British Prime Minister Theresa May’s government lost its sport minister on Thursday in a row over slot machine stakes. Sport and Civil Society Minister Tracey Crouch submitted her resignation after the government seemingly delayed cutting the maximum size of an electronic gambling machine bet from £100 to £2 ($2.60, 2.30 euros). The government is rolling the measure out in October 2019 instead of April — the date backed by Crouch — to give the treasury time to come up with a new gaming tax that could compensate for the lost budget revenues.
“It is with great sadness that I write to tender my resignation,” Crouch wrote in her letter to May. “It is a fact of Government that ministers must adhere to collective responsibility and cannot disagree with policy.” May argued in letter addressed to Crouch and released by Downing Street that there had “been no delay in bringing forward this important measure”. Her government denied claims that MPs had been led to believe that the rollout had been set for April.
But May added: “Having taken the decision to make this very significant cut in the maximum stakes, we must ensure that this change can be made in an orderly and effective manner”. Crouch wrote that not having the cut introduced next April will see an additional £1.6 billion “lost on these machines, a significant amount of which will be in our most deprived areas”. Gambling on everything from sports to royal baby names is a British tradition stretching back decades. But electronic gambling machines have been targeted by campaigners because they are believed to be especially heavily used by the poor. May’s government has suffered a string of resignations linked to difficult negotiations with the European Union about the terms of Britain’s split from the bloc in March.
