National Lottery Bill

When I spoke on the earlier occasion that we met, I made the point that the literature relating to the Big Lottery Fund indicates that the Government want to build on the successes of the Community Fund and the New Opportunities Fund. But as we go on, it is clear that this is a reverse takeover and that they are really moving forward on the New Opportunities Fund. For example, there are no regional committees and so forth, which I spoke about on the last occasion. The Community Fund took account of that and the New Opportunities Fund complied. If the Minister has such tremendous confidence about the tight central control that the Big Lottery Fund is now being pushed into having, this ought not to be the way forward. It really ought to be able to have confidence in its own decision-making procedures and take account of what Ministers have to say from time to time, otherwise it becomes even more of a nationalised industry, which I fear is the way that it is going.