Tracey Crouch MP interview

Torrin Wilkins: Welcome to the Centre Think Tank interview series, In Conversation. My name is Torrin Wilkins, Director of the Centre Think Tank. Today I am joined by Tracey Crouch, the Member of Parliament for Chatham and Aylesford since 2010. She has also served in two roles as a Parliamentary Undersecretary of State, first for Sport, Civil Society and Loneliness, and later for Sport, Heritage and Tourism. Welcome to the conversation, Tracey.

Tracey Crouch: Thank you for having me. It is a pleasure to be here.

Torrin Wilkins: Great to have you on. So, the first question I thought I would ask is more of a general one about your political views. Do you consider yourself a one-nation Conservative?  That is, a term often used for those in the centre ground but who are still firmly Conservative. What do you think that term means?

Tracey Crouch: I have always considered myself a one-nation Tory. I joined the party in, gosh, 1990 maybe, 1991. It was during John Major’s leadership, and I was very taken by his journey into politics. In particular, into conservative politics. At that time, there was a real difference between the Conservative Party and the Labour Party. I was studying at school for my A-level politics, and when we learned all about socialism and conservatism at that point, everything about John Major resonated with me. He described himself as a one-nation Tory, obviously very different to Margaret Thatcher, who had preceded him.  I was captured by that, and it made a strong impression on me at that time. He was a man from a single-parent family. I was in a single-parent family. He had been to grammar school. I was at a grammar school. Given his background, he had gone on to run the country. For me, it made me feel like I could do anything, that the future was very much open to me.

Torrin Wilkins: In the recent local elections, the Conservatives lost both individual seats and control of some councils, while the Green Party, Labour, and the Liberal Democrats all gained seats. What are your thoughts on those results, but also, how do you see the Conservative Party regrowing from here?

Tracey Crouch: So I generally try not to get overexcited about local elections and what they mean in terms of the national picture. I have maintained that position when we have done well as well. I do think people vote in local elections for a whole variety of reasons: sometimes it is to give the government, whoever that government is, a bloody nose. I was on the receiving end of that back in 2009  when I was selected to run for Chatham and Aylesford. We saw seats that were solid Labour seats, completely change to Tory seats. But a lot of it was not necessarily about David Cameron; it was not about the forthcoming elections or anything like that. It was actually because they were just a bit fed up locally.

Potholes had not been fixed. Potholes are not a new phenomenon, by the way. Their bins had not been collected either. So actually there was a lot of, there is a lot of, individual nuance at local elections. Nonetheless, they do take the temperature of the nation, and it would be foolish of the party not to take notice of this and to be clear about what it means and how you can engage with people in different parts of the country. I also think it is very foolish if there is a one-size-fits-all approach to this. The issues that are important to people in the South East are not the same as the issues that are important to those in the North East. So when you talk about a national campaign, it has to be a national campaign with local bits to it. I feel very strongly about this. I think this is when we are coming out with a national policy, which is designed to suit red wall seats. That is great, and that has to happen, but it is not necessarily of great importance to voters in my constituency or elsewhere in the South East. And so, therefore, you have to be thinking about those policies as well.

Torrin Wilkins: So, during your time as the Parliamentary Undersecretary of State, you worked a lot on changing gambling rules. One of the reasons you gave for this was that in your constituency, many low-income individuals ended up losing vast amounts of money compared to the amount they earned while gambling on betting machines. Why did you feel that this was such a large issue, especially in your area?

Tracey Crouch: Well, my area is really interesting. It has a bit of everything in it, and there are urban areas with real deprivation. There are wards on the most deprived index, whilstothers areas are relatively affluent. What is telling is that bookmakers do not have retail outlets in affluent areas; they are all in the poorer, most deprived communities. There is no bookmaker in Aylesford, for example. But there are probably four in the space of less than a mile in parts of Chatham. So it is clear who they are targeting – they want to target those who are desperate to have money in whatever way they can get it, and gambling sort of preys on that hope. The thing about the machines is that you can win big, but also lose heavily. There were countless examples of people, constituents, who would play these machines, and they would win something like £8,000. Amazing. That was life-changing for many in those communities. Yet they would not save it, they would not put it towards paying off debt or supporting families or whatever.  It would, in many cases, go straight back into the machine. And that was that, unfortunately. The problem with those machines is that they would prey on those who desire that huge win.

Torrin Wilkins: You were one of the people who led the change to reduce maximum stakes on fixed odds betting terminals from £100 down to £2. So why did you campaign so passionately for that change? I know you eventually resigned from your position because the government had not implemented it as quickly as you wished. What were the main arguments in favour of making those changes?

Tracey Crouch: The change, specifically from £100 to £2, was a really important policy aspect. It was something that people were calling for. It was all to do with equivalents with other betting machines, but also it was an acknowledgement of things like the spin time, the spin cycle of the machines, and the fact that you could lose £100 in 20 seconds. I mean, that is extraordinary. So, trying to limit that loss was a really important aspect of the policy. 

We won the policy, and it was a fundamental part of the gambling review.  It was agreed across government that the point of implementation became the contentious aspect of it, and with the attempt to delay it from April to October, which is what the Chancellor wanted, and thank goodness we won the argument. Okay, it took my resignation and then a huge debate in Parliament, but thank goodness, because if you recall back in 2019, we ended up with more time-consuming things to be discussing around Brexit, we would never have had it done if it had not come in by April.

Torrin Wilkins: So, looking at the situation now, do you think there is any more that the government or gambling companies themselves can do to ensure that gambling itself is safer?

Tracey Crouch: Well, the government has just published a gambling white paper. I mean, I think it is a shame it has been delayed for so long. But let us be clear, it has made huge steps forward in terms of recognising gambling-related harm. It looks at various aspects of that, including advertising on football shirts, which has become a hugely contentious issue as well. I think that most people, campaigners, are very happy with the content of the white paper. There are always issues around the actual implementation, and I think we would all agree that we would quite like to see it sooner rather than later,r but that is the nature of the beast. I think the fact that there are major policy issues that have been largely resolved in many respects is a massive leap forward.

Torrin Wilkins: So in 2021, you were the chair of the independent fan-led review of football governance. What recommendations in that report do you feel were the most important to ensuring that football clubs are properly run going forward and in the future?

Tracey Crouch: I mean, it was a great pleasure to be the chair of the football review. I have long spoken about the importance of football in communities, es and it took a couple of crises in football for people who do not care about football to understand why football is important. I think in the past, politicians have always thought that football was just a 90-minute game. It took for Bury to disappear, the European Super League and  Macclesfield Town and other sorts of kind of seismic events for politicians to suddenly realise and appreciate why football is much greater in many respects than the sport itself.

The football review is really about how we can protect clubs from disappearing. It asked, how can we protect the long-term sustainability of English football?  Within that, the recommendations are very firmly around things like the independent regulator, real-time financial monitoring, business plans, and so on. It is not about interference. It is about making sure that those bits of our community that are so meaningful to those communities continue to exist going forward.  It is only when they are not there that people begin to appreciate how important they were, and they are important on so many different levels. There is a social aspect to it. We saw that during COVID-19, when people whose only interaction with other human beings could be on a Saturday afternoon, standing on the terraces of their local football club c,  could no longer attend. We are not always talking about Premier League clubs here, by the way. We are talking about grassroots clubs with a couple of hundred people who rock up.

That kind of interaction was evident, the impact of it not being there. Football clubs are always the first to put up their hands and say, “We will be a COVID-19 vaccination centre”, or “we can host nurses here”, or “we can do educational aspects here”. It is quite often forgotten because we are too busy shaking our fists at profits or losses or what have you. I think that actually, that is what the football review was all about, which was about recognising the whole ecosystem of football.

Torrin Wilkins: So, how do you feel that we can communicate the community aspect of football, which is one that I think is so often overlooked by people in politics, because, as you said, there is this massive disconnect between the two. It is often difficult to have politicians understand just how crucial it is to some of those communities.

Tracey Crouch: Sadly, I think the crisis in football has begun to show why football clubs are important. I think politicians who do not care about football, who do not follow a team, who prefer a different sport, just perhaps need to spend some time with their grassroots clubs and see what it is they are doing beyond the Saturday, the Wednesday or the Tuesday. It is so much more than just the game itself. So many clubs came into their own during COVID-19 and are continuing to do that work. 

They are quite often, when you think about other policy areas like social prescribing, our link workers who GP practices are turning to, to say how you help us with isolation? How can you help us reduce diabetes or support people with dementia, for example, by engaging people with memory loss. I think there is a greater recognition, not just of football, but of sport in general, of what it can do to contribute in other areas of policy as well.

Torrin Wilkins: So, are there any ways that reforms to football governance could go further in your opinion? Especially when it comes to clubs falling into bankruptcy? 

Tracey Crouch: Well, certainly other sports are looking at some of the recommendations within the football governance reviews to see how they can do things differently in their sports in different ways. So cricket may well be looking at some of the governance regulations. Whereas rugby may look at some of the financial distribution aspects. So, I think it piqued an interest in other sports as to how they can make themselves both financially sustainable for the future, but also how they can improve their governance situation.

Torrin Wilkins: Well, that was the final question. Thank you so much for coming on. How can they find out more about you online or on social media?

Tracey Crouch: Well, I would not believe everything you read on the internet. I am on all the usual social media channels. 

I am just grateful to you guys and everyone who is still banging the drum for centre politics. I think the ground is very fertile. Actually, we do better when we come together on these issues and forge a consensus. Thankfully for me, all of the portfolios I had lent themselves to cross-party working, but also cross-departmental work, where we were unable to have that consensus and to push forward, I think, some major policy changes.

Torrin Wilkins: Well, thank you so much for coming on and thank you for speaking to me today.

Tracey Crouch: You are welcome.

Note: This interview has been edited for grammar, clarity, and flow. The original recording is the final and definitive version.