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 he Good Gambler |
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| The Editor, Richard
Whitehouse makes regular contributions to coverage of the gambling
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TheEditor on any
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Richard Desmond's new Health Lottery challenges the Gambling
Commission
In October 2011 the Health Lottery launched in the UK.
The premise of this lottery is that it is a collective of 51 local society
lotteries each representing one or more local authority areas. Money raised
goes towards services that are not covered by existing NHS funding. Instead,
through the local society lotteries’ partner charity, the Peoples Health
Trust, the monies are distributed across Great Britain to health related good
causes important to local communities within each local society lottery
area.
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That all sounds good but there are
plenty of issues raised by charities, the Advertising Standards Authority and
Jeremy Hunt the culture secretary.
To start with the Health Lottery is
run by Northern & Shell a British publishing and television group. This
company is owned by Richard Desmond and along with several newspapers and
magazines it also operates channel 5 and several porn channels. A bit of a
strange juxtaposition when you think that lotteries are not-for-profit
organisations. Then you look into the details of the distribution of money and
you find that Northern & Shell takes 22 pence from every pound spent for
operating costs. This is how lotteries make money for their
operators.
There is nothing illegal about organisers making a profit but
it is illegal for anyone other than Camelot to operate a national lottery. So
is this a national lottery? Well it has more outlets than Camelot, 40,000
compared with 28,000, and it is nationwide. No wonder Camelot are crying 'foul'
and are asking the Gambling Commission to investigate as to whether the Health
lottery is actually legal.
The Gambling Commission were the people who
gave Northern & Shell a license to operate in the first place and their
history of acting against breeches of the law is poor to say the least. Back a
few years when bookmakers began introducing roulette machines into betting
shops, they briefly objected and then, conveniently, altered their
interpretation of the Gambling Act 2005 to suit the new world order.
The Health Lottery say that they are in fact 51 lotteries and so do not
break the law. The beauty of this approach is that small lotteries don't have
to pay the Exchequer the 12% of income that Camelot have to. Controversially
there are also no limits on profits for a small lottery but Camelot are limited
to 0.5%. More critics point to the 20.3% of sales donated to the various
charities whereas the National Lottery hands over 28%.
More questions
are raised when the proposed breakdown of revenue is investigated. With 22% in
operating costs, 20.3% donated and 33.4% returned to winners, there is a gap of
24.3% which looks like pure profit. That is more than the charitable donations.
The list of complaints go on and on but this will have to turn into a top
flight political issue if the Gambling Commission are going to do anything
about it.
So what is the Health Lottery? You have to choose 5 numbers
from 1 to 50 and the are only three prizes; matching 3, matching 4 and matching
5 numbers. Three numbers pays £50, four numbers pays £500 and
matching all five pays £100,000.
For more on the Health Lottery
go to the Health Lottery
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