Clause 26 - Payments out of Fund
Horserace Betting and Olympic Lottery Bill
3:30 pm
Mr Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath, Conservative)
Many of the amendments would ensure that the money from the Olympic lottery goes towards sport and towards winning the bid for London 2012, to ensure that we do not run any risk of money being wasted on other matters such as bureaucracy administration or matters unconnected with sport. We felt that it was important to build some extra precautions into the Bill, which the amendments
are designed to do. Amendment No. 66 is particularly important, because it would delete subsection (6). Clause 26(2)(d) already makes it clear that money should go to the Greater London authority: we would amend that in order to restrict the purposes for which the GLA can use that money.
I know a number of excellent Conservative members of the GLA, and if those people were in complete control I would have enormous confidence that they would ensure that the money was spent wisely. I am suspicious of subsection (6) because I have grave doubts that the GLA will necessarily use an unfettered power—which subsection (6) would give it—just for the benefit of sport. As it stands, it is the blankest of blank cheques. To change languages, it would give the GLA carte blanche to do more or less whatever it likes with money.
If one combines amendment No. 66, which would delete subsection (6), with amendment No. 63, which would ensure that the purposes for which the GLA uses the money relate to sport or the promotion of the 2012 bid, there would be proper protection. If subsection (6) is allowed to remain, it would be a recipe for a subsequent National Audit Office investigation of how the money might not have been used for proper purposes because it had not been spent by the GLA on the things that it should have been spent on—sport and the 2012 bid. I urge the Minister to consider amendments Nos. 66 and 63 in that context.
Amendment No. 64 replaces amendment No. 24, which we originally introduced. It is rather different, but it deals with an important issue. It would use the words ''the National Paralympic Committee'', rather than the National Paralympic Association.