National Lottery

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Wednesday 14th July 2021 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to review the objectives of the National Lottery.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, since its launch in 1994, the National Lottery has been an unprecedented success, raising over £43 billion for community, arts, heritage and sports projects across the UK. The primary objective of the National Lottery is to raise money for good causes and we have no plans to change that.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that reply, but I hope that she may be prepared to reflect. The National Lottery has not been quite so successful in recent years; life has changed and we should have new objectives. The big change has been the problem with the nation’s health. We have the worst number in Europe of deaths from Covid. I believe that the Government should review the objectives of the National Lottery and see whether a greater focus on health for the nation should be considered. One of the lottery’s great benefits is that it reaches the hard-to-reach groups in society. As many play the National Lottery with scratch cards and so on, the Government should consider how that link might be used to incentivise and reward players for moves to better and healthier eating and drinking and exercise rather than simply focusing on money rewards, as it does at the moment. Let us put the real health of the nation at the heart of this objective rather than simply money.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord is of course right that the pandemic has highlighted the importance of the nation’s health. He will be aware that health is one of the objectives of the National Lottery Community Fund, but, more broadly, this Government have an ambitious target for reducing, in particular, obesity. The lottery must provide additionality in its funding, not replace core government funding.