Orders of the Day — National Lottery Bill [Lords]

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 9:19 pm on 7 April 1998.

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Photo of Richard Spring Richard Spring Conservative, West Suffolk 9:19, 7 April 1998

The hon. Gentleman has only to pick up the newspapers to see that, every day, articles are written by those in the arts community who are disgusted at the way in which the Government are failing to carry out the nods and winks commitments that they made before the election. If he has not observed that, I fear that he is reading the wrong newspapers.

We vigorously oppose the Bill, which has no purpose other than to make a shabby and unprincipled raid on the lottery. As many respondents to the White Paper observed, the Government are breaching the additionality principle—they should at least have the courage to own up to it.

The English Sports Council summed up the problem in a letter that it wrote to me yesterday. It said:

The ESC is aware that on examination existing international Lotteries have tended to start by bringing unique new resources to areas such as sport, then this funding has been eroded in favour of areas more closely related to core policy areas.The ESC seeks assurances from the Government to restate the commitment to the long term funding of sport through its share of Lottery income. The ESC may have to wait a very long time.

We utterly reject the Secretary of State's assertion that he is adhering to the principle of additionality as set out by the Prime Minister in the White Paper. I do not for a moment think that the public—or the people, as the Secretary of State is so fond of referring to them—will be fooled. They know that health, education and the environment are core Government responsibilities. They will not be convinced by his shifty explanations of additionality. They will see that the Government are brazenly using the lottery for their public spending programmes.