A former Tory Cabinet minister today said her party risked failing to hear the “emotional heartbeat” of the country in the row over gambling machines.
Nicky Morgan said the Conservatives could be accused of using their “heads over hearts” by delaying for six months the introduction of a £2 maximum stake on fixed-odds betting terminals (FOBTs), described as the “crack cocaine” of the gambling world.
Ms Morgan said: “The Conservative Party still runs the risk of making decisions which stress head at the expense of heart, and which miss hearing the emotional heartbeat of the country.”
Former sports minister Tracey Crouch said last week that she had chosen to resign because of a six-month hold-up in the plan to slash maximum stakes on FOBTs from £100 to £2 next April.
She was angered by Chancellor Philip Hammond’s decision to push back the change to October 2019. Ms Crouch quit in protest, saying two people would take their lives every day due to gambling addiction in the interim.
Her comments came as a growing number of Tory MPs criticised the delay. A number praised Ms Crouch’s decision to resign, including Boris Johnson and former minister Priti Patel who praised her “principled” stand.
Ms Morgan claimed the Government has “bowed to pressure” from vested interest groups to push back the cut in the maximum stake over potential losses in revenue. The machines are said to generate £1.8 billion in revenue a year for the betting industry, according to the Gambling Commission, and taxes of £400 million for the Government.
Ms Morgan wrote on the Conservative Home blog: “At a time when the Conservative Party is putting the rest of the country through its own ideological rabbit hole in the form of Brexit, we need to be alive to adding to the impression that the fixing of a social harm can wait a few months while we find a way to replace lost revenue.” Communities Secretary James Brokenshire insisted there had been no stalling over the plans.
He told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show: “We were called on to introduce these arrangements prior to April 2020 and we have brought that forward to deliver this in October 2019, recognising we need to do this, we need to bring these stakes down. We want to see this delivered effectively, for all the reasons Tracey identifies. But it is wrong to say there has been a delay.”
