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National Lottery Bill

My Lords, I hear what the noble Viscount has said. I am merely emphasising that I am seeking to repudiate the main thrust of the amendment on the ground that informing the nation about the virtues of the lottery—where and how the money is spent and in order to have a public debate about the good causes—is important in improving the allocation mechanism. This current short debate on what I regard as a trivial point—although I recognise that the noble Lord has used an element of it to illustrate general principles—is part of the public debate on how the various distributors go about their task. I would like to reassure the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. He will recognise this point as he should also have received a copy of the correspondence—the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, wrote to me about these issues and I replied explaining matters as we saw them. He was satisfied with that reply and wrote to thank me for making clear to him the reasons for the paragraph. I had thought that perhaps that degree of approval might extend beyond the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, to all his colleagues in the Liberal Democrat Party. It probably has extended to all his colleagues, apart from the spokesman from the Front Bench, but that is the way of the world.