National Lottery Bill

The noble Lord, Lord Shutt of Greetland, asked whether we could find another way of doing this, and doubted whether the clause would work. I shall journey along these lines in support of my noble friend Lord Astor. In this case, I suppose that we are not talking about match funding, as I think he indicated, because the Big Lottery Fund can give a 100 per cent grant and is not required to find the match funding. Reference was also made to expertise in granting funds. Many other institutions do, of course, have great experience of funding, so in leading up to the Minister’s response to this Section 36C discussion, I shall try not to go over any more ground that has already been covered. Briefly, the purpose of my amendment is to follow the guidance in the Explanatory Notes that non-lottery funds will be funds from government departments or charitable foundations that wish to make use of the Big Lottery Fund’s infrastructure. My amendment seeks to eliminate the statutory bodies and the private sector, which would, I suppose, also eliminate funds from government departments so that we could focus in Committee on grant-making trusts and the voluntary and community sector. I believe that the definition of the voluntary and community sector, on which the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is working with the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, will turn out to be coterminous with the Treasury’s third sector. Indeed, the NCVO’s summary that,"““all activity operating in the space between the state and the market””," may do what needs to be done to stop us agonising over this. Perhaps the Minister will remove any last doubt. His recent letters nearly did the trick. In his letters of 6 and 15 March, he urged us to think about purposes as well as, or was it meant to be instead of, organisations or institutions. The issue here is that purposes and organisations are not alternatives. Purposes provide us with purpose and good cause; organisations—institutions—provide us with cheque signatories and accountability. We need both. Many grant-making charities, which I distinguish from delivering charities, are organisations with a distinguished history. Nearly all grant-making charities make grants for health, education and the environment that amount to somewhere between £2 billion and £3 billion a year. What evidence do the Government have that these charities will be attracted to the Big Lottery Fund’s distribution infrastructure? Will the proposed new Section 36C help because, although it nods in the direction of limiting the fund’s freedom of action, it nowhere suggests partnership? The Big Lottery Fund will remain in control and the charities will pay their money into the fund, but in successful partnerships it is not always the same person who leads. Thus, what is proposed is not partnership. What confidence, therefore, can we have that proposed new Section 36C will achieve anything which will take proper account of additionality or of the massive experience gained by charitable trusts over many years? Most probably, the Minister will give me a lesson in accountability for public money and I could reply with accountability of trustees under charity law, which will get us nowhere. Yet we have PFI schemes, we have academies and the Government support public/private partnerships in both health and education. I therefore urge the Minister to go back to the department and to the Big Lottery Fund, and to think through and bring forward amendments that would achieve a truly joint endeavour between the Big Lottery Fund and charitable trusts. I believe the lottery-playing public would welcome the introduction of a successful distribution infrastructure and the evaluation methodology of grant-giving charities into the affairs of the Big Lottery Fund. The suggested new Section 36C will not achieve this objective. It needs a fresh approach.