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New Opportunities Fund (Specification of Initiatives) (No. 2) Order 2005

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Davies, for introducing the order. He could have opened his speech by saying that the order is really the cart before the horse, because the National Lottery Bill now before another place was first introduced last November. It failed to make progress through another place. In the mean time, the Government set up the Big Lottery Fund, in effect to merge the New Opportunities Fund and the Community Fund, but failed to recognise that their legislation would not be in place in time. As a result, they have had to introduce the order, which gives us a wonderful opportunity to make a substantial attack on the Government on how they have tinkered with the lottery. They are increasing government control over the direction and distribution of the funds, which means less money for the original good causes. They have breached the additionality principle, and there has been falling public confidence in the lottery. However, the Minister will be glad to know that I shall leave that for another day, because the National Lottery Bill will appear in this House. The original Bill came here in 1993, and my noble friend Lord Ferrers and I took it through the House. I can assure noble Lords that we had quite a difficult time. We were then attacked by the Labour Party on the principles of additionality and various others, and I must say that we will throw their words back at them when the Bill comes before the House. They may have a rather difficult time. So the noble Lord has much to look forward to in future. Anyway, the order is necessary because the Government have created the Big Lottery Fund. I do not disagree with that. Sometimes the Community Fund’s grants were bizarre, and it brought itself into, not so much disrepute but ridicule by some of the things that it did. I think that we would all agree that the Big Lottery Fund is a good idea. I do not think that any of us on the Opposition Benches believe that the Government should interfere through directions by the Secretary of State in where the money goes. That is wrong. That is something that we will have to deal with in future when the National Lottery Bill comes before the House. I have only one simple question for the Minister. He said that this was an interim measure. That may be. In the last Parliament, the National Lottery Bill failed. What happens if it does not arrive here during this one? Does the order continue? I should be interested to hear the Minister’s response.