Conservative leader David Cameron has called for a Government statement on super casinos after Prime Minister Gordon Brown seemed to back away from the concept, marking a dramatic U-turn in the Government’s attitude towards gambling.

Brown outraged supporters of the massive gambling venues this week when he announced a review of whether they are the best way to revive run-down areas.

Manchester was the surprise winning bidder to host the casino and had been expecting £200m in investment and 2,700 jobs for the city’s highly-deprived east-end. But the scheme is now reported to be ‘pretty much dead in the water’.

Cameron said: “We congratulated Manchester (when it was awarded the first super casino), because we thought the review had been conducted properly, but then we found out that they hadnt looked at really important issues like will this encourage problem gambling and should it be a destination casino i.e. somewhere people actually have to go to in order to gamble rather than just being in the centre of a big city.”

Brown’s comments have angered Labour MPs such as Graham Stringer (Manchester Blackley), who said it was ‘quite frankly insulting’ to think the city council had not examined the other possibilities for regenerating the area.