National Lottery Bill

moved Amendment No. 2:"Page 5, line 13, leave out ““prescribed””" The noble Viscount said: The amendment relates to the Government’s powers in regard to the Big Lottery Fund. We are concerned about the word ““prescription””, which seems to add an extremely more powerful set of words than has ever before been connected with the distributing bodies. We think that the lottery distributors should be guaranteed a level of independence free from interference from the Government. One of the difficulties with the lottery is that we all have views about what organisations the various distributing bodies should or should not give to. One of the advantages of handing that responsibility to the distributing bodies is that we can all complain when they give to organisations that we do not like and we can all applaud when they do things that we do like. That is its nature and it is a good process. We are all bound to have a different view. However, I am concerned that now that we have the Big Lottery Fund, which will receive 50 per cent of the funding coming out of the National Lottery, its remit is getting very close to core government spending. After all, the Big Lottery Fund will have a remit for health and education, and in effect there will be increased government control over it. The Minister’s argument on Second Reading, and the argument that now faces us, is that this is a light-touch Government and that the power is a reserve one which we do not need to use. If that is the case, it seems to me that we should go back to the words that have served us well in the nearly 10 years that the distributing bodies have been in place—that they must ““take account”” of the Secretary of State. That seems much better, because it gives them that independence. I do not understand why the Government need the word ““prescribed””, which seems unnecessary and heavy-handed and raises all kinds of issues that will affect our debates as we progress through the Bill, for example on things such as additionality. If we are to be persuaded later on about things such as additionality, we will have to have a glimmer of understanding of why the Government want this power of prescription. As soon as they put it there, we think, ““This is a way, through the back door, of breaking the concept of additionality””. In practice, although the Government pay lip service to that concept, it is increasingly being broken, as we heard on Second Reading from the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and from the other place. We would like to see less of that, not more. I therefore think that Amendment No. 2, by deleting the word ““prescribed””, would be a welcome addition to the Bill. I beg to move.