Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 7:32 pm on 7 April 1998.
I suppose that someone has to say it: I dislike the national lottery. It puts decisions about public money into unelected hands, and introduces a random hand in expenditure, which is unaccountable—within limits: if an allocation of funds in not particularly popular, Ministers have nothing to do with it; if an announcement is popular, Ministers are always in the photograph.
I should much prefer no lottery at all. It was originally argued that we had to have our own state lottery because other gambling and other state lotteries would come into the United Kingdom and take British money if we did not. I was unpersuaded by that argument, and still feel distaste for the British Government's sponsorship of a lottery, which lowers the tone of government by putting the authority of the state behind the concept of gambling.
And gambling it is: 30 million people a week—two thirds of households—take part. My hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Mr. Prior) referred to an average bet of £3, but £5 or £6 per household per week goes into this vast money machine, which gives gamblers a negligible chance of winning.
In December 1992, the Secretary of State for National Heritage said:
The lottery will not attract the gambler. We expect it to attract a new section of the population, people who are willing to have a flutter knowing that—win or lose— money will be going to good causes.
Some flutter: £15,000 million is spent, often by people who can ill afford £5 or £6 a week per household. It saddens me that the turnover in lottery tickets is busiest in the most deprived areas. Self-evidently, people hope for a miracle to escape financial disadvantage—it is tax by another name.
The profile of those who pay shows an emphasis on those with lower incomes and capital, and the analysis of those who benefit shows a heavy slant to the more privileged. The lottery is redistributive, and I regret that.
I should have preferred the Government to have the courage years ago to decide on good causes, to find the money, and to come to the House of Commons to explain what major projects they proposed to support. Projects such as the magnificent one at the Louvre in France deserve support, but I should prefer hon. Members to debate them in the House.
The hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Thomas) referred to the development of the new and burdensome industry of advisers and consultants, who assist local authorities and others to make lottery bids. Applicants are encouraged to shape their bid to make it more attractive to those who might provide the money, and advisers even encourage institutions to reorganise and restructure, so that they are more likely to be an acceptable bidder. Many bidders spend good money to reshape themselves, and that dead money is of value to no one.
If we are to have a lottery, how should it be structured? The 1978 royal commission defined worthy causes as those which
however desirable, would not ordinarily be financed by Government
because
they would distort the priorities the Government had set itself.
The commentator, Sir Robin Day, said that the idea was worthy because it would support projects that would
bridge the gap between public funds and private philanthropy in those many areas of national life where additional expenditure may be described as desirable but not essential.
My noble Friend Lord Baker, when Home Secretary, said of the money from the lottery:
I must emphasise that this will be additional funding. The Government do not intend that the money provided by the lottery should substitute for existing expenditure programmes.
Following those principles, I cannot imagine a better cause than the Millennium Commission's sponsorship of the plan to redevelop the entrance to Portsmouth harbour and the Gosport area in my constituency. One does not have to stuff presents from Father Christmas back up the chimney because one does not believe in him. The plan is imaginative; it is a sweeping vision, with promenades for Gosport and for Portsmouth, new open and leisure areas and spectacular water features, which will be dominated by a tall, elegant tower reminiscent of a sailing spinnaker.
The planning stage has gone through, and building work will proceed later in the year. This £86 million project has £40 million of support from the lottery. I should have much preferred it to come out of public funds rather than lottery funds, but the project is exactly in accordance with the original test of additionality.
What is planned under the Bill? The siphoning off of £1 billion, which is in excess of the original expected lottery yield of £9 billion, has been justified by the Prime Minister, who said:
It is the people's lottery. It should address the people's priorities.
On message as always, the Secretary of State for Social Security said:
It is the public's money, and the public want it spent on high-quality child care.
I join my right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major), who attacked the "people's this, people's that" attitude; an increasing number of people find such extraordinarily cheap populism offensive.
The Government propose the New Opportunities Fund and the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, and they will spend the money as they think fit. They are also tightening their grip on every aspect of expenditure of lottery funds. Clause 12 provides that the Secretary of State will give instructions about a strategic plan, which must be submitted to the Secretary of State for consultation, after which a body must
make such modifications to the draft as it considers necessary or expedient.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude) said, the Secretary of State will tighten his control over the distribution of lottery funds. The Secretary of State will discover that, in the annual bilateral meetings with the Treasury, it in turn will tighten its control over him. The Treasury will lean on him, and, as always, it will win. The lottery will become a voluntary tax paid substantially by poorer people, and promoted by the Government as a game. I find that very sad.