National Lottery Bill

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that there was more to the preface. I was hoping that in the spirit of comradely friendship I would not be tempted into commenting on that aspect of Sir John Major’s remarks, but now that the hon. Gentleman has provoked me I should, in fairness to the House, point out that the Conservatives’ view of the issue of additionality is somewhat ambiguous. The hon. Gentleman raises the issue of sport, so I must now point out that that ambiguity was demonstrated in their manifesto at the last election, when their much heralded Club2School sport scheme was to have been funded by the national lottery. I have pointed that out to the Conservatives before and they have said, ““Oh no, we got it wrong, we won’t ever do it again.”” However, their new leader was at it again more recently, on 5 January. He was asked who would fund his idea for a new school leaver programme policy, and he replied:"““Well, we want to look at that, there is the National Lottery, there are all sorts of programmes we can access.””" I accept that he did not say that funding would come from the national lottery, but clearly it was a possible source.