A group of UK Members of Parliament want to see more lottery revenue going to charitable causes and is urging the country’s Gambling Commission to push for a change in the national lottery contract with Camelot.
The current lottery deal runs to 2023. Parliament’s public accounts committee said in a report that the deal is overly long and inflexible, making it difficult to respond to consumer changes which had seen incomes for charities drop by 15 percent in a year, according to the Guardian newspaper.
The 15 percent drop was tied to consumers purchasing more scratch cards, which pay a lower share to charity.
The report found that while money for charitable causes raised by the lottery had increased by 2 percent between 2009-10 and 2016-17, over the same period Camelot’s profits increased by 122 percent from £39m to £71m.
The committee made a series of recommendations, including that the commission take steps to seek “a fair return” for good causes, and that the next national lottery license is sufficiently flexible to guarantee this. The committee also called for more support for gambling addiction education, warning that the low stakes for the lottery and scratch cards were appealing to younger players.
“Raising money for good causes is one of the founding principles of the national lottery but this objective is under threat,” said Meg Hillier, the Labour MP who chairs the committee. “It would be a sad and significant loss to many deserving organizations and individuals if that funding, which has amounted to some £37bn since 1994, should dissipate as a result of inaction now.
“Our report lays bare the need for a concerted effort from government, the Gambling Commission and Camelot—a monopoly supplier whose profits more than doubled in seven years while returns for good causes grew by just 2 percent,” she said.
Camelot has operated the national lottery since it launched in 1994 and is now into its third license agreement with the UK. Under the current license, Camelot’s profits are about 1 percent of sales after tax, rather than the level of 0.6 percent recommended by the Gambling Commission, according to the Guardian.
The committee found that charitable revenue dropped 15 percent in the last year partially due to a fall in overall lottery sales and a shift away from people buying draw tickets towards scratch cards. Draw ticket revenue raise a higher percentage to charity than scratch cards.
Camelot has increased its annual contribution to GambleAware from £190,000 to £300,000 to support measures to combat problem gambling, the report noted, but the committee said this still “falls well short of expectations”.
A Camelot spokeswoman told the Guardian that the company would work with the Gambling Commission and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to maximize the money spent on good causes.
