National Lottery Bill

If the hon. Gentleman writes to me, I will take the matter up with the Big Lottery Fund. We will do anything that we can to streamline applications. That is covered on the website. Measures that the Big Lottery Fund has put in place should make it more sensitive at national, regional and sub-regional level to organisations such as the one that the hon. Gentleman described. The undertaking by the Big Lottery Fund that 60 to 70 per cent. of its funding will go to voluntary and community sector organisations is a commitment by the Big Lottery Fund alone and is not applicable more widely. We shall have a full discussion of that undertaking when we come to amendment No. 4. For now, I say again that the undertaking has been given by the boards of the Community Fund and the New Opportunities Fund, operating as the Big Lottery Fund, and not by the Government. We fully support the undertaking, but we do not need to repeat it or write it into the Bill. I want to make it clear that it does not apply to other distributing bodies. We do not support new clause 1 in the form in which it has been tabled, for the reasons that I have given, but we will have the co-operation of the chief executives of the other distributors, which will probably take the same position as the Big Lottery Fund. It will be possible to debate additionality in the House in an informed way, against the background of the annual report.