National Lottery Bill

It might be for the convenience of the Committee if we completed the discussion on directions. Amendments Nos. 28 and 29 are grouped together and I was going to ask the Committee’s permission to treat them separately because Amendment No. 28 is so different from Amendment No. 29 that they do not really fit very accurately into a group. In Amendment No. 29 I am seeking to leave out part of the provision about which my noble friend Lord Astor spoke. In Amendment No. 28, I am talking about publicising and it would not for my purposes matter what was in the provision. Whatever is left in the provision, it needs publicising, so it is rather a different point. The second way of going about Section 36E is to leave out subsection (2). The principal concern is the progression, which has been outlined by my noble friend, of directions from the small beginnings of 1993 to the present 37 pages of Big Lottery Fund directions with 160 significant headings and the prescriptive detail which follows each heading. It is the Minister’s expressed intention that the Secretary of State changes to a light-touch regime. He has given us that assurance. There are five pages in the circulated illustrative directions document with three themes and four outcomes. The themes are ““community learning””, ““community safety and cohesion”” and ““physical and mental well-being””, all of which are well represented on the face of the Bill. These and the four outcomes with their abstract nouns rather than the present programmed sums of money and the prescriptive detail which follows seem to show that directions have run their course. Indeed, earlier on this evening we were told about the intention behind orders in respect of maximum and minimum expenditure sums. However, surely the board will not need any more directions. Like squirrels, the members will be able to unearth as much as they will need for years to come from the 37 pages. Those 37 pages arrived after the small beginnings of 1993 with Section 26 using ““to take account of”” and gathered speed in Section 43 of the 1998 Act, which used ““must comply”” and the question is, what now? We have the same words and an equivalent very widely drawn power. That is against the background that it is Parliament’s understanding that directions are for administrative reasons not policy matters—as indeed they are in Section 36E (3), (4) and (5). What happened between 1998 and today seems to be that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport constructed a new directions doctrine not used elsewhere in government. Is that what the Government have recognised with their proposed light touch? The question remains about what this history has done to Big’s independence and what will happen to its independence in the future. It is clear that the board of Big—a shadowy presence in our debates—does not have a significant degree of independence today. Why is that? We have been told that the board has agreed and agrees to everything—not the usual position of independent boards. How many times has the board disputed draft directions? What has the discussion been about? Did all the members quietly agree to the administrative merger of the three funds? Why indeed has Big’s board agreed to so low a percentage as 60 per cent to 70 per cent to go to the voluntary and community sector when it did not have a published definition of that sector? Why not 80 per cent to 90 per cent? The Minister asserts that 60 per cent to 70 per cent is as much or more than before, but as I know from Written Questions and Answers, he does not have accurate figures—nor, in the case of Big’s grants to registered charities, any figures—to back up his assurances. These questions and their answers, none of them exceptionally contentious, are the stuff of independence. We will most probably be told that all is well and that there is no need for vigorous debate, nor any place for difference of opinion. So much for openness. Behind such an assurance lies the likelihood of a cosy dialogue between DCMS officials and Big’s management, who deal with all these matters. Big’s board members will remember that they must comply, which means that the Secretary of State will get her way, as she always has. Parliament will not know until long afterwards; meanwhile, debate can be diverted into additionality—a classic red herring. Nothing that I have seen or heard leads me to believe that Big’s board has, nor has it shown, any degree of independence; nor will the new Section 36E(2) help it to re-emerge. The Secretary of State has gone way beyond the original will of Parliament and has trained Big into compliance. The clause should be left out and directions should revert to administrative matters.