Tories plan Lottery shake-up

'Players will have more choice'

Lottery players should be able to pick the charity their stake is used to support, according to Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith.

For too long the game has been damaged by donations to "highly controversial" causes, the Conservatives claim.

Now they hope to reverse the Lottery's fortunes with the introduction of a new mechanism to allow players the option to give the charitable share of their £1 stake directly to a good cause of their choosing.

Conservatives are determined to sweep away the obstacles that frustrate or politicise the vital work of charities and community-building organisations

Iain Duncan Smith

The plan is outlined in a Conservative policy paper on the voluntary sector, entitled Sixty Million Citizens.

The move follows controversy over a number of the good causes supported, especially one organisation which was involved in helping asylum seekers to fight deportation.

Ownership

"Conservatives are determined to sweep away the obstacles that frustrate or politicise the vital work of charities and community-building organisations," said Mr Duncan Smith.

"Our proposed reforms would greatly increase the accountability of the charitable sector to local communities.

"They also have the potential to transfer significant resources from the public to the community sector - increasing the opportunities available to the voluntary sector and reducing the power of bureaucrats."

The paper also looks at a proposal to enable community organisations to take over the management - and possibly the ownership - of under-used public assets such as community halls, parks or vacant land.

'Tax relief'

Start-up charities would be given help by new "bureaucracy busters" to wade through red tape and thereby allow them to concentrate on the work for which they were set up.

People could choose to give up their child benefit, state pension or other universal state benefits to charity and there would be a "presumption of tax relief" on all "spontaneous giving" such as donations to collection boxes.

The government would be prevented from launching initiatives which "usurp" voluntary sector projects by a new "unfair competition test".