National Lottery Bill

The Minister is full of eminently reasonable arguments about what the Government are and are not going to do. There is only one problem about his eminently reasonable arguments, which is that we all know that commitments given during the passage of the Bill are often ignored when it is enacted. There may be a change of Minister and no one bothers to read what was said or it is totally ignored. We find that what was in one debate a reserve power suddenly turns into a major policy change by another Minister in the same Government. I say that, knowing full well that the Minister could turn round and say: ““That happened when the Conservative government were in power””. It did. It happens under all governments. That is the nature of the process, I have to say. The Minister reassured me to some degree on my second amendment, Amendment No.  9. I understood what he said and I am grateful for his response. However, he did not reassure me at all on Amendment No. 6. Let me take him back a bit. In 1997–98, the balances were touching £4 billion and the Secretary of State at that time called in the lottery operators—quite rightly, in my view—and said that the balances should come down. The Minister, Mr Caborn, said in another place:"““Just under £4 billion was being held in the balances, and that has been brought down to just a little more than £2 billion””.—[Official Report, Commons Standing Committee A; 27/10/05; col. 140.]" That is £2 billion that has gone out. I know that governments can spend one or two billion pounds pretty quickly when they want to, but lottery distributors find it quite difficult to give away such large sums of money while maintaining the integrity of how they give it away and of the causes and projects that they give it to. They have done a remarkable job in bringing down those balances. There is no indication that they will not carry on doing so. The reserve power is unnecessary. If the Government find that any of the distributing bodies is not bringing down those balances fast enough in future, there are plenty of other ways of enforcing that. I am not convinced by the Minister’s argument. I shall not divide the Committee at the moment, because I want to listen with care to the arguments on the next group of amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, which relate to the same issue, but we shall certainly return to the issue at Report. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.