National Lottery Bill

Indeed, but I will have to do better in future, not least because the Royal Opera house and the Royal Albert hall are both in my constituency. As the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) and the Minister pointed out, the Bill’s passage has been long and drawn out. Second Reading took place as long ago as June, and the Committee stage meandered through October and November. As a conscientious Opposition, we have endeavoured to table reasonable amendments, and I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Windsor (Adam Afriyie), for Isle of Wight (Mr. Turner) and for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker) for their sterling efforts in Committee. While some progress has been made, we remain concerned about a number of provisions in the Bill that undermine the fundamental principles of the national lottery. We shall continue to oppose in the strongest terms the vastly increased Government control and direction over the distribution of lottery funds. It is unacceptable that money should be withheld from the original deserving causes to be channelled into areas for which state funding should be preserved. Furthermore, the lottery was set up to improve the daily quality of life for all people in Britain by earmarking funds for activities that might otherwise be neglected in the everyday distribution of tax receipts. In short, the flagrant breach of the additionality principle has fuelled the public’s faltering confidence in the lottery. Controversial awards are always meat and drink to an ever more voracious press, but a strict focus on directing lottery receipts to the arts, heritage, sport and charity would doubtless minimise such criticism. Additionality is a principle that has been widely recognised, and political concern about it took up a significant part of our debates both on Report and in Committee. There is no doubt in our mind that the Big Lottery Fund has been used and, we presume, will continue to be used to replace core Government expenditure. We therefore sought to introduce a new clause that would provide a double lock in an effort to apply the principle that lottery money should not be spent on the services and works that are usually provided by Government. That applies not only to the Secretary of State in her activities but to the distributing bodies in their strategic plans. The additionality principle is central to all that is best about the national lottery, and it is highly regrettable that the Government have sought to flout it. It was understood by Members on both sides of the House when the original lottery legislation proceeded through Parliament that Governments of whatever party should maintain an arm’s length relationship with lottery operations and, perhaps more important, all aspects of grant distribution. Since 1997, however, there has been a systematic and presumably focus group-led strategy to allocate lottery money to projects whose funding should be the responsibility of the Government. When the Millennium Commission was wound up in 2001, its one-fifth share of lottery funds was transferred to the New Opportunities Fund, thus accounting for one third of good causes money in health, education and the environment. Inevitably, the strain on the public purse has resulted at the very least in the emergence of a grey area, with health and education funding for projects divided between departmental budgets and New Opportunities Fund expenditure. Expenditure on healthy living centres and a programme to provide cancer equipment in England has taken up almost £400 million of lottery resources, which has been spent on projects that, arguably, should be regarded as mainstream NHS responsibilities. The same applies to the information and communications technology training for teachers and the school librarians initiative and the out-of-school-hours learning programme, which account for a similar aggregate sum in education. The Conservatives would like a more transparent system. The Big Lottery Fund has been charged over the past 18 months with the distribution of half the good causes money from the amalgamation of the New Opportunities Fund and the Community Fund. We believe that the latter should be restored, and that by scrapping the Big Lottery Fund we would save some £450 million, which would be released annually for charities, sport, arts and heritage. We appreciate the need for a special London Olympic lottery initiative before 2012, but otherwise we favour a system granting 25 per cent. of lottery funding to each of the four pillars of the lottery that I just mentioned. That would help restore confidence in a distribution process that has increasingly become discredited in the eyes of the general public. Indeed, the Conservatives estimate that the four original causes have missed out to the tune of £1.29 billion in the five years to 2004. We remain doubtful of the Government’s wisdom in inserting clause 19 to widen the definition of charitable expenditure. We hope that a full debate will take place on the matter before the Bill goes to another place. Where does the national lottery go from here? I have a small confession to make. I am one of the small minority of people who have never played the national lottery. [Hon. Members: ““Shame!””] That is not because of my technical inexpertise, but I have always regarded it with a somewhat puritanical eye.