Orders of the Day — National Lottery Bill [Lords]

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 7:40 pm on 7 April 1998.

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Photo of Tom Levitt Tom Levitt Labour, High Peak 7:40, 7 April 1998

There seems to be general agreement that the projected £9 billion of lottery income could be £10 billion, and there is even speculation that the figure will be higher. I hope that my colleagues on the Front Bench will not be too perturbed, and will not get their statisticians to recalculate their projection when they discover that I am yet another hon. Member who has never bought a lottery ticket in his life. I am £176 better off than anyone who has bought one ticket a week. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood (Mrs. Humble) said that she has won more than £50 on the lottery. If she had bought a ticket a week, she would now be £120 out of pocket.

By not paying that £176, I have deprived the good causes of only £40 over the three and a bit years that the lottery has been in operation. That would have been spread among all the different good causes in the lottery structure. I am not being sanctimonious when I say that I have given considerably more than £40 to good causes in that period, with the added advantage that, for every pound I have given, the good cause has had £1-worth of benefit.

I had some gut sympathy with the arguments of the hon. Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers), but they were the arguments of four years ago. They were pertinent to the establishment of the lottery, but not to the position now. The lottery is well established, and is undoubtedly successful by any measure. We must move forward, and no one except the hon. Gentleman seriously wants to go back four years to a time when we did not have a lottery.

I noted that the right hon. Member for South-West Surrey (Mrs. Bottomley) said that being a millionaire can damage one's health. Perhaps she was referring to some of her hon. Friends.

The arguments of the hon. Member for Gosport tell us something about the way in which the lottery is operated. Concerns have been expressed about under-age gambling, the promotion of gambling, the size of the profits made by Camelot and the size of its directors' pay packets, and the damage that may have been done to charitable giving. My hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. Pendry) said that the Football Trust had lost about 60 per cent. of its funding, although it may now have got that back. Many other charities will have got their funding back, but some will not, and we must give them consideration.