National Lottery

Lord Giddens Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Giddens (Lab)]

My Lords, to change the metaphor deployed by the noble Baroness, in academic life when you are chosen to speak last in a debate at the end of a long day you call it the death slot. This will probably be the death slot for me in another way, because I will take quite a lot more of an interrogatory attitude towards the National Lottery and lotteries in general than any noble Lords have adopted so far. But I join all other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, on the exemplary way in which he introduced this debate and on his stellar Olympic career. He is the only student that I know of from my classes in Cambridge who won nine gold medals. Of course, plenty of students won six but that is not quite in the same league. He introduced his speech in a wonderfully lucid way.

Sociologically and politically, lotteries are an intriguing phenomenon. A large number of countries have national lotteries and most have embraced them enthusiastically. In the United States, $70 billion is spent annually on state lotteries. That is an amazing amount. It is half the budget of the largest state in the US—California, which has an economy almost the size of that of the UK. In the US, $1 billion is spent on advertising alone.

Lotteries are surrounded by humour and jokes, although my joke is not a very good one. Joking always denotes ambivalence, and there is a lot of ambivalence and criticism—quite rightly, I think—surrounding lotteries. Question: What is a lottery? Answer: A tax on people who are bad at maths. The chances of winning a jackpot are infinitesimally small: one in 40 million for lotto in this country and one in 260 million in the US. According to Camelot, 70% of the UK population regularly plays the lottery, but to me—speaking sociologically, I suppose—the question “Why?” is a very real one.

We can easily see why Governments like lotteries and we can see why noble Lords in this debate who have been recipients of lottery money like them. They provide a substantial source of revenue handed over in a voluntary, even enthusiastic way. They are very different from an orthodox tax in that respect. Yet I suggest that the respectability that they have achieved, which I think has been very visible in all the contributions in this debate, is odd for three reasons, which noble Lords will be glad to know I will not develop at length. First, it is a form of gambling. Secondly, it is regressive—that is, poorer people spend a far higher portion of their revenue on lotteries than more affluent people. Thirdly, lotteries—not always but quite often—fund elite projects which are remote from those punters. In addition, there is the issue of addiction, which the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, mentioned at the beginning.

Naturally, Camelot is anxious to downplay these issues. It has to be said that Camelot appears to be one of the best-run lotteries in the world. It is run in a fairly exemplary fashion and is very aware of its responsibilities. I accept all the wonderful things that have been said about what is achieved through the National Lottery. As it says on its website:

“We want large numbers of people to spend small amounts each”.

That is a very desirable and laudatory position. To me, however, two questions remain, and they should be asked and responded to: why do so many want to spend even small amounts on the lottery when they have a close to zero chance of winning large sums of money; and, are we doing enough to monitor its more negative aspects? I have been thinking quite a lot about why so many people are attracted to playing the lottery and the conclusion that I have come up with is that there is a cluster of motivations.

Most of the research that we have on this seems to come from the US, not from this country. For many who are really struggling, playing the lottery and hoping for the jackpot is a “hope for a miracle” position. When you have a fairly hopeless life, people are not stupid—they know that they are not going to win but they still think, “Well, I might”. For others—at least in this country—it seems to be a kind of glorified reality game show, creating a feeling of belonging. For others, perhaps there is an altruistic element.

Can the Minister first of all tell us whether there is any research on all this? I checked, and it was very difficult to find any systematic work on it. Most of the work we have comes from the US and is moderately negative in its conclusions. Secondly, can she tell us how much research is funded by Camelot or other organisations on the demographics of players and the prevalence of addiction? It is conventionally said, and said very assertively, that playing the lottery has no relationship to other forms of gambling. I cannot find the evidence for that, and evidence drawn from other countries seems to suggest the opposite—so I would be interested in whatever comments the Minister cares to make.