The instantly recognisable catchphrase of the National Lottery is 'It could be you'. But asfar as the disbursement of its proceeds to charities and other groups are concerned, thefickle finger of fortune is much more likely to point at organisations based in London thananywhere else in the United Kingdom.

The latest figures show that while Londoners spendleast on the lottery (£77 per head in the first 17 months) they are first in the queue forhandouts with cumulative grants of almost £400 million in that time. This means that forevery pound spent in London the city has received almost 70p back, not a bad returnespecially when you take into consideration Scotland's 30p per pound.

Of course theDepartment of National Heritage which is in charge of the lottery, is only repeating what isan article of faith for every Government department and every Tory Minister. This dogmaholds that any and all spending in London is termed "investment in the nationalinfrastructure", while spending everywhere else is just spending. This 'London Levy'features in every area of Government activity. And not only do we get less, we actually paymore for it. Even Scottish Office figures for 1995/96 show that every taxpayer pays £10 moreper week than their UK counterparts. Yet no matter how used we are to UK Governmentfiddling, fudging, and scaremongering about the reality of our financial relationship, itadds insult to injury to discover that the rot is so deep it even affects the NationalLottery.

The lottery has only been really good to three sets of people; the directors ofCamelot, for whom every week is a jackpot; the people of London, whose public infrastructurestands to benefit greatly; and the Government, which has a very handy share to prop up theailing public finances. Everybody else may enjoy a flutter, but they don't get much back inreturn. A separate Scottish lottery - 'Scot Lot' - would be set up by an IndependentScottish Parliament under the Scottish National Party. Such a lottery would give Scots amuch better deal.

Scots are very supportive of the lottery in terms of ticket sales and wehave long been proportionately higher donators to charity than our English counterparts. Anylottery run in Scotland will make sure that the priorities of Scots - to fund charities andvoluntary organisations - is preserved. An SNP Government would forego the tax receipts from ticket sales (currently 12% of ticket sales, equivalent to £30 million) and ban lotteryscratchcards - because of the addiction problems they can cause - not just for an instantbut for ever. And the 'ScotLot' would have a smaller jackpot payout - a desirable aspectwanted by many concerned about excessive jackpots - but the chances of winning would bemuch higher because of a smaller market for ticket sales.

So with the lottery, as with alldistant Government, every one of us in Scotland is paying a bigger and bigger 'LondonLevy'.

Alex Salmond MP
Leader
Scottish National Party

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Alex Salmond is the Member ofParliament for Banff & Buchan and is leader of the SNP. An economist aged 42 , he is widely regarded as one of the most effective Scottish politicans of his generation.

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If you would like to know more about the SNP and HELP SCOTLAND contact snp.hq@snp.org.uk or visit the official the Scottish National Party web site.

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