ANDREW PIERCE: Labour deputy leader Tom Watson hedges his bets over gambling row after Tracey Crouch resigns
Several Cabinet ministers and influential backbenchers have rallied behind Tracey Crouch since she quit the Government last week on a point of principle over delays to betting reforms.
Ms Crouch wants to cut the maximum stake from £100 every 20 seconds to £2, and was furious when, in his Budget, Chancellor Philip Hammond announced reforms to the law would be postponed for six months until October 2019.
The delay in slashing the stake on fixed-odds betting terminals — described as ‘addictive as crack cocaine’ — will lead to more suicides by gamblers mired in debt, the former sports minister has warned.
She has triggered a potential crisis for the Prime Minister who faces defeat on the issue in a Commons vote this week.
Several Cabinet ministers and influential backbenchers have rallied behind Tracey Crouch since she quit the Government last week on a point of principle over delays to betting reforms
Now Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, has backed Crouch. ‘Tracey showed courage and principle. I was particularly taken with the line in her resignation letter where she admonished “commitments made by others to those with registered interests” for the delay,’ Watson said at the weekend. No surprise there.
As shadow culture secretary, Watson is leading calls for a ban on gambling advertising at live sporting events. Problem gambling is a ‘public health emergency’, he says.
Why then, has the Labour Party taken more than £400,000 from the online gaming company, Bet365, which pays actor Ray Winstone a handsome sum to front its TV advertisements urging people to bet during football matches?
What’s more, Watson was given four tickets to the Championship play-off final at Wembley by none other than Sky Betting & Gaming.
So much for a ‘public health emergency’.
As shadow culture secretary, Tom Watson is leading calls for a ban on gambling advertising at live sporting events. Problem gambling is a ‘public health emergency’, he says
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MP reveals bedroom secret
Spare a thought for the long-suffering wife of Paul Farrelly, the Labour MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme. Farrelly told the Culture Select Committee, ‘that a lot of debate about fake news’ concentrated on potential political harm to mental health. He wanted to point out that, ‘there’s also the harm to your pocket’.
‘I’ll admit this in public — I clicked on something to do with a topic of great interest to my wife . . . snoring,’ he said. It’s a decision he regrets: ‘because I’m now relentlessly pursued by advert after advert for little things you stick up your nose that suddenly cure the problem.’
‘I’m not going to ask if it worked,’ said committee member, Culture Secretary Jeremy Wright.
To which Farrelly replied: ‘It’s a scam.’ That’s a no, then.
Br-explain to Jane: Hollywood veteran Jane Fonda, 80, who is visiting London, can’t resist a political row. Dubbed Hanoi Jane for her ‘unpatriotic’ protests against the Vietnam War in the early Seventies, she’s particularly concerned about Brexit. ‘Why is your opposition party not opposing it? she asks in The New European. It’s a long story Jane . . .
Conservative donor Lord Harris of Peckham, whose charitable foundation runs 47 schools, played a small but vital role in the rise of grime music. ‘I got the best GCSE grades in my school, and was given [an] award because of it,’ London-born rapper, Stormzy, writes in his memoir, Rise Up. ‘I went to a Harris Academy, so Lord Harris came along to present it, and he said, “If you want to go to Oxford or Cambridge, I will make it happen”.’ Sadly, Stormzy didn’t take up the offer. ‘A-levels were too much for me,’ he admits.
Veteran Tory MP Sir Greg Knight, a leading member of the Vote Leave campaign, left his East Yorkshire constituents in little doubt of his feelings about the EU. On his website’s Brexit section, the EU flag is in flames.
Lord Llewellyn — David Cameron’s Downing Street chief of staff — is enjoying his new life as British Ambassador to France. Given the plum post by Cameron as a reward for loyal service, Ed Llewellyn spent £270,883 on hospitality last year. No doubt he has a bottle of best Bordeaux in reserve in case the former PM makes his return to politics as Foreign Secretary.
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