Labour Party Labels Conservative Party Ration Card Plan “Unworkable”

A Conservative Party proposal that would prevent certain criminals from spending their benefits on gambling in the UK via the issuing of ration cards has been called “unworkable” by the ruling Labour Party.

The proposal was announced by Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp in late spring. The plan would also include a ban on spending on alcohol and drugs, and would be implemented if the Conservatives were to return to power.

The card would be pre-loaded with funds which could not be used for cash withdrawals. According to the Conservatives, this could impact roughly 350,000 claimants and save the taxpayer £538 million annually.

The benefit ration cards would apply to welfare claimants who have received a community or suspended sentence where gambling, alcohol or drugs were a factor in the offence. The cards would bear some similarities with Aspen cards given to asylum seekers, which are only meant to be used to buy basic items.

A benefit ration card would only be granted to out-of-work jobseekers who have been claiming Universal Credit for more than six months and also do not have a consistent record of tax or National Insurance contributions. Standard payments would be reduced by 30% and funds would be loaded on to the card rather than to a regular bank account.

Unlikely to become law

The Conservatives were in power in the UK from 2010 to 2024, but a crushing defeat under the leadership of Rishi Sunak to Labour, led by Sir Keir Starmer, in the 2024 General Election left the party with just 121 seats, down 251 seats from the previous successful election in 2019; it was the worst ever result for the party, in terms of both seats and vote share.

That means the plans are unlikely to come to fruition, and there appears to be little to no intention to implement the plans from the Labour Party. A spokesperson for the party said:

"The Conservatives had 14 years to fix our welfare system but they completely failed to make meaningful reforms. Now they are proposing an unworkable new card scheme, which does nothing to tackle the numbers of people their system left signed off and written off."

Regulation a hot topic

Tighter regulation of gambling in the UK was a common theme when the Conservatives were last in power, and the trend has continued since Labour returned to power. In 2023, the government’s Gambling White Paper was published, setting out more than 60 proposals to update the country’s gambling laws.

Among the terms recommended were affordability checks, improved identification checks, a statutory levy, and a cap on the maximum stakes on online slots at £5 for older adults and £2 for younger adults.

Labour has continued this trend with the introduction of increased online tax. Remote gaming duty, paid on online casino bets, was raised from 21% of gross gaming yield (GGY) to 40% in April, and general betting duty, paid on online sports bets, will rise from 15% of GGY to 25% in April 2027.

There is also the possibility of machine games duty (MGD) being increased in the Autumn Budget in October. In June, cross-party think tank the Social Markets Foundation called for MGD on Category B machines in the UK to be raised to 40% of net takings, which would be double the current rate of 20% of revenue generated on gaming machines in both casinos and bingo halls.