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National Lottery Bill

My Lords, I really cannot see the necessity for this amendment, although I congratulate the noble Lords on bringing an amendment to address the dreaded question of additionality without mentioning the word. They are to be very warmly congratulated on that. The amendment also seems to aim to check what proportion of money will go the voluntary and community sector. It also seems to have another crack at limiting what is already, in my view, very limited government influence. It is, in other words, something of a catch-all amendment in trying to do all those things. It is unnecessary because there are already safeguards in place. We have discussed the independence of decisions about funding at length and have, I hope, established that those decisions are always taken independently by lottery distributors, including the Big Lottery Fund. As we have heard, the Big Lottery Fund and the other distributors are already pledged to monitor and report regularly on the question of additionality, as they are pledged to report on how they will carry out their publicly stated commitment to ensuring that the voluntary sector receives between 60 and 70 per cent of the total sum. If they did not do that we can be assured that NCBO and other voluntary organisations would soon shout loudly about it. There are very heavy requirements for reporting already on lottery distributors, especially the Big Lottery Fund; they are very willing to meet and extend these requirements. To require them to do any further reporting would, in my view, risk their spending too much time reporting and not enough doing what they were set up to do: distribute lottery money to disadvantaged individuals and communities.