Clause 7 - National Lottery Distribution Fund: apportionment
National Lottery Bill
11:15 am
Richard Caborn (Minister of State (Sport), Department for Culture, Media & Sport; Sheffield Central, Labour)
The merging of the three lottery funds, the Community Fund, NOF and the Millennium Commission, is in the Bill. Yes, the Millennium Commission will stop operating. It was expected that the Bill would go through—and therefore that the Millennium Commission would cease to operate—probably by early next year. That is not the case. Instead of being wound up in March, it will probably continue until September or October. We are being practical about that. It has to operate, which is why those answers were given in that letter. That does not explain why there could be underspends on some of the major schemes undertaken by the Millennium Commission. It could be that the receipts we will get from the dome—not now, but two or three years down the road—will go into that process.
We will tidy the whole of that process up as well as bringing NOF and the Community Fund together. That is the object of the exercise and it has been accepted out there in the real world through the consultation we have carried out. We are going slightly wide of the amendment but we try, as we have done in the explanatory notes, to be as open with the Committee as possible to ensure that we have a full, informed debate.