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Committee Says London 2012 Bid “Drain” On National Lottery

The Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport issued a report Thursday saying that the earmarking of 1.5 billion pounds for London’s 2012 Olympic bid to come out of the national lottery was “a straightforward raid”, and that the Games were a “huge potential drain” on the lottery.

The report from the committee of MP’s concluded with the remarks, “the principle of ‘additionality’ – where lottery resources are not supposed to be used by ministers to replace government spending – is being eroded, especially in the light of contingent plans for staging the Olympics”.

The MP’s said that creating another lottery distributor to manage the 750 million pounds expected to be generated by a new Olympic Lottery to help pay for the Games if the bid is successful was “unnecessary, wasteful of resources and against the thrust of the Government’s own strategy for sport. On “pessimistic estimates” as much as 59 per cent of the revenue would come form players switching from regular lottery games, draining cash from other good causes.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport said it welcomed the report and would respond fully at a later date.

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