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Heritage

My hon. Friend is entirely right. That is the exact subject that I want to come on to and the Committee has some strong views on that. The concern is about future funding. We already know that the funds available to the HLF will decline significantly. The establishment of an Olympic game will, we believe, cost the HLF some £75 million and the additional amount which it has been announced will be taken out of the main lottery will remove £68 million over four years from lottery funds. The HLF’s ability to fund projects in future will be considerably affected by that. The fund has made it clear to us that in the main large grants are likely to be cut. That is a matter of some concern. When we published our report, we said specifically that the Government should undertake that no more should be taken away from the original good causes to fund a possible increase in costs of the Olympics. Since the report was published, we have had a second inquiry into the Olympics and we know, because the Secretary of State came and told us, that costs have already gone up by £900 million. We are awaiting a decision from the Government on how that money will be found. The Secretary of State gave us a strong steer in our session that she was looking to the lottery to make a big contribution, if not to meet the entire overspend. That is a matter of concern to us. There is no doubt that if the lottery has to go on giving more and more to meet the costs of the Olympics, its ability to fund other good causes will be severely affected. It risks doing real damage to all of those other areas—the arts, sport outside of the Olympics, charities and particularly the area that we are debating today, the heritage. Again, I do not expect the Minister to give a commitment, but I hope that he will at least take on board our strong view that it is not appropriate for the lottery to fund any more of the Olympic games than is already proposed. I turn to the other big player in heritage matters, and perhaps the biggest—local authorities. They are doubtless at the sharp end in delivering heritage protection, and they have the key responsibilities. There is a huge variation between authorities in the degree of expertise that is available to them, the resources that they can put into heritage matters and the priority that they can give to it. Not all authorities employ conservation officers, and we are concerned that that position may deteriorate because, as the officers reach retirement age, they may not be replaced. Our first recommendation was that more information is needed about the number of authorities that have conservation expertise, and about the extent to which that can be expected to increase or diminish in coming years. That is particularly important given that the main thrust of the heritage protection review will be to place new responsibilities on local authorities.