National Lottery Bill

My Lords, on these Benches, we strongly support both Amendment No. 2 and Amendment No. 4. Perhaps it is worth while expanding on the principles that we believe should apply to the Bill. In essence, we agree with the National Council for Voluntary Organisations about the underpinning principles for the National Lottery and the funding to the distributing bodies. First, the lottery should be independent from government but accountable to Parliament. Lottery distributors should have the freedom and independence to take final decisions on both funding and specific priorities, after consultation. That is what these two amendments are about. Secondly, lottery funding should be additional. We debated that at length on Second Reading, and I have no doubt that we will debate it further in Committee. Lottery funding should be additional to what should be properly funded from general taxation and not a substitute for it. It should not be used to fund essential services or government-inspired programmes. Thirdly, we very much agree with the principle of sustainability. Lottery distributors should support the development of a sustainable funding environment for the voluntary sector. In particular, lottery grants should cover the full cost of the activity being funded. Our general approach has been to try to imbue the Bill with those principles. The approach taken by my honourable friends in the other place was strongly aligned to that. We could have argued in the other place for a totally different structure and a totally independent lottery foundation instead of the structure that we find in the Bill. Certainly, that would have many attractions and would get round some of the problems of additionality and some of the issues of independence from government. We could have argued for a return to the pre-New Opportunities Fund situation, and I believe that an amendment is coming down the track on that. We chose not to do that. Nor did we argue, as we could have done, for the status quo, with the current proportion of the lottery fund taken by the New Opportunities Fund. We took the view that it was the responsible thing to do to accept the reality that the Big Lottery Fund was set up in 2004. We are effectively dealing with a fait accompli, difficult though that may be to accept when a Bill is passing through this House at such a late stage in proceedings. We therefore took the view that we would be constructive within the general framework of the Bill and that we would try to follow the principles that I have outlined. We agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, that the Bill constitutes an unprecedented and unacceptable level of government control over lottery funding. It allows the Secretary of State to prescribe amounts, purposes and periods of lottery funding. These powers undermine the independence, and indeed the perceived independence, of the new lottery distributor, and compound existing concerns about the relationship between lottery funding and political priorities, which are at the root of many of the amendments tabled. We believe that the amendments will significantly reduce levels of government control over lottery funding and provide significant reassurance for the voluntary and community sector, which is very much needed.