National Lottery Bill

I support Amendment No. 11, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. The Minister will no doubt say that inserting ““shall”” rather than ““may”” would be too prescriptive. Of course, the Government like prescription when they want to prescribe, but not when someone else wants to prescribe. I echo all the points made by my noble friend Lord Brooke and the noble Lord, Lord Pendry. Both those noble Lords will remember the concerns, when the original lottery Bill came before both Houses of Parliament, about charitable giving and giving to good causes. I am particularly concerned by Clause 11, and paragraph (c) of new Section 25E, to which Amendment No. 12 relates. The provisions muddle up charitable giving and the lottery, which was always a concern. Let us remember that the public buy lottery tickets not to give money to good causes but to win a prize. We have always maintained, and those involved in the lottery have always made sure, that the most effective way to give money to charity is to give it directly to a charity. So I am very concerned when I see the words,"““encouraging participation in activities relating to the National Lottery in general””." That seems to blur an important principle. If we could have some words referring to National Lottery distributors, or something like that, I should be entirely happy. As my noble friend said, the more publicity that goes to the worthwhile awards that are made, the better—and we all know how important good publicity is. There is no doubt that good publicity encourages people to buy tickets and encourages more money to flow through the system, but we should not confuse with charitable giving the job that Camelot does in publicising so that people buy tickets for the National Lottery. We all accept that that has a motivation different from charitable giving. Camelot’s job is to encourage the purchase of tickets, and it does that well. But I am concerned that the distributing bodies referred to will be muddled in how they promote and publicise things. It is extremely important that we get them to publicise these things, but I should like more focus so that there is no confusion and the distributing bodies promote what they have done, rather than having the somewhat generic reference to the National Lottery in paragraph (c). Will the Minister consider those concerns and whether there is some different wording that would satisfy my concerns and the aspirations, which I entirely support, of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones?