Orders of the Day — National Lottery Bill [Lords]

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 6:22 pm on 7 April 1998.

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Photo of Mr Peter Brooke Mr Peter Brooke Chair, Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, Chair, Northern Ireland Affairs Committee 6:22, 7 April 1998

I am most grateful to the Secretary of State, who has saved us a piece of mutual correspondence. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Forest of Dean, just as it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wirral, South (Mr. Chapman). I personally approve of the measures that the Secretary of State has taken in the context of widening access to the lottery across the country. That was reflected in the speeches of both the hon. Members to whom I have referred.

I am grateful also to the right hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Mr. Maclennan) for drawing attention to the fact that some of the figures attributed to Westminster have a wider ambit. On the eve of the White Paper, I was sent figures about the distribution within my constituency. I picked up £55 Million which clearly did not belong in the constituency at all—although I acknowledge that £50 million of that was for the Tate at Bankside, which could be regarded as an ambiguous case. Projects in four other parts of London—and seven in other parts of the country—were attributed to Westminster.

A little over five years ago, I had the privilege of moving the Second Reading of the National Lottery etc. Bill. I took 22 interventions in 59 minutes, and one of your predecessors in the Chair, Mr. Deputy Speaker, took any number of points of order. The hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. Pendry) will remember the course of events. It was a detailed, but genial occasion—a good omen for the lottery itself.

Understandably, there was concentration on additionality, the arm's-length principle and the percentage distributions to good causes. At that stage, there were concerns—to which the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde referred—about the effect of the lottery on the pools, and its effect on charities.

We knew that the Millennium Commission's future demise—which was allowed for in the Bill—would afford an opportunity to revisit the percentages for good causes at some date in the future. I indicated that Parliament would have an opportunity in each Parliament —at least while my party was in power—to consider the percentages. If change was desired, there was a mechanism by order in the Bill to effect that change.

The first of those 22 interventions was—to his credit—from the present Minister for Sport, the hon. Member for West Ham (Mr. Banks), who asked me for assurances on the issue of additionality. He came back with a later intervention—he was among the 22— and was an enthusiastic contributor to the debate. As he did not repeat his first question, I can only assume that he received some reassurance from my answer.

I can only say that the lottery has been a success. I next revisited the subject as a Government Back Bencher, when the noble Lord Attenborough was good enough to invite me to what appeared to be a Labour party rally in the Mansion house in my constituency—new Labour, new venues—at which the then Leader of the Opposition, the present Prime Minister, made a more enthusiastic speech about the arts and artists than he has so far managed in government. He removed several of the veils of NESTA on that occasion, as the Secretary of State may recall—I do not know whether he was there.

I have not compared the cast list of those who applauded the speech at that luncheon warmly with the cast list at the meeting on 24 March to discuss the opera house dilemma, when the reactions were also warm—but, on the whole, not in a direction favourable to the Government.

The Labour party manifesto indicated that the party would, if elected, create a new good cause to succeed the Millennium Commission when that lapsed. That pre-empted the opportunity to increase the amounts potentially available for charities which would have served to protect the arm's-length principle.

On 21 July last year—the day that the Secretary of State published the White Paper —I asked the Minister for Film and Tourism what his current definition of additionality was. I apologise for not having warned the right hon. Gentleman that I would say this, but I thought that he would be here. He replied, a little bizarrely:

I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman is planning to contest the Glasgow, Govan constituency, or is he asking a question relevant to a Department he once headed?— I do not recall that he did much about it when he was in government. If the right hon. Gentleman manages to catch your eye when my right hon. Friend makes his statement, Madam Speaker, I am sure that he will not be disappointed."—[Official Report, 21 July 1997; Vol. 298, c. 677.] Whatever that answer meant, it was not an answer to the question I had asked. It occasioned me some presentiments of anxiety which were not relieved when the Secretary of State made his statement, by which, I fear, I was disappointed.

It was, I suppose, inevitable that the Secretary of State should that day have had the striking originality to call it "the people's lottery". I mentally promised myself to re-read "1984". Happily, the Secretary of State's shamelessness has not stretched to incorporating that tired phrase in the Bill, and I wholly applaud what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said on that subject.