Clause 26 - Payments out of Fund
Horserace Betting and Olympic Lottery Bill
4:00 pm
Mr Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath, Conservative)
I am grateful to the Minister for responding in some detail. On that last point, on amendment No. 73, we return to the kind of discussion that the Minister had with my hon. Friend the
Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) this morning. It would do no harm to add the word ''sporting'' before ''cultural and other events'' and would at least put sporting matters into the Bill. I hope that the Minister will accept that adding one more word will not lead his officials to send him another note like the one they sent him this morning saying ''Too many words'', and that he will think about it again. I should be delighted if, at a later stage, he were to insert the word ''sporting'' into clause 30(4)(b) through a Government amendment. It is a small point, but it would send all the right signals.
I understand the Minister's point about the memorandum of understanding, as I made clear in my intervention. I do not want to spoil the good working relationships by injecting a sense of mistrust, as the Minister suggested we might be doing, but there could be some middle ground, a way in which subsection (6) does not need to be open-ended. The Bill could refer to the memorandum of understanding.
In the light of what the Minister has helpfully said, Lord Moynihan and I will consider whether it is possible to table a modified version of our amendment on Report or in another place. However, because I want the flexibility to return to some of those issues later in the passage of the Bill, I shall not pursue them to a vote as a point of principle this afternoon. We are making a genuine attempt to improve the Bill.
I am still concerned about what happens when the fund is wound up. I accept, as the Minister said to the hon. Member for Bath, that we are looking a number of years into the future. The hon. Gentleman had a helpful thought when he said that we could at least put something in the Bill that said that the good causes received money back in the same proportion as they had contributed. That might be another way of approaching what I was seeking to do when I said, ''Let's make sure it all goes back to sport''.
We do not want to fight the matter tooth and nail; we were making a genuine attempt to improve the Bill. Therefore, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Further consideration adjourned.—[Mr. Kemp.]
Adjourned accordingly at two minutes past Four o'clock till Tuesday 27 January at half-past Nine o'clock.