National Lottery

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments, which are extremely well put. If the Secretary of State does not want to listen to figures from us, why does he not talk to people in the industry? Tim Lamb, the former chief executive of the England and Wales Cricket Board, who now runs the Central Council of Physical Recreation, said:"““What's the use of getting more kids involved in sport at school if they don't have decent facilities to play with when they leave? The Lottery must not be used as a piggy bank for ministers to pay for the games.””" If the choice is made between funding lottery good causes or funding the Olympics, we will fail in our commitment to the Olympic legacy, because it is the lottery commitment to grass-roots sport that is the means whereby we will provide that legacy. Why have all these problems arisen? The construction budget went up by 29 per cent. last March; the regeneration budget went up by 70 per cent.; and the security budget nearly tripled to nearly £600 million, despite the fact that the original security budget at £220 million was less than the Greeks paid for the Athens Olympics. Why we thought it would be cheaper to make the London Olympics secure, I do not know. There were two items in the revised budget that, inexplicably, did not appear in the original budget. The revision included a contingency budget of £2.7 billion. We now know that it was against explicit Treasury guidelines not to have a contingency budget in a project of that size, yet the Treasury approved the original budget. There was a VAT bill of £840 million in the new budget. If the Treasury approved the original budget, why did it decide that it did not need VAT then, but that it needed nearly £1 billion of VAT the second time? Since then, the news has got worse, not better. In June we heard that the security budget may go up to £1 billion. In October the Olympic Delivery Authority said that the cost of the stadium would go up 77 per cent.—by another £216 million. Let us return to the lottery. In order to secure the bid, the bid team made great play of London's cultural heritage—they talked about the 300 museums and galleries and the five symphony orchestras—but because of today's measure, arts and heritage distributors will lose £90 million each. The Secretary of State spoke about English Heritage. Dr. Simon Thurley, the chief executive of English Heritage, stated:"““Inevitably the additional reduction in Lottery funding will reduce opportunities for the cost of inspirational projects which have transformed the historic environment…and made it accessible to millions more people””." Peter Hewitt, chief executive of the Arts Council of England until the end of this month, said:"““The reduction in budget . . . will hit smaller arts organisations at grassroots level very hard””." The Olympics will be in London, but of course we want it to benefit the whole country, so it is particularly depressing to read the remarks of the chief executives of the Arts Councils of Wales and Scotland. Peter Tyndall of the Arts Council of Wales commented:"““Many projects will be unable to go ahead and individual artists will not have their work funded.””" Jim Tough, the acting chief executive of the Scottish Arts Council, said:"““The Scottish Arts Council is disappointed by this decision . . . the plans will undoubtedly also have a serious impact on general participatory activity and programmes for future years.””"