Clause 1 - Funding of endowments
National Lottery (Funding of Endowments) Bill
4:00 pm
Mrs Gillian Shephard (South West Norfolk, Conservative)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Norfolk on this third attempt to enact such change. Tribute should also be paid to the hon. Member for Norwich, North and to Lord Walpole of the county of Norfolk for their attempts to do so, once in the House and once in the other place.
The campaign mounted by Norfolk's well reputed newspaper, the Eastern Daily Press, showed up an anomaly at the heart of the legislation that prevented this particular activity from benefiting from lottery funds. The causes that are helped by the lottery are many and various, and some might be regarded as less deserving than assisting with the work of carers, not just in Norfolk, but throughout the country.
There are some 130,000 informal carers in the county of Norfolk, and only last Friday I had the honour of presenting an award to one of them—a young woman called Emily Smith, who is still at school. She is the full-time carer for her mother, who is heavily disabled. This young woman, and another girl at her school, Rosie Luck, received the Diana, Princess of Wales award for outstanding citizenship. Emily Smith is a wonderful example of the work done by families and others who care for people with handicap and disability, and those who may merely be elderly and in need of care. I hope that, at the third attempt, the Bill achieves the help for carers that they so richly deserve.