IT'S an appalling and wholly unacceptable situation that thousands of people are buying Instants scratchcards where there is no chance of their winning big cash prizes.

National Lottery operator Camelot, which runs the cards, has conceded that shops and Post Offices were continuing to sell them a day or even two days after the top prize had been claimed, because they were unaware there was already a winner.

Camelot has conceded that most of the 30,000 outlets selling the cards, did not know the top prize had been won until at least 24 hours and sometimes 48 hours afterwards.

Something must be done, and quickly, about that time lag. Camelot is making enough profits from the National Lottery to spend some of them on devising a method of stopping the sales of scratchcards immediately there is a claim for the big prize.

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