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

My Lords, comments having some fun with carts and horses being placed in various places were a great temptation on the order. However, as the noble Lord said, there is really no point. It is a legal mess caused by the slow progress of the Bill, so the order is basically just holding ground. I think that the Bill has just got out of Standing Committee A in another place. We really do not know what we are doing with it. Reading the order, Article 2(2) caught my eye. It states:"““The reference in this Order to promoting community safety is to making communities places in which it is, or is perceived to be, safer to live and to work, in particular by the reduction of actual or perceived levels of crime and other anti-social behaviour””." Let us face it, additionality—expanding beyond the base—started when the idea of the lottery started. It has gone to a ridiculous level. Surely, from local government upwards, every department of state concerned with law and order should be dealing with the content of Article 2(2). If the National Lottery is seen to always have things taken away, when there is a crisis in its funding or it over-extends its grasp, there will be a problem in maintaining those projects. Ticket sales are going well, although they have gone badly. They can go well in the future. When someone comes up with a nice, money-spinning virtue of small stake/big reward, eventually there will be a problem, especially if we expand in this way. It will go wrong at some time. I hope that I am not around when it does.