National Lottery Bill

I cannot support the amendment, largely because of the enormous difficulty of defining additionality. There is a pretty misguided view about how decisions on lottery funding are taken, especially with regard to the Big Lottery Fund and certainly how they were taken in the New Opportunities Fund. The image is that the Government speak and make their view known and lottery boards roll over. It is not like that. In my experience—which, like that of the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, is extensive—all lottery boards agonise over their decisions. One of the things that they agonise about most is additionality. The whole issue is a moveable feast. With the greatest respect to the noble Viscount, it is easy to table an amendment that talks about things ““usually”” being provided ““by core government spending””, but defining what is usual or core is pretty difficult. The idea that lottery money will somehow enable government to renege on their existing commitments or ignore need is wrong. I shall cite a couple of examples. The New Opportunities Fund in its initial allocation spent more than £50 million setting up out-of-school-hours childcare. It was enormously successful, with breakfast clubs, after-school clubs and so on. Now we see that extended school hours are becoming the norm, and we shall soon see that funding as usual and core to government expenditure; but it was not usual and core when that project started. Another example for which NOF has been widely criticised is giving money to health authorities to buy linear accelerators and MRI scanners and equipment of that kind. Again, it was not as simple as that. The New Opportunities Fund, as other distributors, was charged to focus on disadvantaged individuals and communities. We tried to even up the balance of access to such equipment. Is a scanner bought by public fundraising in a wealthy area additional? That is how many of them are bought, as noble Lords know. Any such equipment was not going to be provided by public subscription in poor areas. The New Opportunities Fund evened up that balance a bit. Anywhere that there was a commitment to buy such equipment in the current or future plans of the local authority, no lottery funding was made available. Now that the equipment has been made available more evenly, the revenue costs fall on the NHS. Those examples—and I could give many others—show the need for extra, not less, core government funding. These are not easy decisions, but we should remember that lottery boards are made up of wise, experienced and independent people who struggle with these issues on our behalf. We have made great progress towards meeting the concerns. The Big Lottery Fund will be open about its decisions, and each distributor will report regularly to Parliament on additionality issues. They will report the kind of debates and agonising decisions which I have set before your Lordships this evening. We have gone as far as we can in the Bill in an area that calls for endless flexibility and continuous reassessment, rather than exact definitions.