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

The former Prime Minister. Habits and loyalty die hard.

On additionality, the arm's-length principle and the 20 per cent. distributions, the news was universally bad. The opportunity for Parliament to debate the percentage distributions had not been taken, and the Millennium Commission's demise was not so much anticipated as disregarded. At Second Reading of the National Lottery etc. Bill, Labour Front-Bench Members had said that no more than 15 per cent. of national lottery revenues should be devoted to tax, but by Third Reading, at which the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde spoke from the Labour Front Bench—by which time the tax figure of 12 per cent. had been announced —the hon. Gentleman said that the 12 per cent. tax yield to the Treasury was far too high. I suppose that I should have regarded consistency as an unlikely element in the present Government's planning.

On 25 November 1997, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that the cost of £300 million over five years to set up 30,000 new out-of-school clubs would be shared between the Exchequer and the New Opportunities Fund—words which the Secretary of State for Social Security echoed on 10 December 1997, speaking on the lone parents issue at the Report stage of the Social Security Bill. She prefaced that echo of the £300 million coming from the national lottery and the Exchequer with the words:

the Government have made the biggest ever investment in child care."—[Official Report, 10 December 1997; Vol. 302, c. 1087.] Additionality seems difficult to identify in those words.

When I was in the Whips Office, I recognised that the price of a Back-Bench vote to take through a controversial European Union directive concerning heavy lorries might well be a constituency bypass, but at least on that occasion it was the Government's money that we were spending. When the present Government, confronted with a rebellion, played the child care card on the lone parents issue, a lot of the money was the lottery's, even if the Bill was not yet law.

The Bill was presented for First Reading in the Lords at the start of December 1997. My hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Randall), to a series of well-targeted questions, received a series of answers from Ministers in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Education and Employment about current Government expenditure on projects that the lottery new good cause is scheduled to fund. I especially liked the answer by the Minister for Arts on 5 December 1997, that the budget of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport did spend money on librarian training, but that the sums involved were relatively small—the classic sad account of the parlour-maid' s pregnancy.

On 18 December 1997, at Second Reading in the Lords, the Government's spokesman, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, spoke of the Libraries and Information Commission report, "New Library: The People's Network", which my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude) mentioned, and prided himself on the Government's response to the request for a further £50 million.

I was reminded, especially by the words "The People's Network", of the principle of Danegeld. I remind the House of the account of Danegeld in "1066 and All That":

Rather than wait for Ethelred the Unready,

the Danes used to fine him large sums called Danegeld, for not being ready. But though they were always ready, the Danes had very bad memories and often used to forget that they had been paid the Danegeld and came back for it almost before they had sailed away. For Ethelred the Unready—who was on the throne at the last millennium—read the Secretary of State; for the Danes, read spending Departments short of a bob or two.

All of that is said to be theology. In Liz Forgan's article in the Evening Standard on 17 December 1997, she asked:

in what way is this spending on health, education and the environment different from the Government's normal spending on health, education and the environment? Send for a Jesuit. But Treasury theology is usually erected as a Treasury defence against spending Departments. Here we have a spending Department conniving with the Treasury in the deployment of the theology.

I acknowledge that it needs to be emphasised that the Secretary of State's role is largely metaphysical. A wise man once said of ghosts that appearances are in their favour. I imagine that, in this instance, the Secretary of State will not wish to be quite so forthcoming. The percentages are a separate issue. When Labour was in power between 1929 and 1931, the British Government were offered what became the Aramco concession in Saudi Arabia for£ 20,000, provided that the money was paid in gold. Mr. Snowden, the present Chancellor's predecessor, declined the offer, on the ground that paying in gold would reflect adversely on sterling.

It was in that era that Calouste Gulbenkian earned his title of Mr. Five Per Cent. He knew that a constant percentage is a better long-term bet than an absolute sum, which is what the Secretary of State has decided that the existing distributors really wanted. The distributors have, of course, seen their percentages cut. I find it distasteful that the Government should imply that the distributors are not the losers.

I have narrated once before in the House the episode in the Brussels embassy when Ernest Bevin was Foreign Secretary and there was concern about whether he would be able to get through the doorway between the main spare bedroom and main spare bathroom in the embassy. A telegram was sent to the Foreign Office in London saying, "Please verify Secretary of State's diameter", to which the telex came back—those who know and love the Foreign Office are not surprised that it is more literate than numerate—"Unable to verify diameter, but circumference is 60 inches". For the Foreign Office not to understand geometry is perhaps forgivable; for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport not to understand arithmetic is less so.

These losses have struck distributors at exactly the moment when resources for the individual training of athletes are proving their worth; when the Arts Council cannot afford to sustain the highly important south bank centre's forward plans; and when the Budget's foreshadowing of changes to the access rules for works of art of museum quality retained under inheritance tax threatens that major works will flood on to the market—constituents have already advised me of that.

The present Lord Chief Justice, as a young barrister, when defending the Three Hands Disinfectant Company in a public health case, resisted the temptation of advancing the defence that this was a case where the first two hands did not know what the third hand was doing; but, at this juncture, the inheritance tax changes look like a case where the third hand did not know what the other two hands were up to.

I make a final comment on the penalties that the lottery operator may have to pay. I appreciate that the former director general asked for them; I do not oppose them, but I believe that they need to be clear. The Government were a little confusing and contradictory on that subject in the Lords. As a clarification, I found tautologous Lord McIntosh's reply to Lord Redesdale's amendment in Committee:

We believe that the sensible and reasonable application of the power to impose financial penalties is the most appropriate way of ensuring that any penalties imposed are fair." — [Official Report, House of Lords, 19 January 1998; Vol. 584, c. 9.] I am reminded of the definition of an Act of God in Blackstone's law dictionary—an act that no reasonable man would expect God to commit.

I close with a verdict on the Bill, said in both sorrow and anger—to the latter of which I am not usually prone. It was described in the Lords as the thin end of the wedge. I think that it is the thick end, and I speak of its intellectual content. However, to go further down its road leading into public expenditure substitution is to be counter -productive in terms of popular support for the lottery.

In the run-up to the publication of the National Lottery etc. Bill in 1992, we said that, now that Albania had a lottery, we were the only country in Europe not to have one. Coming so late, we were able to create the best lottery in the world, and the former director general should have his own share of the credit for that. I am personally sad that the Bill takes us a small distance away from that pinnacle, and in an Albanian direction.