Orders of the Day — National Lottery Bill [Lords]

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 4:27 pm on 7 April 1998.

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Photo of Francis Maude Francis Maude Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport 4:27, 7 April 1998

May I join the Secretary of State in the generous tribute that he paid to my right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major)? It is good to see my right hon. Friend here, together with my right hon. Friends the Members for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke) and for South-West Surrey (Mrs. Bottomley). Against the background of much criticism, knocking and denigration, they did a huge amount to make the national lottery such an extraordinary success. It is ironic that their success enables this Government, with the Secretary of State as the hapless tool of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to treat the lottery as their re-election fund.

Contrary to what the Secretary of State says, no one claims that everything about the lottery as originally set up was perfect. It would be astonishing if it were. Obviously there is scope for change and improvement. It is hundreds of years since the last national lottery in this country, and it would be extraordinary if we had got everything right the first time.

Some of the changes in the Bill are welcome. We support some clarification of the regulator's powers, and we shall look carefully at the Secretary of State's plans for the new commission. There are clear arguments in the later part of the Bill for allowing the distributors to delegate grant making in some circumstances.

However, most of what the Bill proposes is wrong, because it attacks the very basis on which the lottery was founded and which made it so successful. It puts at risk the success of the most successful national lottery in the world, and we shall oppose it.

Please, let the Secretary of State spare us this insulting rubbish about it being the people's lottery supported by popular acclaim. Let us be quite clear: it is the Government's lottery—by the Government, of the Government and for the Government. If his new commission is, as he so portentously claims, to be the people's watchdog, it is lamentable that he has now become the Chancellor's lapdog. It is the Chancellor's lottery.

I shall speak briefly about the part that the Secretary of State rightly prefigured—a matter of some interest, the dog that did not bark, the most startling omission. Labour's manifesto contained a commitment to seek a not-for-profit operator". In July 1996, Labour had said that the lottery

should be run efficiently but not for profit. There was no "seeking". It was a clear, hard-edged commitment. It was not at all equivocal. It was an uncharacteristically clear commitment, and, poor sap, the Secretary of State, thought so, because he doggedly went ahead and prepared the Bill on the basis that it was to enact such a provision. The real powers in the Government had not told him that they did not mean it. It was just for the birds. It was only a manifesto pledge. It was just a vehicle for