Gambling Act 2005 (Monetary Limits for Lotteries) Bill

Joe Robertson Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 24th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Joe Robertson (Isle of Wight East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak on behalf of His Majesty’s loyal Opposition on this important matter. I congratulate the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) on bringing forward this Bill. She has spoken with passion and knowledge on an issue that she clearly knows and cares much about. I also thank her for supporting my Westminster Hall debate on a related issue that is particularly important for charities: the impact of this Government’s national insurance increases.

The simple and well-intentioned aim behind the Bill is to allow charities to raise more money to deliver on their charitable aims, and the hon. Lady seeks to do that by disposing of the limits imposed by the Gambling Act 2005. She has already referred to the People’s Postcode Lottery, and we have heard how much it does to support charities in our constituencies up and down the country, including in mine on the Isle of Wight. Who would not want to support charities such as the People’s Postcode Lottery?

The leading argument against restricting the cap on charity lotteries is that they might then compete with the national lottery, which is not subject to this cap. That is a legitimate concern. It is in all our interests that the national lottery continues to thrive, but research has been done on competition between charity lotteries and the national lottery. In 2017, the Gambling Commission found

“no statistically significant effect of Charity Lotteries affecting National Lottery sales.”

Indeed, it remarked that the national lottery and society lotteries have continued to grow side by side. Consequently, the previous Conservative Government partially liberalised charity lottery sales and prize limits in 2020. Two years later, the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee took evidence on the matter, and its subsequent report, “What next for the National Lottery?”, said:

“We do not consider that society lotteries pose a threat to the charitable giving of the National Lottery, in line with the views of the Gambling Commission and the Department.”

The Conservatives support the principle of allowing charities to raise more money, including from society lotteries, and reducing the regulatory burden placed upon them. The previous Government commissioned independent research, as the hon. Member has referred to, and she asked some questions of the Minister, which I endorse. Can the Minister say whether the research has been received at the Department, and will she give an indication of its summary?

Before finishing, I will briefly discuss the importance of charities’ work in delivering £17 billion of public services each year, without which the public sector could not do its work. This Government bear greater responsibility to support charities through additional fundraising than might otherwise have been the case, because they are taking an estimated £1.4 billion from charities through their increases to national insurance contributions in the Budget. The Government know that will damage the public services that charities deliver. That is why they exempted the NHS, but they provided no such exemption for charities delivering health and social care, charities supporting people who need housing, charities trying to lift people out of poverty, charities trying to cure disease, and charities supporting victims of violence against women and girls.

I urge the Government to act. They owe charities the support and they owe charities compensation for the money they are taking off them in extra tax. This Bill would just be a start. I thank the hon. Member once again for bringing this important issue before the House, and I wish her every success in realising the aims and objectives behind the Bill.