National Lottery Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Lords at 6:53 pm on 6 February 2006.

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Photo of Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Crossbench 6:53, 6 February 2006

My Lords, I decided to speak on this Bill because I have a concern about safeguarding opportunities for the young. First, I must commend the Government for listening during the consultation period and for ensuring that those who wanted to express their views were able to access people at different levels. There is much in this Bill to be welcomed. For the devolved administrations—and I have an interest in Wales—the changes are welcome.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, deserves praise for her work, and her expertise was evident today in her speech. However, recognising the problems she outlined, I have a concern that the principle of additionality must not be eroded. To ensure that it is not eroded, there needs to be some independence from the core needs of statutory providers in the way decisions are made and yet an awareness of the real needs—an awareness of what statutory providers are doing. This is a difficult balance to strike. For true added value it is crucial that the investment enhances what is already there and also that it is sustainable. We have all seen—sometimes sadly at first hand—the difficulties when pump priming is given to a project which does not have sustainability adequately built in and the project then folds through lack of sustainability later.

I was always taught that the gifts of health and happiness are the greatest you can have. If we look at funding good health as a national priority—which I believe it must be—those projects and services which are known to bring huge enhancements to health and quality of life should also be eligible for funding when they are outside statutory funding. I refer of course to the hospice movement—I declare a major interest in this—and all that it does for the terminally ill. I hope the Minster will be able to assure me that they will still be included in the categories able to apply for lottery funds as they are in large part still charitably funded.

I would also like to address sport and music as the innovators of change for good in society both now and in the future. We have a huge problem looming in our country. We have a whole tranche of youngsters who feel distanced from the rest of us and we need solutions to the problems, not just empty words.

Of course, noble Lords will commiserate with me over the defeat of Wales on Saturday but let us not forget that in Wales rugby has grown out of the valleys, out of a working class culture, out of the very population from which much of the money raised by the lottery comes.

It is every little boy's dream—or almost every little boy's dream in Wales—to play for Wales. Sport needs innovators outside and beyond the confines of an education authority. It needs opportunities to arise in the life of the genuinely talented child. This can happen when the child is able to experiment with sport in an environment removed from school where sometimes anti-social tactics from others have undermined confidence, where a child may genuinely fear being successful and in an environment where the child is not known by labels of academic performance in other spheres or by what his parents did or did not do. In the mixed-age, mixed-background environment of such sports and arts activities, young people discover inspiring role models, learn to venture far beyond their current social boundaries and develop confidence for integrating into society.

I also want to address musical opportunities. Currently we have orchestras which open doors to those who otherwise would not be exposed to classical, jazz or other types of band music at all. This tuition teaches the child to interact, to have internal self-discipline, to listen and work with peers, to succeed and to experience the language of emotions and the subtleties therein. Indeed, one only has to listen to a teenager's choice of music and it tells you much about their mood. It is the process of making the music itself that differs fundamentally from the monotonous repetitive beat of pop, rap and heavy metal that becomes mind-numbing and incites all kinds of negative emotions in youngsters who listen to this for hours on end in their bedroom or on a street corner.

The direction of funding for more creative arts has somehow to be independent and be outside and beyond what the youngster sees as completely statutory provision—as well as what is statutory provision. If it is too close to the Treasury I fear that it will become consumed in basic service provision and will never be spent on the added-value projects that provide the opportunities for youngsters to discover that they can after all do something well. Without consultation with the charity sector providers and other organisations, how will we guard against money being spent on what is actually core service? How will the public be involved in consultation?

Let us not ignore the evidence that drug-taking is lower in those children who participate in team sport or music, that their physical health is better and their predictions for future health are far better than those who do not have such opportunities. Thinking that local education providers will provide unique focused opportunities is folly. The money will melt away in a bureaucratic maze of core provision and the diversity of opportunity and richness that it affords will be lost. So I would like the Minister to tell us—indeed, to assure us—that the Bill will guarantee an expansion, not a contraction, of all the good projects that have happened to date, and that the cross-boundary projects which have proven value for the physical health and emotional welfare of the youth of today will flourish, not dwindle.

My fear is that if lottery money funds core health projects, we will remove the sources of prevention of illness—the sport and music activities which maintain physical and emotional fitness—and spend ever more on the ill effects that result from physical inactivity and emotionally disturbed people.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, has already touched on the over-inflation of the gambling addiction, which was spoken about before the lottery ever came into being. But the lottery appeals to those with debts and who have a tendency towards gambling. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure me that the publicity will not encourage gambling by promoting it. We should not forget that it has been estimated that 28p in the pound from the lottery will go to good causes, but I believe that £1.28 per pound comes from tax efficient donation. The publicity must not mislead the public as regards making such tax efficient donations to charities that are already providing added value.