Raiding the Lottery
When the National Lottery was established in Britain in 1995, its underlying principle was that money from the sale of tickets would be given to good causes. When people bought a ticket, they not only had a chance to become a millionaire, but, if they didn’t win, could take comfort that they were also helping causes which were inevitably at the back of the Government’s spending queue.
Since then the original aims and aspirations have become distorted under this Government.
Last year, when the National Lottery Bill was being debated in the House of Commons, the National Council of Voluntary Organisations again highlighted their concerns about maintaining a clear dividing line between lottery expenditure and core Government expenditure. It must not be abused as a substitute for general taxation. Sadly the lines have become blurred in recent years.
I recently attended a meeting in Stanton in my constituency to discuss the plans for redeveloping the village hall. Village halls play such an important role in rural life, bringing communities together, with a wide range of clubs, events and activities. The plans for modernisation are very impressive, but are dependent on securing funding for the project. I shall be supporting the village hall in their application to the National Lottery through the Big Lottery Community Building Fund. They richly deserve this financial assistance.
However, due to the mishandling of the London Olympics project by Gordon Brown and Tessa Jowell, we could eventually see costs quadruple to an eye-watering £9billion by 2009—and perhaps even more. It does not need a huge leap of the imagination to see that the National Lottery pot may be raided yet again to try to cover these spiralling costs, crowding out worthy local projects such as Stanton Village Hall. This would go against the very ethos of what the National Lottery is supposedly all about.