National Lottery Bill

moved Amendment No. 1:"Page 5, line 13, leave out ““prescribed””" The noble Viscount said: My Lords, in moving Amendment No. 1, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 3 and 14. The main aim of these amendments is to ensure that the Big Lottery Fund is officially established on the same footing as the other distributing bodies with the same amount of prescription by the Secretary of State. Amendment No. 1 removes the description of Big Lottery Fund expenditure as ““prescribed””. Amendment No. 3 takes out Clause 7(3), which describes what prescribed expenditure is. That subsection states that,"““‘prescribed expenditure’ means expenditure of a description prescribed by order of the Secretary of State””," which means that the whole of the 50 per cent of lottery distribution going to the Big Lottery Fund should be prescribed by the Secretary of State. That subsection also allows for the prescription of devolved expenditure. Amendment No. 14 attempts to establish the Big Lottery Fund on the same footing as other distributors. We debated these issues in Committee and at Second Reading. As your Lordships will remember, the original lottery distributing bodies were set up to comply with directions on matters to be taken account of when distributing lottery funds. The funds had to comply with directions relating to their management in terms of accounting, the delegation of powers, and so on. That was also how the Community Fund was set up by the Government when they changed from four original good causes, and how the Millennium Fund, which has come to an end, was set up. But when the New Opportunities Fund was set up by the Government, there was a greatly increased level of prescription. The New Opportunities Fund had to comply with directions from the Secretary of State on all matters including the distribution of grants. We always felt that it was entirely reasonable that the Secretary of State could tell distributing bodies what to consider when awarding grants, and intervene directly to correct mismanagement or unacceptable accounting practices. That was part of the original Act when it went through this House creating the National Lottery. The Government gave themselves a lot more powers over the New Opportunities Fund, however. The Minister has said on a number of occasions that they are backstop powers that will not be used, but when we make other suggestions, he says that there must be entire flexibility in these matters. Unfortunately, the Government cannot have it all ways on the Bill at the same time. The logic of their arguments does not stand up to scrutiny. It worries us because we know that when they originally looked at introducing the Bill, the Government planned to create one distributing body—a vast Big Lottery Fund, which would distribute all the lottery money. Luckily, that plan has been shelved, but it may have been shelved only for the moment—who knows? The Government have, as we have heard before, broken their own rules on additionality. Indeed, almost everyone involved in the lottery has admitted that that has happened—the only people who have not admitted it are the Government, but it is clear that it has happened. We know that from a recent reply to a Written Question from my noble friend Lord Howe about how money was awarded for projects affecting the health service. Until quite recently, the DCMS website used to highlight that the Government were investing £2 billion of public and National Lottery money in sport by 2006. That has now been changed. It now says that £3 billion is being invested in sport by 2006, coming from both the Government and the National Lottery. That is an improvement. The Government have given themselves much greater powers over the distributing body. They cannot argue that they need those powers over one distributing body rather than over the other two. The argument that they need it because it is bigger is not good enough. We ought to be talking in this Bill about principles. The principle should be that National Lottery expenditure should be additional. The Government should not be involved. We all know that there are problems when the Government are not involved—that there are National Lottery projects that are turned down that we would individually like to support, and that some go through that we find somewhat objectionable. That is the nature of the system and we have to accept that that will always happen. At the same time, some projects are more successful than others. However, if we are to create an independent body which is independent of government, we will have to accept those aspects as being part and parcel of the process. I am afraid that the Government do not have a good record. They have interfered. They have encouraged the use of National Lottery money in ways that are clearly not additional. We find that there is no good excuse for the Government giving themselves these powers, which are over and above what was ever considered when the original National Lottery was established. They are powers that are greater than for the other distributing bodies. They are not necessary and it is not good enough for the Government to say that they are a backstop and a reserve. If the Government really felt that 50 per cent of the lottery funds in this country were being misspent, they ought to come back to Parliament with a new lottery Bill. That is why my amendments are necessary. I beg to move.