet is exempt from paying VAT and often pays no corporation tax, with many online firms based offshore. It is also inescapable that gambling causes serious harm, especially in its most high-stakes forms.
'Set against a context of stark and rising levels of child poverty, it only feels fair to ask this industry to contribute a little more.'
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