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Olympics and Paralympics (Funding)

While we are still talking about funding, I should like to endorse what the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) said. It would be a missed opportunity if, in an effort to reimburse the national lottery fund, we were to lose moneys that would otherwise go to regeneration. That is their raison d'être in that part of London for the next 10 years. May I say to the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales) that the independence of the lottery has long since been lost? The Big Lottery Fund, which was introduced under the previous Government, means that lottery funding goes, to a large extent, outside those main causes. It is also true that we put a significant amount of money into the millennium fund in advance of 2000. In many ways, that head was transferred into Olympic funding.