Health Lottery decision under fire by Camelot
The National Lottery operator Camelot is to mount a legal challenge after the Gambling Commission ruled that the Health Lottery was not acting unlawfully.
Camelot first complained to the Gambling Commission after the Health Lottery launched five months ago.
The Health Lottery scheme raises money for health groups in 51 regional “society lotteries” that operate in rotation. Each lottery ticket costs £1, and 20p of that goes to health-related causes. A TV draw, hosted by Eamonn Holmes, is broadcast weekly on Saturdays on Channel 5.
Camelot’s chief argument is that the Health Lottery, run by Northern and Shell, is essentially a national lottery and that the Gambling Commission made a “fundamental error” in giving the Health Lottery a licence to run.
The Health Lottery said their claims were “devoid of merit”.
Camelot Chief executive Dianne Thompson said:
“If the Health Lottery is a national lottery, then policy-makers and regulators need to ask themselves how this squares with the National Lottery Act 1993, which allows for just one national lottery,” she said.
Thompson says that the existence of the Health Lottery might allow other commercial groups to setup rival lotteries and have potentially “devastating” impact on the money the National Lottery makes for charity and the duty revenues it generates.
“The Gambling Commission appears to have accepted at face value that the Health Lottery is actually promoted on behalf of 51 separate societies,” she said.
“And in doing so, the commission has allowed the Health Lottery to get round the restrictions imposed on other societies and to avoid the obligations and the responsibilities laid on us,” she said.
“As a result, the Health Lottery gives much less of each pound to good causes than we do. They give 20 pence in the pound. We give 28 pence in the pound.
“And it pays no lottery duty whereas we pay 12 pence in every pound. Our total contribution to society is 41 per cent of revenues, which is double theirs.”
Ms Thompson said she had “no problem” with Richard Desmond, owner of Northern and Shell, or the company itself.
“I know Richard, I like Richard and I admire his enterprise,” she said. “My fight is not with him.
“But I do have a problem with the Gambling Commission, who appear to have allowed statute and regulation to be circumvented in a way which is at clear odds with the intention of parliament and the best interests of the many good causes that rely on National Lottery funding.”
If a judicial review finds that the Health Lottery did exploit a “legal loophole”, then Camelot would seek “swift” action from the government to ensure the law “mirrors the intention” of parliament.
A spokesman for the Health Lottery said: “The Gambling Commission has given a very robust response to Camelot’s arguments.
“We agree with the Gambling Commission that Camelot’s arguments are devoid of merit.”
