National Lottery Bill

Again, if my hon. Friend will allow me to progress through the speech, I shall try to answer the question. There is no perfect solution. There will always be imbalances when deciding whether to base distribution on those who pay into the lottery or deprivation factors. However, we have tried to balance that. Let us consider the Big Lottery Fund. In consultation, there was considerable support for bringing the Community Fund and New Opportunities Fund together. It made no sense in our view to run two separate bodies with such similar remits. Conversely, it makes sense for the Millennium Commission’s residual functions, including any remaining balances of funds, to be transferred to the new lottery distributor. One body, one board, one set of overheads instead of three will mean more money for grants and cut costs and bureaucracy. The new body, the Big Lottery Fund, is at the heart of the important progressive reform that I am presenting to the House. The fund will also be the centre of lottery excellence, for example, in improving the assessment of capital projects for viability and developing cutting-edge ways of involving the public in decisions about grants and programmes. Although the Department has not conducted any polling, we know that polls have shown evidence that the public regard health, education and the environment as important good causes. Let me consider the balances. Careful preparatory work and consultation lies behind the provisions that we are introducing to ensure that money gets to the good causes more quickly. The size of the balances that distributors build up has always been a matter of concern in the House and, indeed, outside. We have already made much progress on that. We have developed guidance on managing the balances and we have simplified the financial framework in which they operate. More recently, the National Audit Office recommended more that the Department and distributors could do and we are following that advice vigorously. All that has helped to get money out more quickly to where it is needed and to reduce the balances by no less than one third.