Acevo condemns idea of deregulating society lotteries

13 Mar 2015 News

Deregulating society lotteries would be a mistake, according to Acevo’s response to the government’s calls for evidence on lotteries.

Deregulating society lotteries would be a mistake, according to Acevo’s response to the government’s calls for evidence on lotteries.

In its submission to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport Acevo claimed that any potential further deregulations would undermine public trust in society lotteries and would “worsen the creep” of commercial gambling companies into the voluntary sector.

Acevo also argued that – despite the suggestions of other organisations – an increase in the annual income cap would actually have a detrimental effect to the amount of money going from social lotteries to good causes.

The submission called current lottery regulation “an essential protection for the third sector and for the wider public”.

Acevo’s director of public policy Asheem Singh said: “Any government plans to deregulate lotteries would be bad for society, and good for gambling companies’ profits.

“Society lottery regulation should remove barriers to entry for non-commercial organisations, but avoid allowing commercial operators to directly compete with ‘good cause’ bodies – without donating to any good causes themselves.

“The government must understand that society lottery regulations serve a valuable purpose. Any attempt to water them down would reflect badly on its sense of social purpose.”

NCVO’s response

Acevo’s submission came a few days after the release of NCVO’s, which was also hesitant to back full-scale deregulation of society lotteries.

NCVO argued that there was not enough evidence available to agree with calls to substantially increase the annual lottery income cap and other deregulation proposals.

While NCVO conceded that the cap ought to be raised “from £10m to £15.2m based on year-on-year inflation since 2005” it worried that any further increase would undermine public trust.

Institute of Fundraising’s submission

The IoF and a number of other bodies made called for more freedom for smaller charities to start a social lottery and for an increase in the annual lottery income cap from £10m to £100m.

It pointed to evidence contained in an nfpSynergy report which claimed that 74 per cent of the 1,000 people surveyed supported the notion that charities running society lotteries should be able to make as much money from them as the National Lottery does.