Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 4:27 pm on 7 April 1998.
I think that the Minister objects to the fact that I have read the Bill and the fine print. We are not satisfied with just reading the headlines that his spin doctors create in the newspapers.
We want to be sure about the Bill, which states that the distributors have to prepare a draft, give it to the Secretary of State, talk to him about it, and amend it. If he does not appreciate that the only reason for that provision is to exert greater control over the distributors, he has not read it properly. If the provision were entirely innocent, and only about being strategic, everyone would support it. Why cannot the Government recognise that? Of course they could: it is just a fiction.
The direct arrogation of power to ministerial offices makes us concerned about the clause that gives distributors the power to solicit applications. I know that the distributors want that, and, on the face of it, it is innocuous. However, when combined with all the apparatus of massively increased ministerial control of the distributors, the clause is the final link in the chain of control between Ministers and recipients. If it is abused, it will effectively enable Ministers to decide who gets what, when and where. It amounts to a nationalisation of lottery proceeds.
If the direction of the Government's intentions needed any clarification, the way in which the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts is to be set up provides it. The advance billing was that NESTA would be, in the words of the White Paper
a National Trust for talent and creativity".
That is set out in a nice big headline—the Government are good at headlines— but the fine print makes it look rather different. We thought that it would, like the National Trust itself, be independent. After all, why endow it with scarce capital unless it is genuinely independent?
As a trust, NESTA could be accountable to trustees in the same way as other independent truts, but, as before, the fine print belies the headline. It will not be independent at all: it will be a quango. Its board will be appointed by the Secretary of State and his cronies, and its staff will be civil servants on the public payroll. It will have no freedom over how it invests its endowment.