A group which helps asylum seekers fight deportation must be investigated to ensure lottery players their money is being well spent, the culture secretary has said.

Tessa Jowell, with Home Secretary David Blunkett, has asked for a �340,000 grant for the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns (NCADC) to be reviewed.

It was a very high-handed and very knee-jerk reaction

Lisa Schuster NCADC

The asylum aid group has branded the intervention "high handed" and says its work would not be needed if the government gave asylum seekers a fair hearing in the first place.

The Community Fund, which made the Lotto award, says it will now run more checks into the organisation - a decision welcomed by Ms Jowell.

Political work?

The NCADC backed a family of Afghan asylum seekers who were controversially arrested in a police raid on a West Midlands mosque last month.

The Home Office and the Culture Department are worried the group may be encouraging people to break the law in campaigning against deportations.

Jowell says the group must answer important questions

They also question whether the group is involved in "political" activity - something outlawed in Lotto rules.

Such claims are rejected by the group and the Community Fund says it has seen nothing to suggest any illegal activity.

Ms Jowell told BBC Radio 4's World At One: "My interest here is to maintain confidence in the lottery so that people can believe that the 28p from every pound spent on a lottery ticket for good causes is well spent."

The minister said the Community Fund would have the final say on the grant.

Fairness complaints

The Home Office's public intervention over the grant has faced criticism in some quarters.

But Ms Jowell pointed to the �129m the Home Office gave every year to organisations helping asylum seekers try to avoid deportation.

Earlier, NCADC's Lisa Schuster was fiercely critical of the government's response to news of the grant.

"It was a very high-handed and very knee-jerk reaction," said Ms Schuster.

"The people who we try to advise and support are people who are very vulnerable and very marginalised, who frequently do not have access to good advice.

"If the Home Office was making good, fair, just decisions in the first place, there would not be a need for an organisation like ours."

The Community Fund has given money to the group before and is asking the Home Office to outline its concerns.

'No need for panic'

Officials from the two government departments are due to meet Community Fund officers later this week.

The Community Fund's Gerald Oppenheim told the World At One that the NCADC should expect to account for what it was doing.

But there was no need for the organisation to "panic", said Mr Oppenheim.

Liberal Democrat peer Lord Dholakia said he was "shocked and disappointed" by the government's intervention in the Lottery award.

"What they are doing is providing a service which may be to an extent political but in a sense that it does not agree with the decisions the government takes," Lord Dholakia told Today.