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The boss of the UK’s main betting and gaming lobby group has told MPs that there is no “social ill with gambling” as she warned against imposing higher taxes on the sector in the November budget.

Grainne Hurst, the chief executive of the Betting and Gaming Council, repeatedly made the statement to parliament’s Treasury select committee on Tuesday, where she also claimed that higher taxes would result in thousands of job losses and push punters into using hidden market services.

Hurst made the comments as part of the gambling industry’s lobbying against calls to increase taxes on the sector – including on products seen as the most risky for creating problem gamblers, such as online casinos and the betting machines that fill high street adult gaming centres (AGCs).

During an at-times testy session, the committee member John Glen said to Hurst: “This issue has become pertinent in the run-up to a budget because people and government [are] frustrated that the taxation of something that does have a significant social ill for those individuals isn’t properly addressed in our tax system.”

Hurst responded: “I would disagree that there are social ills as a result of it. I think that it is properly taxed in the system … Our argument is that if you increase further any additional taxes on the industry … it will put jobs at risk, will put shops at risk, will put sports sponsorship at risk.”

The committee’s chair, Meg Hillier, then checked that she had understood Hurst’s position correctly and asked: “Do you think there are any social ills associated with gambling?” The lobbyist replied: “No.”

She later added that the industry does “everything that it possibly can in order to mitigate any harms that may be caused by our products”.

Earlier, the committee heard evidence from a panel of experts who all argued that taxes should be increased on the riskiest gambling products, while maintaining lower taxes on more benign forms of betting such as punting on horse racing and playing bingo.

Stewart Kenny, a founder of the bookmaker Paddy Power, now retired, said that he regretted “some of the things I did” while working in the sector, but that he had resigned from the group’s board in 2016 after 29 years because he did not believe the company was protecting problem gamblers enough.

“When you open an account to have a bet on the next general election or Manchester United to win the Premiership … within 24 hours [bookmakers] send you free spins in the casino, to the online slots,” he told the committee. “It is rather like going into a bar for your first drink and having a shandy and the barman … says: ‘why not have a triple strength brandy on the house?’

“So if we can disincentivize the bookmakers from sucking people from the least addictive product to the most addictive product, that I think is the most important [objective].”

The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, is under huge scrutiny about what measures she will announce in her budget next month, with many observers expecting a range of tax rises.

Taxing the betting industry has been floated as an area where the Treasury could raise significant revenue, but the industry has been fighting the proposals.

Last week Betfred said it would close all 1,287 of its high street betting shops if Reeves raised taxes on the gambling industry, while earlier this month the company behind William Hill said it was considering closing up to 200 betting shops if Reeves raised taxes. The industry has also argued that higher tax rates would mean lower revenues collected from the sector.

Kenny – along with fellow experts Theo Bertram, the director of Social Market Foundation, and the Carsten Jung, the interim associate director for economic policy at the Institute for Public Policy Research – told MPs the government could “significantly increase taxes on online gambling and increase revenue”.

The co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s has accused its owner of being part of a movement of “corporate butt kissing” of Donald Trump and says management blocked the ice-cream brand from producing a flavour in support of peace in Gaza.

Ben Cohen told the Guardian that Unilever was pursuing a “corporate attack on free speech” by blocking the development of a special flavour in solidarity with the Palestinian people. It is understood the flavour had been approved by Ben & Jerry’s independent board and first mooted about a year ago.

Magnum, the group’s ice-cream arm, confirmed it had not gone ahead with the board’s suggestion for a Palestine product this summer.

Cohen has mounted a “Free Ben & Jerry’s” campaign to persuade Unilever to sell the brand to a group of socially minded investors who he says have pledged to allow it to continue its “social mission.”

With an increasingly authoritarian Trump in the White House, Cohen says now is the time that “companies and anyone who believes in justice, freedom and peace stands up. This is the moment when it is most needed for Ben & Jerry’s to be able to raise its voice.

“It seems like since Trump got elected anything that Trump is against, DEI, black history, protesters’ rights to free speech, all those things got censored.”

Previous Ben & Jerry’s flavours with an activist bent have included “Save Our Swirled” to highlight the need for action at the 2015 Paris climate meetings, “I Dough, I Dough” to celebrate the legalisation of same-sex marriage at a US federal level, and “Home Sweet Honeycomb” in support of resettling refugees in Europe.

Cohen’s criticisms, which he has backed up with a video posted on Instagram, are the latest blow in the acrimonious spat between the brand’s founders and owners. Unilever is planning to spin off the Magnum Ice Cream Company into a separate business, which it hopes to list in Amsterdam with secondary listings in London and New York.

Those plans were this week delayed because of the US government shutdown, although they could proceed by the end of the year. Unilever said remained confident of implementing its demerger plans this year.

Unilever and Magnum said Ben & Jerry’s was “not for sale”.

Magnum said: “The independent members of Ben & Jerry’s board are not, and have never been, responsible for the Ben & Jerry’s commercial strategy and execution.”

Referring to the proposed pro-Palestinian flavour, a spokesperson said: “Recommendations are considered by Ben & Jerry’s leadership, and management has determined it is not the right time to invest in developing this product.”

The company said Ben & Jerry’s was focused on “campaigns close to its communities” such as improved conditions in refugee accommodation in the UK and campaigning in defence of the first amendment and freedom of speech in the US.

Magnum added: “We remain committed to Ben & Jerry’s unique three-part mission – product, economic and social – and look forward to building on its success as an iconic, much-loved brand.”

Unilever, the British owner of consumer brands ranging from Dove soap to Hellmann’s mayonnaise, bought Ben & Jerry’s in 2000 for $326m, but agreed an unusual deal for the ice-cream brand to preserve an independent board with the ability to speak out on social justice issues.

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The founders argue that Unilever has reneged on that promise, particularly in relation to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza as the Israeli government destroyed much of the territory.

A spokesperson for Unilever said: “We have always sought to work constructively with the Ben & Jerry’s teams to make sure we stayed true to the original agreement around the progressive, non-partisan social mission.”

Ben & Jerry’s was founded in 1978 by Cohen and Jerry Greenfield after the friends took a $5 correspondence course in ice-cream making. They opened their first store in a renovated petrol station in Burlington, Vermont, with a mission to “advance human rights and dignity”.

Under Unilever, the pair have officially been paid employees with no formal role in the business beyond promoting its values as “brand ambassadors”. Cohen remains in that role, but Greenfield resigned from Ben & Jerry’s in September, saying it had lost its independence.

Cohen said Ben & Jerry’s was being blocked from “making ice-cream with purpose”, and pledged to create a Palestine solidarity flavour in his own kitchen.

Members of the public are being asked to name and help create the flavour in a two-week competition. He suggested it would be based on watermelon, itself a symbol of solidarity with the Palestinian people.

The ice-cream, which would be created as a small batch under his personal Ben’s Best brand, will not be for sale, but is intended to draw attention to the cause of “rebuilding, and peace and dignity for the people of the region”. He has previously used the Ben’s Best brand, first created in 2016 to back leftwing Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, to support a number of causes.

Ben & Jerry’s has clashed repeatedly with its parent company over Palestinian rights. It refused to sell ice-cream in territories occupied by Israel, took legal action against Unilever when it sold the brand’s Israeli division to a local operator. In May the brand called Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide, a description used last month by a United Nations independent international commission of inquiry.