Don Foster (Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media & Sport, Culture, Media & Sport; Bath, Liberal Democrat)

Welcome back to the Chair, Mr. Gale. For those following our proceedings, in an odd but nonetheless perfectly logical order, we move from clause 14 to clause 8.

This is a highly controversial clause, whereby the Secretary of State will take upon herself a range of powers. If she does not like one distribution body and does not believe that it is doing enough to reduce its balances, she will be able to take away its money and give it to another distribution body.

Somewhat surprisingly, I speak to my own amendment with a degree of reluctance. It is somewhat wimpish. Were I to have felt gung-ho and bold, I would have proposed the deletion of all the powers. Knowing that the Minister would not accede to that, however, I thought that it would be more helpful to table a watered-down amendment for the Committee’s and the Minister’s consideration.

The amendment is so watered down that I can see no justification whatever for the Minister to refuse it. It says that if the Secretary of State is to use those draconian powers, which I am uncomfortable with her taking, it should be at least with the advice of an external body.

The Committee will be aware of the explanatory notes as well as the Bill. The notes say about the power:

“In practice, the Secretary of State would only use this as a last resort in the event that a distributor was considered to have failed, signally, to reduce balances to a reasonable level and there were serious concerns about the ability of a distributor to act economically and effectively.”

We have it on record that the provision will be an absolute last resort, and the Minister will no doubt repeat that. Nevertheless, it is clear from the notes that the Secretary of State will judge whether the distribution body has failed to reduce its balances. It will be her judgment whether the body is at fault, for reasons that she will determine.

My amendment simply says, “For heaven’s sake, we have a body that constantly reports on the lottery and matters of balances, namely, the National Audit Office.” The Minister will shortly refer to the most recent report from the National Audit Office to give succour and support to what he seeks to do, so he will acknowledge that it has a vital role to play. I merely suggest that some advice should be sought from the National Audit Office before the Secretary of State uses those powers.

Given the nature of the clause and the amendments, the debate will understandably be widened to include the question of the balances more generally and whether there is a serious problem with them. The Minister will no doubt say in a few minutes that money must be transferred as quickly as possible to projects and that it should not sit in distributor bank accounts any longer than necessary. I accept that, but I do not   accept that increased political interference under the proposed legislation is the way to deal with a perceived problem.

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