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

For the edification of the Secretary of State, I shall read what the Prime Minister said in the White Paper:

We don't believe that it would be right to use Lottery money to pay for things which are the Government's responsibilities. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Green) said, of course the public want improvements in health, education and the environment. Increasingly, however, they know that they were deceived before the general election.

"Education, education, education" has, in practice, meant fewer people in higher education, bigger class sizes and cuts in school budgets. "Fourteen days to save the national health service" has, in practice, meant anything from the removal of ambulance cover to soaring waiting lists throughout the country. Perhaps the hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Thomas) should discuss those issues with his constituents.

The public will quickly discover that the money is being diverted from elsewhere. When the lottery money for capital projects in sport and the arts, for schemes to improve access to our heritage and for financing the work of small charities begins to dry up, they will know what the Government have done.

Will the Secretary of State tonight guarantee the percentages for the good causes beyond 2001? If not, he will be sending out the most negative message. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude) said, the confidence of the distribution bodies hangs on that.

The irony of Labour's proposals and of all their rhetoric about "the people" is that the Bill will do nothing to empower individuals or groups of people to make a difference to their lives. The Bill is all about empowering Government. Nasty, authoritarian Governments have always centralised power in the name of the people. There was certainly nothing democratic about the so-called "people's democracies" of eastern Europe. Instead of enhancing the role of the public, the Bill seeks to centralise the power of the Secretary of State like some aging people's commissar.

Part of the lottery's triumph has been its success in strengthening the local loyalties that are essential to civic society. It has reinforced local institutions and made possible the creation of new ones. I am not talking about the grand projects that have benefited from the lottery. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Mr. Prior) said, we are talking about small projects: village halls that have received money for new roofs; community groups that have received money for new minibuses; sports clubs that have received money for new equipment; and brass bands that have received money for new musical instruments. None of that has been to fulfil an election pledge or take forward a political agenda; it has been the public's money, without political strings attached. How shameful and narrowly partisan that the Government should put that at risk.

Even worse, the Government's contempt for parliamentary authority is such that they have not even waited for the Bill to become law, so eager were they to get their hands on lottery money for their own purposes. They started to set money aside for the New Opportunities Fund last October, even though they had no power to do so under the National Lottery etc. Act 1993. In that regard, would the Secretary of State care to publish the voluntary agreements that he made with distribution bodies with respect to the "shadow" accounts?

What the Government have done is unlawful. The Bill includes provisions to amend the 1993 Act retrospectively to legitimise what the Government have done, but make no mistake: in their rush to get their hands on lottery money, the Government have clearly acted outside the law. Conservative Members have noted the Secretary of State's irritation on that point and his attempts to brush off criticism that what he is doing is illegal and that the retrospective provisions in the Bill are oppressive. I challenge the Secretary of State to come up with a comparable precedent for that retrospective action. He failed to do so today.

The Government have made great play of the idea that their proposals are endorsed by the people. I wish to make two points on that. First, the plan to deprive the original good causes of some of their percentage share of the lottery pot is not a manifesto commitment. Labour's manifesto commitment was to create the Government's health, education and environment fund to replace the Millennium Commission only when that body had been wound up. So much for the credibility of the manifesto.

Secondly, the notion that the Government's proposals have been endorsed in their consultation exercise is patently absurd. I urge hon. Members to look at the Government's analysis of the consultation exercise. It is not the people who have endorsed their proposals but the organisations that stand to benefit from them. Most of them are Government agencies and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-orset and North Poole (Mr. Fraser) said, 496 of the 588 responses received in the consultation process came from local authorities, schools, campaigning and professional groups, which all stand to gain from the Government's proposals. Only 92 responses were from individuals. More than five times as many were from organisations with an actual and direct interest in the lottery.

Even those who stand to gain from the Government's proposals are under no illusions; the Government are using the lottery to replace taxation and to implement their agenda.