National Lottery Bill

The noble Lord, Lord Brooke, could have chosen a happier day than this to berate me for trying to play with a dead bat, given that that is exactly what the England cricket team could have done with in India over the past 24 hours. Far from playing with a dead bat, I am in the happy position of having, not a hostile ball bowled at me, but constructive suggestions from the Opposition on how we can improve the Bill. I am taking those on board as best I can with, now and again, the odd reservation about accepting the amendments. The Committee will recognise that, for example, I accepted the elements of the previous amendment in principle and am glad to say that we are acting in concord with it. I do not think that that is a dead-bat approach to opponents, but a constructive enterprise that we are all involved in together to improve the legislation and the working of the National Lottery in the United Kingdom. The noble Viscount, Lord Astor, with his characteristic modesty, said that he knew what Amendments Nos. 15 and 16 were about but that all the rest were incomprehensible. They are not incomprehensible; they all do the same thing. They seek to change the Big Lottery Fund to the Charitable Lottery Fund and then abolish the health, education and environment good causes. That is what all the amendments are for. The noble Viscount, quite rightly, concentrated on the desirability of that outcome. I will resist that, as he rightly predicted. I think he said he was about upsetting the applecart. I was trying to think of a circumstance in which it could ever be beneficial in any exercise at all to upset the annual apple cart. I cannot think of one, but on this occasion I will assume that the noble Viscount is indicating that he does not expect me to regard his amendment as wholly beneficial to the Bill, and, indeed, I do not. What is involved here and in broad principle is a wholly retrograde step of going back to 1998. I congratulate that administration, of which the noble Viscount was a distinguished feature. I respect that administration. It created the National Lottery. I am sure that the noble Lord will also recognise that we have done a great deal in this Government to re-energise the lottery and bring it closer to people. The noble Viscount should recognise that Parliament voted to add health, education and environment to the existing lottery good causes in 1998—a Parliament, I might say, which had substantial backing from the community. That reflected the fact that health, education and environment are as important to people’s lives as sport, heritage and the arts. We have public opinion behind us. When we asked in a MORI poll what the public wanted as the two or three most important things for the lottery to provide, they said health and education—69 per cent quoted health and 55 per cent quoted education. That will fit entirely with the experience of Members of the Committee when they talk to our fellow citizens about just how much they are rated by the public as goods that they hope will be delivered—knowing full well that there is always a limit on what resources can be made available through government and eager, as they have always been through charitable activities, for them to be advanced through other sources. After all, what is a feature of our health provision in this country and, to a lesser degree, our education provision, if it is not resources coming from bases other than government? Indeed, the good causes that we have promoted have produced some absolutely excellent projects. Across the UK, 350 centres have been funded enabling people to learn about healthy living and eating. More than 4,500 pieces of cancer-fighting and life-saving health equipment have been purchased which would otherwise have taken years of fundraising to secure and are additional to what, even in the greatly enhanced health provision under this Government, would have been provided under government resources. Also, 30,000 World War II veterans, widows or carers have visited battlefields where they or their loved ones saw action or fell. A network of computers has been created throughout all of our 4,000 public libraries. The Committee will recognise that those features are the product of the lottery. They would not have come from core government funding, however enterprising and benevolent the Government prove to be, as they do on most occasions. Those are just a few examples of the benefits of the lottery.