Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 60: 60: Clause 15, page 8, line 7, at end insert— ““( ) Any grant or loan made under subsection (1) must not— (a) replace or substitute for government or local authority expenditure; (b) subsidise or provide part of the costs for a service that is provided on a contract basis for a statutory body; (c) replace statutory funding that has been withdrawn or is in danger of being withdrawn; or (d) duplicate services that a statutory body currently provides.”” The noble Lord said: This amendment will not come as much of a surprise to any of your Lordships—certainly not those who have ever had anything to do with the DCMS or lottery matters. It has always been of great concern to us on these Benches that lottery money should not be used to top up government spending. We have repeatedly raised concerns about the appropriateness of spending what is not taxpayers’ money on government responsibilities. Her Majesty's Government frequently sympathise with that, stating that there is no intention of appropriating non-taxpayer funds for government purposes. Tony Blair stated in 1997 that: "““We don’t believe it would be right to use lottery money to pay for things which are the Government’s responsibilities””." Yet it was the Government who insisted that the Big Lottery Fund should give grants to projects providing health and education, and to those connected with the environment, and should spend 50 per cent of the total lottery distribution fund in so doing. I am sure that these areas are the Government’s responsibility. If the Minister wishes to deny that it is the responsibility of government to improve the standards of state schools and hospitals, I am sure that we would all be very interested to hear it. The money, the distribution of which we are discussing today, is not taxpayers’ money, and the principle of additionality is as relevant as if it were lottery money. Already we are seeing that Her Majesty’s Government are attempting to divert this money into projects that are essentially the responsibility of government. In his evidence to the Treasury Select Committee, the Economic Secretary claimed that youth services have been underfunded for years. I do not have the knowledge to pass an opinion on whether there is adequate funding for youth services. That decision should rightfully be made by the appropriate Minister with all the information and resources at his disposal. What should be explored is how the Minister reconciles the Government’s previous statements that they fully concur with our concerns about additionality with instructions in the Bill to direct money to youth. It seems very much as though the Government have identified an area in which they have failed and are now mustering resources from everywhere they can think of—even those that should not rightfully be theirs to direct. Can the Minister explain exactly how dormant account money will be spent differently from money spent by the Department for Children, Schools and Families? What sort of projects does he envisage being paid for by Her Majesty’s Government, and what will be paid for by the nominally independent Big Lottery Fund? Any breach of the additionality principle will no doubt extend to the matter of financial education. How does the Minister intend that dormant account money will be spent so that it does not duplicate the attempts of other departments? The difficulties in this area that the Bill will create have already been noted by the Treasury Select Committee. In paragraph 71 of the 11th report of the 2006-07 Session, it points out the contrast between the Government’s intention to make the scheme voluntary so that there is no compulsion on the banks and building societies to join and the Government’s refusal to consult on where the money should go. It will be extremely difficult for the disbursement of this money to be directed by a Secretary of State without breaching additionality. It will be impossible for a Minister, with the power to direct taxpayers’ money through his department, to be, or be seen to be, objective when asked to choose between spending which eats into his budget and money which comes from an outside source. That is precisely why non-taxpayers’ money should be allocated by an independent body. Only an independent body can take a properly objective view on what is suitable for this non-taxpayer money to be spent on. This was, after all, the original motivation for setting up the lottery distributors. As a result, I have turned to the lottery distributors for the drafting of this amendment. The wording is taken from the definition of ““additionality”” that the Big Lottery Fund uses to report on its distribution of lottery funding and the three criteria against which its grants are assessed to ensure that it does not breach additionality. Of course, the definition has been somewhat amended. Amazingly, the Big Lottery Fund maintains that it is not breaching additionality to spend money to add value to a government project. As that has resulted in it distributing more than £1 billion since 2004 to statutory bodies such as local councils, schools and National Health Service trusts, there is a strong argument that this is, to say the very least, an inappropriate definition. Just in case the Minister seeks to argue that such spending was not on core government projects, let me give examples of some of those grants. In October, Lancashire County Council received £1.4 million to fund a three-year advice, training, information and support service for carers. I am not commenting that this service should not be offered to carers, who no doubt would gain an enormous amount from it, but there is no doubt that such a service, provided by a government body in line with this Government’s stated objectives to improve support for carers, should be funded by government, and not by lottery fund, money. In 2006, another grant from the Big Lottery Fund supplied the Danish energy company, Elsam, with £50 million to subsidise the construction of a wind farm. How can the Minister justify the spending of this type of money on projects which are so clearly tied to Her Majesty’s Government’s targets on renewal energy, targets that the Government are struggling to meet? The inappropriateness of this grant is made even worse by Elsam’s statement that it would have gone ahead anyway, even without the grant. The definition has therefore been strengthened and I should like to hear from the Minister why such a safeguard as this amendment represents would be inappropriate in primary legislation. Do the Government think that a definition such as this would open the Big Lottery Fund to litigation from rejected applicants? If so, is there any evidence? The Big Lottery Fund has been using a stated definition of ““additionality”” for some time and has not suffered from litigation of which I am aware. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response on these points. I beg to move.