National Lottery Bill

I shall amplify what has already been said; I hope not to cover the same ground. Clause 19 is all right, provided that we remember one or two things, the first of which is that it was probably unnecessary. I suspect that the lawyers danced on the head of a pin and kept telling the management and boards of the two lottery funds that there were problems with the drafting of the original Bill. However, when I have asked what the problems were and requested one or two examples, none has been provided. Lawyers are extremely good at telling you what you cannot do. My own approach in years past has been to say to them, ““Well, I dare say the Bill doesn’t allow me to do that, but who will object and what will their objection be?”” You cannot think what objection there would be because what you propose to do is undoubtedly a good thing. That was in the days of the Commonwealth Development Corporation, which, in the early 1990s, still existed by virtue of a Bill drafted in 1948. Life was different then; for example, they said, ““We are not sure that you can do mobile telephones””. Well, we did it and nobody objected. I have a feeling that something here has been built up into much more than it really is. We should remember that. Secondly, as I mentioned, you cannot live on purposes alone; you need institutions as well. ““Purposes”” is abstract; institutions are accountable. I am sure that the Big Lottery Fund will look very carefully at the institutional arrangements of the body to which it will make grants and then monitor and evaluate the results of that grant, not in terms of a purpose, but of the performance of the grant recipient. Clause 19 does not make a lot of difference and, therefore, one should not go on about it for too long, but it leaves us with things that we need to remember.