Anti-betting campaigner who’s left No10 staring at a crisis
TRACEY Crouch used her maiden speech to describe the severe poverty in her Kent constituency when she captured it from Labour in 2010. ‘I want to accomplish many things,’ she said. ‘But I hope improving the plight of the poorest will be my greatest achievement.’
This is why Miss Crouch, when she became Sports Minister three years ago, made it her priority to persuade the Government to cut the stakes allowed on fixed-odds betting terminals from £100 to £2.
Miss Crouch, 43, the MP for Chatham and Aylesford, has never forgotten struggling with debt when she was a law graduate from Hull University.
As an MP, she said: ‘I suddenly saw a huge growth in the number of bookies being opened. In Chatham, there are probably 20 shops within a two- or three-mile radius... It was the lowest-income groups in the highest areas of deprivation that were falling victim to these machines.’
It was this passion for her cause that, over the last 24 hours, has seen Miss Crouch involved in an extraordinary stand-off with Downing Street.
It’s unprecedented in recent times for a middle-ranking minister to threaten to resign over the timing of a change in government policy. It’s even more unusual for a minister like Miss Crouch to carry out the threat on a point of principle.
She wanted the change to come into effect in April along with other Budget tax changes because she fears fixed-odds betting machines are a cause of family breakdown and preventable suicides. But Philip Hammond, the Chancellor, insisted on implementing the changes in October 2019 to maximise the tax take for as long as possible.
Fresh from the triumphant reaction to his Budget, Theresa May backed her Chancellor. And now Downing Street must come to terms with the consequences of not taking Miss Crouch’s threat to quit seriously enough. Her resignation has the potential to become a Tory crisis.
Significantly, one of the first MPs to publicly mourn her departure was David Davis, the former Brexit Secretary, who described her as the ‘best sports minister of modern times’. She was Davis’s chief of staff when he served in David Cameron’s shadow cabinet. He spoke to her in the last few days about her intentions.
She also worked for Dominic raab who succeeded Davis as Brexit Secretary. raab has stayed close to Miss Crouch, a popular and respected figure on both sides of the Commons.
Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, has also backed her. And support for Miss Crouch does not stop there.
There was genuine surprise in Downing Street when Andrea Leadsom, the leader of the Commons, added her voice.
AND there was even greater surprise when Boris Johnson also came out in support. His intervention will be seen as opportunistic attack on the Prime Minister.
‘I shouldn’t think Boris has ever seen the inside of a betting shop,’ said one Tory MP last night. ‘But it’s Downing Street’s tin ear which is turning a problem into a crisis.’
Miss Crouch, the daughter of a social worker and insurance broker, went to a girls’ grammar school in Folkestone. Soon after she entered Parliament in 2010 she demonstrated her independence by abstaining in the tuition fees debate.
She is a long-standing opponent of fox hunting, which is why the former Queen guitarist, Brian May, a leading animal rights campaigner not noted for his love of the Tories, went to campaign for Miss Crouch in her constituency.
She was also unusual for a sports minister in that she understood and loved the job – she is an FA qualified coach.
She made political history in February 2016 when she became the first Tory minister to take maternity leave when she had a boy, Freddie, with her partner Steve Ladner, a radio DJ.
Last year she had her brief expanded when she became the world’s first ‘loneliness minister’ to ‘ tackle the difficulties and realities of modern life’. She’s certainly made the realities of the Prime Minister’s life much more difficult.