National Lottery Bill

moved Amendment No. 4:"Page 6, leave out lines 6 to 8." The noble Viscount said: My Lords, this simple amendment prevents money in outstanding balances from being used by being moved from one distributor to another. As the Minister said, this is a reserved power, only to be deployed in extreme situations. The Government always want these powers just in case, but we believe that if that happened the whole distributing mechanism of the lottery would be in such chaos that the Government would have to come back to Parliament, and it is right that they should do so rather than give themselves this power. A secondary concern—the Minister may be able to help the House on this—is that the Government set up funding for the Olympics from the distribution fund and we are always concerned that they will get their sums wrong or there will be overspending on the Olympics, which would be a way of the Secretary of State topping up the Olympic lottery fund. It would be helpful if the Minister could say that there is no chance of that happening by a redistribution of balances. I beg to move.