The UK’s National Lottery operator, Camelot, has been fined £300,000 by the Gambling Commission for placing public confidence at risk.

It follows the publication of inaccurate Lotto Millionaire Raffle results on the National Lottery website for an hour and over 100,000 people viewing the results. The incident took place on October 10, 2015.

The error, says the Commission, breached the terms of Camelot operating licence in two ways: processing and procedures were not fit for purpose and players were misled.

Daniel Dyball, head of policy and regulatory affairs at Camelot, said: “We absolutely accept that we made a mistake in each of the cases and are very sorry that they happened. We therefore accept that licence breaches occurred and, in the one case in which a financial penalty was imposed, have paid it.

"Public confidence in The National Lottery is of paramount importance and we believe our outstanding operational record over the last 22 years underlines how seriously we take our responsibilities to players.

"The incidents, which took place back in 2015 and were caused by human error, were quickly identified and promptly fixed. We also took immediate action to communicate the correct results and to strengthen our internal processes to minimise the chances of these specific issues happening again.

"Returns to National Lottery Good Causes were not adversely affected by any of the incidents and Camelot did not benefit financially as a result of the errors.”