Blunkett accused of stirring up racism over lottery grant

David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, was accused yesterday of "stirring up" racism as lottery chiefs defended their award of £340,000 to a campaign group for asylum-seekers.

The Lottery Communities Fund was inundated with abusive phone calls following Home Office criticism of its award to the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns (NCADC). Mr Blunkett and Tessa Jowell, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, had called for further checks on the group amid claims that its website urged "organised resistance" to all deportations and detentions of illegal immigrants.

The fund said yesterday that it would look at the allegations but made clear that there was no evidencethat the group acted outside the law. It said it had received racist phone calls objecting to the award of any cash to refugees.

Gerald Oppenheim, policy director of the fund, said that the NCDAC was worthy of help. He said that the group's constitution had been checked when it first applied for grant aid in 1998 and it did not breach rules on political campaigning.

Mr Oppenheim said other claims that the group was encouraging illegal resistance to deportations were not proven.

Ms Jowell said the fund would normally give her advance notice of any grants it planned to make but she was unaware of the latest announcements because officials involved were on holiday.

"My interest, and David Blunkett's, is maintaining public confidence in the lottery, so people can believe that the 28p from every pound they spend on a lottery ticket that goes to good causes is well spent," she told BBC Radio 4's World at One programme.

The Home Office itself spent £129m a year through the Lord Chancellor's Department funding organisations that provide support and advice for asylum applicants whose appeals have been rejected, she said.

A spokesman for Mr Blunkett rejected suggestions that the Home Secretary had fuelled racism with his intervention. "Racism is fostered when immigration systems do not have the trust and confidence of the public.

"It is perfectly proper for the Home Secretary to raise this; we are talking about large sums of public money. When a group appears to refuse to accept the legal framework, as decided by Parliament, on deportation, we are entitled to ask for checks."

But Nick Harvey, Liberal Democrat spokesman on Culture, said the racist phone calls to the fund underlined the need for more sensitivity by Mr Blunkett. "Kowtowing to conservative opinion on asylum and immigration always runs the risk of stirring up this unsavoury element," he said.

A spokeswoman for the NCADC, which has already received £400,000 from the fund, called the Home Office's reaction "high-handed".

The organisation says it is bewildered by the investigation into its activities because it liaises on a weekly basis with the Home Office and has dealings with dozens of Labour MPs over constituents who face asylum.

The national co-ordinator of the NCADC, John O said yesterday that he and his colleagues refuse to discuss their political affiliation, but insisted that all decisions were made on a non-political basis.