My Lords, usually when one introduces an amendment in Committee there is a vague prospect that other Members of the Committee will have some familiarity with the subject, having sat through Second Reading and other days in Committee. However, we have already had a gallop through BBC funding, busking regulation and copyrights for broadcasting, so it would not be unreasonable for me to assume that not everybody in Committee this afternoon is intimately familiar with the details of lottery regulation.
I declare an interest as president of the Lotteries Council, which is the trade organisation that looks after 440-plus organisations, most of which are charities or non-profit-making sporting organisations that promote lotteries in this country. The collective revenues are about £350 million a year and they donate, provide or raise for their charitable organisations about £155 million a year, which is quite a significant sum.
Most noble Lords will probably have come across the National Lottery. However, I will forgive them if they have not all come across society lotteries. Society lotteries were introduced following the Rothschild commission on gambling in 1968, which was followed by the Lotteries and Amusements Act 1976, which provided the regulations by which charities, known in law as societies, could raise money for their charities by running small lotteries.
As have many things in this world, they have developed over the years since 1976. There was a significant change in lottery law in this country with the advent of the National Lottery in 1994, after the Bill became law as the National Lottery etc. Act. At that stage your Lordships agreed half a dozen small amendments, not dissimilar to those I am proposing today, to change the 1976 Act to protect society lotteries from the might of the proposed National Lottery. I am delighted that the Government agreed to those amendments, which I had the honour to propose in Committee in your Lordships’ House in the summer of 1994. My noble friend Lord Astor was the Minister who was sitting where my noble friend Lord Gardner is sitting now. I am delighted that the Opposition strongly supported what we were trying to do then and I hope that they will do so now.
I will not go into all the detail but Amendment 81 proposes five small changes to the regulations. The first one is really the preamble and need not particularly concern us. Subsection (2) of the proposed new clause is in relation to the amount of money that society lotteries are obliged by law to give back to the promoting charity. That has consistently been 20%. However, it is quite difficult for some of the smaller charities when they are starting out to maintain that, and my suggestion is that that 20%—which is quite right, and of course it is the primary purpose of lotteries to raise money for their good causes—should be aggregated over the year rather than in single lotteries. If your Lordships think that amount is too low, it is worth remembering that in the last year for which figures are available, 2012-13, society lotteries actually provided 48% to the societies that were promoting them, significantly more than the 20%. This is just to protect those in start-up when their costs are at their highest and it is more difficult for them. They may not all make use of it but it would be an important change.
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Subsection (3) of the proposed new clause is about changing the pool size of each individual lottery. It has changed several times over the years. All the regulations in all areas of the gambling industry change from time to time. If you are a very grand industry such as the bookmakers or the casinos, you get a three-year annual review. Society lotteries, being charities, are at the bottom of the heap and, despite endless promises from Governments of all complexions, they remain at the bottom of the heap and very rarely get to these reviews, so the numbers go up in very small steps. The proposal here is simply to increase the pool size from £4 million to £10 million, which seems like quite a lot of money, except when you bear in mind that the National Lottery often has a pool size in excess of £100 million. This is small beer but it would be of immense help.
Subsection (4) of the proposed new clause is about the annual aggregate number that lotteries can promote—the number of tickets they can sell and the amount of money they can provide. I have never been entirely sure what this cap is for. I have asked Ministers. I worked it out when I was preparing for this amendment—I think I have put down 18 Questions to Ministers over the past 20-odd years asking what the purpose of the cap is and I have received 18 different Answers, every single one of which has quite clearly been complete rubbish. It is very difficult to work out what it is for. The only answer I got of any substance was from the former secretary of the old Gaming Board, which was subsumed into the Gambling Commission in 2005, who told me, “Actually, don’t say it too loudly but we are not sure why it’s there. It crept into the 1976 Act and no one has had the courage to take it out”. In other words, it achieves absolutely nothing at all and if that is the basis on which a regulation should be removed from the statute book, then this one should be removed.
Subsection (5) of the proposed new clause, substituting 10% for 50%, is in relation to the jackpot of any lottery. I am not absolutely certain why the Government, Parliament or the statute book should be remotely interested in what the jackpot of anybody’s lottery is, but they appear to be. Even so, it causes an unnecessary restriction and I therefore ask for it to be removed. These are really ridiculous regulations. There is no real reason for them in this day and age. Therefore I hope that, with the Committee’s agreement, the Government will accept my amendments.
I will finish with a few comments. These increases will pose no threat whatever to the National Lottery, which will continue to have in excess of 95% of the market. It will make no difference to it at all. These changes will significantly reduce the administrative and cost burdens of society lotteries and therefore will allow more money to go to the charities that propose them. None of the measures I am proposing today will inhibit the ability of society lotteries to meet their statutory obligations of ensuring that gambling remains crime-free, is fair and open and that children and vulnerable people are protected. Those are the statutory obligations. It is important that we should acknowledge them today. I beg to move.