National Lottery Bill

moved Amendment No. 23:"Page 8, line 30, leave out from beginning to end of line 5 on page 9." The noble Viscount said: Amendment No. 23 is concerned with co-funding. I recognise that it removes a large block of the Bill, but its purpose is to initiate a debate on the difference between co-funding and joint funding. I should say from the start that we support joint funding—we always have—where the lottery matches funds that have been raised by outside fundraising or by people who have contributed to an organisation or a project or who are receiving money from other sources. That is good. The lottery has been most successful when it has enforced joint funding for possible recipients. It gives credibility to a project, which is a good thing. That is not, however, the same as co-funding. This is where we have a concern. By co-funding, I mean that those with funding—whether it is the Government, which I suspect it largely would be, or anyone else—channel that funding through the Big Lottery Fund. The effect is a loss of transparency and accountability, which concerns us, because, as we all heard at earlier stages of the Bill and as the Minister admitted on Second Reading, a government department once made an announcement about a great project that was financed largely by the lottery and tried to claim it as theirs. We do not want any more erosion of the principle of additionality whereby a government department co-funds a small portion of the funding, the Big Lottery Fund co-funds a large portion of the funding, we never know who has done what and everyone tries to claim the project as theirs. These are our concerns, which the Minister may be able to address by giving us some reassurance. I recognise that my amendment is a catch-all amendment and may have implications that I have not thought of, but it is a probing amendment designed to get at what the Government think so that they can be clear about our concerns on the difference between co-funding and joint funding. This is important. We think that what is and is not funded by the lottery should be absolutely clear. We are all for joint funding, which is important. I beg to move.