Clause 7 - National Lottery Distribution Fund: apportionment
National Lottery Bill
10:45 am
Hugo Swire (Shadow Minister (the Arts), The Family & Culture, Media & Sport; East Devon, Conservative)
The Minister and the hon. Member for Bath are both correct: at this stage, we are not debating additionality, and, quite rightly, you would not allow us to do so, Mr. Cook. However, we are debating what the Big Lottery Fund—the creature of this Government—is saying about its maker. In a sense, we are debating what the monster is saying about Frankenstein. The fund is the son of the Government, but is saying that it is not happy with aspects of the way in which it has been created. That is clear, and it has nothing to do with the principle of additionality, although that is also one of its concerns, to which we shall come later.
I am grateful to the Minister and his civil servants for providing us with a copy of the National Lottery Act etc. 1993 with the suggested Government amendments; it is an extremely useful point of reference, and I recommend it to all who do not already have it—no doubt it is readily available in all leading bookshops. It shows that the original 1993 Act was far better than this Bill will be if it is enacted unamended. The Minister is fond of saying that occasionally he would like to come to a Committee and agree to all the amendments to see what chaos that would cause, but I would say that that if the Opposition withdrew all our amendments and left the Bill as it is currently drafted, it would lead to even greater chaos. Anyway, we shall not go down that particular road; I digressed for only a minute, Mr. Cook.
Under section 22 of the 1993 Act, all other distributors, including the New Opportunities Fund, were given a share of lottery funds ''allocated for expenditure''. If such a form of words has sufficed for all other distributors, why change it? If the BLF says that it hopes to enjoy a less prescriptive relationship with the Government, why include prescriptive powers in the Bill? When the Government changed the rules on lottery distributors' independence for the New Opportunities Fund, they rightly attracted much criticism for eroding the independence of the lottery as a whole from the Government. Why then do the Government continue to use and even extend such powers of prescription? I should like the Minister to spend some time explaining the thought process behind clause 7.
The Government are proud of their consultation record on the lottery; I suspect that we shall be hearing a lot about that in the next few days. On Second Reading, the Minister said:
''we are responding to what was said in the consultation, which was that people wanted more power to be given to the distributors''—[Official Report, 14 June 2005; Vol. 435, c. 170–171.]
However, binding the BLF to prescribed expenditure, as set out in clause 7, does the exact opposite: it gives the Government more power over more lottery money. Almost every voice that one hears from the charitable sector, from the National Council for Voluntary Organisations and the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations downwards, is seriously concerned about the control that the Bill gives the Government over lottery funds. A recent NCVO poll found that 73 per cent. of people wanted lottery funds to be distributed by ''an independent body''. However, the Big Lottery Fund is not such a body as it is constituted in the Bill.
Other amendments in this group include some that would cover what seems to be an anomaly in directions on devolved expenditure. Our amendments Nos. 55 to 58 would make provision for devolved expenditure in the Isle of Man to be decided by the Tynwald. I must confess that I do not know much about the governance of the Isle of Man and I have never been there, but I greatly admire its spinning legs logo. That is about as much as I know about the Isle of Man. The amended Bill now refers to the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, but at some stage the Isle of Man disappears. We are suggesting that it should be mentioned again and I look forward to hearing the Minister's thoughts on that.
That concludes my opening remarks on this group of amendments, which form the kernel of the debate. I look forward to other hon. Members joining in because I am sure that they will have some interesting things to say.