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National Lotteries Bill

The Government’s amendments concern the proposed reserve power to reallocate an excessive national lottery distribution fund balance from a lottery distributing body to another body. The proposed new power has been the subject of extensive debate at all stages of the Bill both in this House and in another place. Ministers have given repeated assurances that the Government would seek to use the proposed new power only as a last resort against a distributor that had failed over an extended period to tackle an excessive NLDF balance and had refused to take steps to manage that balance down to a reasonable level. Those assurances were not accepted by some Members, particularly those in another place, which is disappointing to me as it feels like an attack on my integrity, and I am deeply hurt. To get into such a dismal position a distributor would need to have ignored not just the Government’s guidance, but, as I have said on a number of occasions, the recommendations of the National Audit Office and the very powerful Public Accounts Committee. I emphasise again that at the moment I am very pleased with the progress that distributors have made to get lottery money out of the bank to where people need it to do good. As things stand there is no question of our exercising the reallocation power in relation to any of the distributors. The Heritage Lottery Fund has often been mentioned in our debates. I want to pay tribute to the trustees of the Heritage Lottery Fund and their chair, Liz Forgan, for their wisdom in choosing the best projects to support. They have balanced care in the selection process with a higher rate of spend, and they have reduced the balance from a high point of over £1 billion in early 2003 to just under the target of £800 million by the end of the 2005-06 financial year. In the two months to the end of May the balance came down by a further 4 per cent. to around £764 million. That is a significant achievement by the HLF, and I understand that it plans a further significant reduction in the balance over the next three years or so. That is genuinely to be welcomed. No distributor that manages its balance down in a sensible way has anything to fear from the proposed reallocation power. I should also remind hon. Members that the power is framed so that it cannot be used to transfer lottery proceeds away from any one good cause, whether it is the arts, sport, heritage or causes supported by the Big Lottery Fund. It can be used only to transfer a balance from one body to another within the same good cause. In the reallocation power as framed in the Bill as it left this House, the Secretary of State would not have been able to exercise the power without first consulting the body from which the NLDF balance, or part of it, was to be transferred, and the body to which it was proposed to reallocate that money. The Secretary of State would also have been obliged to consult the devolved Administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Neither of these requirements has changed. Nor was there anything in the Bill as it left this House to prevent the Secretary of State from consulting more widely if she so wished. The Government fully recognise that there would be legitimate wider interest in any proposed use of the new reallocation power. Any use of the new power would be subject to affirmative resolution. There would be no question of the Government being able, somehow, to exercise the power in secret or without giving people time to make representations. However, there was no provision specifically enabling the Secretary of State to consult more widely. The desirability of clarifying that point was pressed on the Government at various stages of the Bill’s passage in another place, and, indeed, in Committee in this place. In response, the Government agreed to table appropriate amendments to require the Secretary of State to consult more widely before she can exercise the reserve power to reallocate balances. I trust that hon. Members will agree to amendments Nos. 3 and 4. On amendment No. 5, I think that there is now general agreement about the benefits of wider promotion by lottery distributors of the benefits of the lottery good causes funding. Our research tells us that people are much more supportive of the lottery and its benefits when they know how the money has been spent and why. But concerns have been expressed both in this House, notably by the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster), and in another place about the original drafting of new section 25E(c) of the National Lottery etc. Act 1993, inserted by clause 11, which refers to"““encouraging participation in activities relating to the National Lottery in general””." There was concern that that could give lottery distributors the power to encourage people to play the lottery, but we have repeatedly pointed out that there was no such intention on the Government’s part. We included that provision because we wanted to make it clear that lottery distributors have the power to encourage participation in activities related to the promotion of the lottery good causes funding, such as national lottery day and the national lottery awards. Those activities are more successful in conveying the way in which lottery money has been used if more people become involved. That is different from merely publishing information about the way in which the good causes money is spent, although it is still related entirely to the good causes funding. Hence the amendment, which makes it clear that the encouragement activity is restricted to"““distribution of money under this Act””." That money, of course, is good causes funding. With that explanation, I trust that hon. Members will support the Lords amendments.