National Lottery Bill

I am not altogether sure that that case is established. In this day and age, even if the lottery had not been developed and we had been allocating resources through the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to libraries, there is no doubt that there would have been a shift in the priority of library acquisition. Whereas the noble Lord and I have an affinity for books, which may be an important part of the information, entertainment and joy that we receive, there is a generation that gets at least as sound information and an enormous amount of pleasure through communication other than books, which they expect—and have the right to expect—libraries to provide. So that is not an entirely fair criticism. We have the right to defend the benefits that the health, education and environment good causes have provided. That concept is here to stay. There is no doubt that that is what the public expects to be delivered. Accordingly, I accept what the noble Lord says about the virtues of specific percentages, to return to the categories that he identified, but we cannot keep things forever as they were in 1998, still less in 1993. The lottery cannot stand still. There are new expectations, new profiles of public demand and new pressures on us. Although the noble Lord wants to take a two-decade step backwards, I am more interested in taking a step forward into the next decade. Within the framework of the good causes, that is exactly what we are doing. I am fulfilling what the noble Lord predicted: I resist the amendment not on detail but on principle. I have one word to say to the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles; I hear what he says about the effect on charities of the development of good causes, but it is somewhat surprising that he can state so assertively that charities dislike having to work under this new framework. I have no evidence of that. He is right that the Wellcome Foundation is by far our most significant allocator of resources in the private sector, but I have no evidence that it finds the present developments inimical to its purpose and is unwilling to work alongside the lottery distributors. I may be singularly ill informed, but it would be surprising if a body as significant as the Wellcome Foundation had not been in contact with my department, which is concerned with these issues, saying, ““Up with this we will not put””, or that it was extremely uncomfortable in various areas because of what is being done under the Big Lottery Fund. All I can say is that I have no evidence of that and, until I get those representations, I prefer to rest on the assumption that the Wellcome Foundation and other charities are working congruently with what we are providing elsewhere so that they may fulfil their purposes, and that this is all to the benefit of the community we serve.