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National Lottery Bill

My Lords, my name is added to this amendment, which is the result of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and myself considering carefully what the Minister said in Committee and trying to come up with a sensible compromise amendment. The Minister will remember that in Committee we moved an amendment asking the Government, in effect, to define additionality, which was resisted by the Minister, as it had been in another place, on the basis that to do so in legislation might create a lawyers’ paradise for arguments on how to define core government spending. A second amendment asked the Government to report on additionality. The Government resisted that on the basis that it was not their job and that they would end up having to define it again and that, again, we would be in a form of legal minefield. So we moved on. Very helpfully, the Minister said that the distributing bodies would report. As a result, we have received a helpful letter from the Big Lottery Fund, from which I shall quote because it is important. It states that it has,"““broadly agreed:""A common framework for reporting on additionality, which will comprise each Lottery Distributor’s policy on additionality, including a common definition; how this informs the design of funding programmes and streams and how the concept is operationalised””—" not a very nice word—"““at grant giving level.""A common definition of additionality [is] as follows ‘Lottery funding is distinct from Government funding and adds value. Although it does not substitute for Exchequer expenditure, where appropriate it complements Government and other programmes, policies and funding’.""Our Annual Reports should be the main vehicle for reporting on additionality””." We agree with that and I think it is a very helpful statement from the Big Lottery Fund, supported by all other distributing bodies. As the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said, we need a safeguard in the Bill. As the noble Lord said, it allows for flexibility in the definition. It leaves it up to the distributing bodies to report; we are not asking the Government to do anything, so I hope that the Government will, this time around, be able to accept our amendment. We have listened to the concerns put forward by the Government and I think we have addressed them. I think the Government ought to be able to accept these amendments. The Minister knows that there are concerns over additionality; this amendment would go a long way towards solving those problems.