National Lottery Bill

I support the probing amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Astor. I shall make one historical observation about the creation of the lottery and the resources of the National Heritage Memorial Fund as a distributor for the heritage. There were those who felt that, particularly given the amount of money going to the memorial fund, it was to an extent a retrograde step. They were disappointed that the Heritage Lottery Fund would have to make decisions not only about general distribution, but also how its own resources within the National Heritage Memorial Fund should be allocated—particularly because under the old dispensation, before responsibility for the built environment passed from the Department of the Environment to the then Department of National Heritage and now the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, there was always the odd £1 million or even the odd £10 million lying around in the Department of the Environment’s coffers as 31 March or 4 April approached. As a result, there was the potential for a bonus for the heritage from those coffers because it was a cause no one could disagree with. The department therefore became a sump for these remaindered extras. In the aftermath of 1992–93, after the lottery Bill was passed, there was concern that the National Heritage Memorial Fund’s budgetary allocation actually fell. I am conscious that that occurred in the early stages under a Conservative administration. I can see the Treasury’s argument that it had this enormous amount of money to distribute qua the lottery because it was a body that had a locus in all four parts of the kingdom. Yet the money which was very specifically its own was going down and was pruned because, as I say, it had access itself to the new lottery money for distribution . The National Heritage Memorial Fund was a particular resource for the crises that periodically occur in national acquisitions. There has been continuing controversy in the years since about how much money the National Heritage Memorial Fund qua itself has received from the public coffers. I strongly support my noble friend’s amendment.