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National Lotteries Bill

I am grateful to be able to say a few words in this debate, and to follow the interesting remarks made by the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood). I share some of his concerns about the general drift of matters to do with the national lottery. There is an acceptance in the House that the Government are moving in the right direction with the lottery, certainly compared with their original plans. However, many people outside the House are very worried about funding for the arts and heritage, which over the decades have tended to be underfunded by Governments of all parties. The lottery was originally intended to bolster the funding for heritage and the arts, and very good work was done in the early days, specifically in connection with the acquisition of objects and works of art for museums and galleries. There was a time when the Department responsible for the arts—it used to be the Department of National Heritage but is now the Department for Culture, Media and Sport—earmarked money for our national galleries so that they could acquire objects and works of art. That has been frozen or even eliminated in some cases, so that now even the British Museum and the National Gallery have almost no money at all. We are approaching the Olympics, when the eyes of the world will be on us. I hope that Ministers will take pride in the fact that this country has some of the greatest museums, galleries and arts organisations in the world, and that they will use the opportunity to talk up, praise and value our extraordinary cultural riches and heritage. However, that approach is slightly undermined by the fact that the Government have almost ceased to help our museums and galleries to make acquisitions. The two organisations that were preventing museums and galleries from being simply unable to acquire new objects and works of art were the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Heritage Lottery Fund. I fear that a terrible drift has taken place in recent years, and that it is embodied in the Bill and in the attitude of the DCMS. Guidance has been given to the Heritage Lottery Fund that it should turn its attention away from the arts and heritage in general, and away from acquisitions in particular, and towards the Olympics, sport and socially desirable programmes. Nobody disputes that those things are valuable and desirable. Everybody wants the Olympics to be a success, but the idea that they can be a success only at the expense of our cultural life and of our major museums and galleries being able to make acquisitions is very regrettable. The Bill does not, in itself, further that trend, but it does nothing to balk a trend that is extremely undesirable. Anyone who has paid any attention to these matters will have heard the articulate pleas of Mr. Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum, and Mr. Charles Saumarez Smith, the director of the National Gallery, that important acquisitions that they ought to be making on our behalf cannot be made.