Ms Carol Boate:

There is currently nothing in the requirements under the licence to prevent a person lying about his or her age in order to play. The requirements contain deterrents to such a practice. If young people knew they would not be able to claim a prize or win, they would have less incentive to gamble.

Another mechanism in place is that the national lottery is not allowed to have games or advertisements that particularly appeal to children. I do not know enough about the previous licences to say if that has always been in place but it has been applied very rigorously under this licence. For example, the Senator will see in the table I have provided of all requests to date that the game "Monopoly" was put forward as a proposal by the operator. It is one of the biggest-selling scratch cards in the world and there are online versions of it. That was refused by my predecessor because it would be of particular appeal to children. We also try to ensure the national lottery games are not attractive to persons under 18.