KIND-HEARTED people buying raffle tickets to send handicapped children to Lourdes are angry that most of their money is used to pay for administration charges, according to an MP.

Of the £1 price per ticket, only 20p goes to charity. The rest is being taken by a Nelson organisation to cover the cost of printing, prizes and the wages of the ticket sellers.

Now Pendle MP Gordon Prentice is calling on the government to take another look at "charity" raffle tickets.

But the man behind the tickets says he is not making any profit from the scheme, and is only selling tickets to help the Cheshire-based charity because it helped his brother to Lourdes some years ago.

Mike Judge says the 80p per ticket he takes out only just covers the cost of running the fund-raising.

The 80:20 split is mentioned on the ticket but Mr Prentice says it is in small print. That is disputed by Capital Campaigns, which operates from a PO Box number in Nelson. It acts on behalf of the Halton Handicapped Children to Lourdes Charity, based in Runcorn, which is registered with the Charity Commission.

There is no suggestion that the charity is acting improperly or that Capital Campaigns is doing anything illegal but Mr Prentice simply wants the amount that goes to charity from these types of ticket displayed more prominently.

"The problem is that the people who buy the tickets do not immediately realise that 80 per cent of what they hand over is going on administration," said the MP. "This information should be displayed very prominently on the ticket.

"I am calling on Ministers to review the current law on these raffle tickets."

He added: "I have spoken to the Charity Commissioners and to the chairman of the charity, who tells me they send about 12 children a year to Lourdes. That is good news indeed." Mr Prentice added: "The man running the charity doesn't have the organisation to do the tickets himself so he contracts with Capital Campaigns. They do all the leg work and take 80 per cent."

But Mr Judge denied Capital Campaigns was making money.

"Capital is basically four people who do this at the weekends," he said.

"There isn't thousands of pounds coming in. What you have to take into account is the cost of the prizes, printing and people's wages.

"It's a very low key operation. I've got other businesses and I don't run this on the basis of making a profit.

"There are well-known charities that only get about eight pence for every pound people give them because of administration costs."

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