UK Member of Parliament calls for fast government action on lottery

The Rt Hon Priti Patel MP has proposed to ministers to bring forward changes to the legislationn of society lotteries in order to allow them to raise more money to support their work.

At present, “lotteries which support a specific good cause are limited in the amount of money they can raise each year to £10 million. To raise more money, charities and organisations have to take out a separate licence that can involve spending six-figure sums,” explains the official report published this week by fundraising.co.uk.

“Time is of the essence, charities providing important public services rely on the funds from their lotteries to continue to do good work. Charities and organisations work really hard to raise this money, we cannot allow out-dated law to get in their way and have money raised from the public paying for the bureaucratic requirements of an additional license instead of the valuable work of patient and public care,” – said Rt Hon Priti Patel MP.

Last month, Lotteries Council chair Jo Bucci also called for change to be speeded up, while the Council, the Institute of Fundraising and the Hospice Lotteries Association wrote a joint letter to ministers on the subject.

Three years has now elapsed since an all-party report of the Culture Media and Sport Select Committee backed raising the fundraising limits imposed on charity lotteries and calling on the Government to speed up its process to reform the law in this area.