National Lottery Bill

I declare an interest as the trustee of a number of UK charities operating outside the UK and as a former chair of Oxfam. I support what the noble Viscount, Lord Astor, said about the importance of additionality, and of transparency and accountability. However, I am afraid that I do not understand the reasoning behind this amendment. If the amendment had provided that the report should set out all awards made during the year for all projects, whether in the UK or outside, I might have supported it. But why limit it to ““projects outside the United Kingdom””? It is difficult not to draw an inference from this selective amendment, that projects outside the UK are prima facie suspect simply because they are overseas. Is the noble Viscount of the view that overseas development charities are less well managed than charities operating in the UK; and if so, on what evidence does he rely for this view? Over the past 25 years or so, I have had a considerable involvement with quite a range of charities, some operating in this country and others overseas, and have seen nothing to suggest that projects in the UK are better managed or better selected than those outside. The lottery’s international programme has built up an excellent reputation over the past 10 years for being an effective funding distributor. Examples are the grants to the charity Impact for a floating hospital in Bangladesh which has already helped to treat more than 115,000 patients. The same charity received funding for a large disability prevention programme, which has already cut maternal and child mortality by more than 28 per cent and 48 per cent respectively in the areas where it has been piloted. Grants to Oxfam have helped improve education for 10,000 children in Zambia and in the arid north east of Brazil will, among other benefits, provide 4,500 water tanks. From previous correspondence with BOND, the consortium representing 285 development charities in this country, it appeared that the noble Viscount was concerned about some of the grants that had been made overseas and of which apparently the Daily Mail and a number of other sections of the media had been very critical. Perhaps he has dropped those particular concerns at this stage. As the noble Viscount now nods that he has not, let me touch on them. Some of the grants made have excited the interest of xenophobic subsections of the British press. This is an indictment of the press concerned, rather than the lottery fund or the overseas charities. An example of this unfortunate tendency is the criticism of a grant of £295,000, which was a well-designed development project aimed at promoting secure livelihoods in Peru. A small part of the project, amounting to less than £2,000, concerned the breeding of guinea pigs, which are a staple food in the region and was the basis of much unfounded alarm by the Daily Mail about the entire project. It would be sad if the lottery fund were to be intimidated in its grant-giving by the fear that parts of the media might launch misguided campaigns criticising its carefully considered decisions. The noble Viscount asked questions about the programme and the moneys allocated by the Big Lottery Fund in relation to international grants. Its position is made perfectly clear in the briefing that it has produced for this Committee, where it is set out clearly why it wished to support international projects. It undertook public consultation in June 2004, showing a sizeable majority of at least 75 per cent of the public in favour of supporting international programmes. This support and the concern of the public for the developing world is also shown by the Charities Aid Foundation’s latest statistics that overseas causes are in the top three of causes supported by voluntary donations over the past two years, amounting in all to about 13 per cent of individual giving. Taking the lower figure of 13 per cent and relating it to the £600 million to be spent annually by the Big Lottery Fund on the voluntary and community sectors, it would seem that the allocation to international grants should be in the order of £78 million each year, rather than the £24 million a year over three years as is presently planned. In practice, therefore, the fund will be spending a little less than one-third of the amount that the public could reasonably expect to be spent on projects outside the UK. I think that the noble Viscount asked the Minister about the proposed expenditure on the international programme. Certainly it is clear from the press release put out by the Big Lottery Fund’s board that over the next three years it is intending to spend £60,000 on development and similar projects overseas and £12 million on tsunami-type projects. Will the Government use the powers that they have to instruct the fund’s board to increase its allocation to overseas development charities to an amount proportionate to the support that the public gives to such causes? I suggest that that would be fair and equitable. Finally, I was pleased to note that the noble Viscount said that his party supported overseas projects. If the problem is that he cannot find out exactly what overseas projects are supported by the Big Lottery Fund from the information given, it seems to me that all that is required is for the fund to be more careful in producing its reports. Certainly there can be no basis whatever for requiring a report to be produced for every single overseas project, when there is no such requirement for projects which take place in the United Kingdom.