National Lottery Bill

I am grateful to Members of the Committee for their contribution to this debate. We have at least one other group of amendments—possibly two—in which additionality will be discussed at greater length. With great respect to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke—I do not blame him for getting his shot in nice and early—I am not too sure that the amendments relate directly to additionality, but I shall seek to cover the ground as best I can. I shall address how the Government define the amendments and try to persuade the noble Lords who tabled them not to press them. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, who referred to the light touch which the Government used towards prescription in allocation of funds. We intend to follow exactly that model, particularly as—and I emphasise this—we are discussing in this clause a very large fund where prescription would be more remote in any case because of the size of the issues involved. Clause 7 creates a new good cause for the Big Lottery Fund, replacing both the existing Community Fund and the New Opportunities Fund. That makes it a substantial fund. More than 50 per cent of the Big Lottery Fund’s expenditure on all good causes would be spent within this framework. We are talking about a very large section indeed. Should there not be some area of broad prescription, combined with the light touch which my noble friend identified as obtaining in the past, about an allocation of such substantial sums? Times have moved on since 1993. As the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said, the Big Lottery Fund creates a whole new dimension. Times have moved on also with regard to devolution. We need some area of prescription to deal with the implications of devolution. I intend to develop that argument in a moment. The intention behind the clause—and this is why I resist the amendments—is to make it easier to obtain grants for community purposes by creating a single pot with a single set of rules. That pot will be large and we want a single set of rules for it. We also want prescriptive powers which by definition will be of a general kind. The clause gives the Secretary of State power by order to limit spending in the good cause to certain ““prescribed expenditure””. Amendments Nos. 2 and 4 would take away this capacity for prescription. They would mean—I emphasise the point I was making a moment ago—that the Big Lottery Fund, having been given 50 per cent of all the lottery’s good cause money to spend on anything connected with health, education, the environment or anything charitable, would be able to make any of the decisions across this broad area without any further recourse to Parliament. That does not make sense. This matter was discussed intensively in another place. As the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, indicated, some of the issues were also raised on Second Reading in this House. However, the arguments have not changed, and I shall set them out again. The new good cause is both broad in scope and large in terms of the percentage of lottery money allocated to it. The other good causes—arts, sports and heritage—are relatively narrowly prescribed areas. Within these narrowly prescribed areas, the existing legislation already prescribes sums to be distributed by different distributors. This has the effect not only of limiting who can spend the money but also of restricting what it can be spent on. For example, prescribing the percentage of money to be distributed by the Film Council in effect prescribes the percentage of money from the arts good cause that must be spent on film. I give credit to the previous administration in developing the National Lottery etc. Act 1993, when the National Lottery was first established. In 1993, Parliament thought that such arrangements were necessary to ensure the effective distribution of lottery money—namely, prescription over really quite narrow areas. The powers that we are proposing in this Bill are not so different in effect, and we believe that they are as necessary now as they were in 1993. I am proud of the fact that new large spending areas of health, education and the environment which this Government created in the 1998 Act are popular with the public and have given the good causes much broader appeal than they enjoyed before. The new Big Lottery Fund good cause brings together these important areas with that of charitable expenditure distributed by the Community Fund, allowing an enormous range of projects to be encompassed. This is a good thing and one of the reasons why we wanted to bring the Community Fund and the New Opportunities Fund together. But it would not be sensible to allocate half of all lottery money to such a broad good cause without any further instruction whatever, particularly when the other half of the money is subject to quite clear and relatively detailed prescription, as established by the original legislation in 1993—legislation that has served us well in those areas. That is why we need to set out, at the very highest level, the types of expenditure in broad terms that the Big Lottery Fund should focus on. It is absolutely right that this should be done in a transparent and accountable way, and that there should be proper parliamentary scrutiny. That is why we are very clear this should be done by secondary legislation and subject to the affirmative resolution procedure. Parliament will debate those broad prescriptive powers and the decisions taken under them. Of course, it is always difficult to agree to delegated powers, particularly when they will be exercised with no great degree of certainty. That is why we have made available an illustrative order, demonstrating how the power in Clause 7 will be used in practice. We intend to use the power to prescribe the three high-level themes of promoting community learning; promoting community safety and cohesion; and promoting physical and mental well-being. Those concepts are broad; they are not narrow prescriptions on how money should be spent; they are broader, even, than the terms that my noble friend Lady Pitkeathley used in describing the work she has done. The Big Lottery Fund has consulted widely on these three themes, and a majority of respondents agree that they provide an appropriate and flexible strategic framework for future funding. We are talking about broad strategy, not detailed prescription. We also plan to prescribe expenditure on small grants—the popular Awards for All scheme—and on transformational grants. We shall use the order-making power to prescribe devolved expenditure. That will be the responsibility of new country committees, subject to directions issued by the relevant devolved administration. The whole Chamber will recognise the necessity for that within the framework of the devolved administrations and their development. The Bill represents a significant devolution of power to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the ability to prescribe devolved expenditure is central to achieving this. Without the power to prescribe expenditure set out in Clause 7, I do not see how the devolution arrangements in the Bill will work. I hope that it will be recognised that our two cardinal arguments require us to have some element of broad prescription. This is a very big fund, concerned with 50 per cent of the money to be spent on good causes. The other 50 per cent is subject to a quite narrow definition of the categories. We are not prescribing in detail with regard to this, but dealing with the broadest strategic categories on what prescription should be made. The second necessity for the powers in this clause revolves around the obvious fact that we need some framework for the devolved administrations. That is why I hope the noble Viscount will feel convinced that he can safely withdraw his amendment.