National Lottery

(asked on 25th February 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of bringing forward legislative proposals to amend the National Lottery Act 2006 to safeguard vulnerable players.


Answered by
Nigel Huddleston Portrait
Nigel Huddleston
Financial Secretary (HM Treasury)
This question was answered on 4th March 2020

The success of the National Lottery has always been to encourage lots of people to play the National Lottery games, while individually spending relatively small amounts. This strategy, in conjunction with the player protection policies of the operator, available here (https://www.national-lottery.co.uk/responsible-play/consumer-protection-strategy), and scrutiny from the Gambling Commission, means that we can be confident that National Lottery games have a very low risk of causing harm to players. This is borne out by evidence from the last combined Health Survey, published in September 2018, which showed that problem gambling rates for players of National Lottery draw-based games were 1.0%, while the figure for scratchcards was 1.8%.

Even though the rates are low for lottery games, a good example of the ongoing work on player protection came last year when Camelot withdrew its £10 scratchcard games in light of evidence suggesting an association between these products and problem gambling.

I do not have plans to introduce further legislative change at this stage.

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