Our Responsibilities Chairman's Statement

As the new Chairman of Camelot I am delighted to see the company achieving record sales and a strong increase in returns to the Good Causes while reinforcing its reputation for running its operations responsibly and cost-effectively. These are results to be proud of.

Camelot’s achievements over the past year are all the more notable as they have been made against a difficult economic background and a worldwide trend of slowing lottery sales. This success is a real tribute to the quality of Camelot’s management team and to the hard work and commitment of its staff.

During the year, Camelot passed into new ownership. Its sole shareholder is now the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (Teachers’). Teachers’ and Camelot share common values and each subscribes to the principles of responsible investment. Teachers’ looks forward to working with Camelot’s management to invest in and build the business in the coming years. I would like to thank the previous shareholders – Cadbury, De La Rue, Fujitsu, Royal Mail and Thales – for their steady record of investment and support over the years, underpinning both the success of Camelot and the long term health of the National Lottery.

At the start of the financial year Camelot moved to a new group structure made up of five operating companies. This is proving beneficial in supporting both our core UK National Lottery business and our plans for international growth and diversification.

Camelot continues to work with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and with the regulator, the National Lottery Commission (NLC), to develop a new regulatory framework. The goal we seek is a framework that is robust – but that also recognises Camelot’s record and experience of having run The National Lottery successfully for more than 16 years.  Since this process began, the government has moved to merge NLC with the Gambling Commission and this merger is expected to take place in 2012. In order to derive as much benefit as possible for the Good Causes, it is important to move to a regulatory environment that is less prescriptive and time-consuming.  We hope that the merger of the Gambling Commission and the NLC will result in such an outcome.

A key current initiative from Camelot, undertaken since the end of the financial year under review, is the proposal recently submitted to NLC seeking a five-year extension to the company’s current ten-year licence. This would enable Camelot to raise an additional £2bn for Good Causes and for the Exchequer over the next 12 years. To achieve this, Camelot would invest in a major expansion of its network of National Lottery outlets, recovering this very large investment over the course of the proposed licence extension. We believe our proposals have a compelling logic – particularly at a time when charitable funding and the public finances are both under unprecedented pressure - and we are working hard for a positive outcome.

In the meantime, Camelot will continue to pursue its successful strategy of efficiency, innovation and diversification, carried through in a socially responsible way. Camelot is a world-class lottery operator. It runs the most-cost-efficient lottery in Europe. It operates the biggest online lottery in the world.  It has created four of the top fast-moving consumer goods brands in the UK, including the biggest, Lotto. It has built the National Lottery into a national institution. And all this has been achieved in a context of social responsibility in which everyone in Camelot can take justifiable pride. This report contains the hard evidence for Camelot’s claim that social responsibility runs right through the company’s DNA.

I would like to pay tribute here to Camelot’s Chief Executive, Dianne Thompson, to her management team, and to all the talented and dedicated people who work throughout the company. Their drive and commitment are key to Camelot’s continuing success.

I would also like to pay tribute to my predecessor as Chairman, Sir Peter Middleton, whose vision, integrity, leadership and wise counsel have played such an important part in building Camelot into the force – and the force for good – that it is today. I am proud to follow in his footsteps.

Lee Sienna
Chairman