In the House of Commons on Thursday, July 19th, the
third reading of the Race Course Betting Bill, which legalizes the Totalisator, was carried by 218 votes to 122. On Monday, in the House of Commons, Mr. Churchill explained the reduction in the betting duties which he announced last week. His purpose, as had been generally assumed, was to make it less worth while for bookmakers to evade the duties. Although the returns had been disappointing the duties had justified themselves by bringing in a revenue, which after all was considerable, and by generating the Totalisator, which would benefit alike the Exchequer and the Turf. Really the talk about the " failure " of the taxation of betting is futile and is confined to those who always opposed the taxation. The only sensible policy was to control an admitted evil which could not be abolished, and the one way of control was taxation. Personally, we always took the view that the taxation of betting must be, like drink legislation, experimental. On Wednesday the House of Lords gave the Bill its second reading.
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