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In August, the British Medical Journal reported that since the inception of the lottery and the relaxation of controls on gambling, there has been a 17 per cent. increase in calls to Gamblers Anonymous. Expenditure on the national lottery is more than £100 million every week, of which £40 million is spent on scratchcards. The accompanying hype, frenzy and even hysteria all underline the potential of the lottery for good and for evil.When people are asked why the lottery can do good, they invariably reply that it helps charity. That argument has been trotted out from those on the Government Front Bench today. The stark truth is that only about 5 per cent. of the take goes to charity. We know that 85 per cent. of the charities that applied for funding in the first tranche were disappointed. On Friday, the Government announced that there would be more research into whether charities are losing out. Research is not needed. The Royal National Institute for the Blind has made it clear already that it has lost £500,000 since the launch of the national lottery. The National Council for Voluntary Organisations estimates an overall decline of about £276 million. The Secretary of State has alluded to the Irish experience. Trocaire, the largest third world charity in Ireland, saw a massive reduction of nearly two thirds in its income once the national lottery had been established there. In January 1992, I told the House that 16 leading Irish charities had written to the Taoiseach to tell him that charitable lotteries had lost half their income and that the situation had reached crisis point with 50 per cent. of charitable donations being lost as a result of the Irish national lottery. Why have we had to repeat the experience? What will more research tell us that we do not know already? Is it not another example of wilfully allowing the horse to bolt when it was within our power to shut the gate?
Mr. Richard Tracey (Surbiton): The hon. Gentleman is pretty scathing about the lottery. Many of us heard him speak in Committee on these matters. Has he made the same criticisms of the pools companies? The pools provide the same sort of gambling and the same inducement to gamble. Has he said the same things about horse racing at the grand national and all other meetings?
Mr. Alton: I shall move on to the liberalisation of gambling laws. The answer to the hon. Gentleman's question is straightforward. The pools and horse racing--I am not per se against any form of gambling--are not sponsored by the state. The national lottery is, and that is why it is fundamentally different.
What money goes where and who decides to give it to whom? There seems to be a gaggle of the politically correct and the chattering classes that is virtually unaccountable to the House or to those who buy lottery tickets. There is the suspicion that everything is worked out in an Islington wine bar. The regional discrepancies bear out that argument. Merseyside knew in advance that it would be a lottery loser for reasons to which the hon. Member for Surbiton (Mr. Tracey) alluded. It was known in the area that there would be a loss of jobs in the pools industry. Jobs were bound to disappear, and they have. It is arguable, therefore, that there should have been a bias to compensate for Merseyside's job losses. Instead, the region has received the smallest percentage share of lottery handouts, only 1.8 per cent. compared with London's 25.5 per cent. If the House studies the charts setting out regional giving and population, it will find the
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discrepancies extraordinary. For example, some 9.4 per cent. of the population lives in the north-west of England, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Ms Lynne) said in an intervention, only 4.5 per cent. of total lottery money has come to the area. Similarly, the area's application to the Millennium Commission for a national museum of sport to be established on Merseyside--the idea was supported by political opinion across the spectrum and by local authorities throughout the area--was rejected out of hand. That was at least an opportunity to sweeten the pill. Instead, there has been the inevitable bitter reaction that the process of dispensing funds is being distorted.In July, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation published a report that warned that the public's support for the national lottery would be lost unless the questions that I have outlined were properly addressed. It stated:
"The National Lottery is in danger of losing public sympathy. It stands accused of transferring money from poorer communities to benefit the rich, of not providing enough new money to good causes and of leading some people into addictive patterns of gambling." It added:
"The report also proposes new safeguards to ensure that inner cities and other disadvantaged communities receive their fair share of an estimated £32 billion sale of lottery tickets during the first seven years."
My last quotation from the report warns
"of a possible public backlash--with disastrous consequences for charities and others who will increasingly depend on the lottery--unless there is action to reassure the public that its benefits outweigh any harmful social consequences."
Mr. Brandreth: The hon. Gentleman and I are neighbours from the north-west. We want, of course, to see a fair share of lottery proceeds coming our way. I think that he is being a bit churlish in not recognising how much is already coming to Liverpool on the sports side, for example, with the Greenbank project receiving nearly £500, 000. St. Helens council--on Merseyside--is receiving nearly £1 million. Brouhaha International, on the arts side, is receiving nearly £33,000 and the Everyman theatre in Liverpool--it is one of our favourite theatres--is receiving nearly £100,000. We should recognise what is being achieved while, of course, asking for more for the north-west.
Mr. Alton: Of course I accept what the hon. Gentleman says. I shall take as an example one of the projects to which he referred. The Greenbank project relates specifically to disabled and handicapped people and--he would know this if he were familiar with its work--has lurched from funding crisis to funding crisis as its statutory funds have been reduced over the past few years. That raises the additionality argument that the right hon. and learned Member for Putney was talking about.
Public confidence will be sapped by the behaviour of the Government and by that of Camelot, which is known in Liverpool as Cashalot. It is unjustifiable that Camelot's five directors all received a bonus worth 50 per cent. of their salaries because the lottery started on time. In addition, they stand to collect a further 140 per cent. bonus if they meet their target figures by September 1997. What sort of good cause is that? That will bring the whole scheme into disrepute. Camelot's profits over the first five months amount to £4.5 million. The Government have taken £169 million over that period. What has that to do with good causes or the impulses on which the lottery was established in the first place?
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An alternative bid was put forward by Richard Branson. He proposed that the money would go back into other charities. That would have been a better approach than that adopted by Camelot. No profit should be involved in the administration of the lottery. There is no need for there to be.Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Under Richard Branson's scheme, the administrative costs would have been very much higher. Had the hon. Gentleman listened to a newsflash that arrived a moment ago, he would know that the profit made by Camelot is only 1p in the pound. It is making large sums because it is supremely efficient.
Mr. Alton: Nevertheless, in the first five months, it made a profit of £169 million. It is a monopoly. There is no reason why it should make such sums. The money could have, and should have, gone to charities.
In this context, I should like to mention the role of the BBC, which has effectively given Camelot the equivalent of £120 million of free advertising since the lottery was conceived. When the BBC's charter comes before the House, as it will in the next parliamentary Session, many of us will ask why a public corporation has been fuelling the national lottery.
It is also worth pointing out that the relevant BBC programme is watched by 27 per cent. of all children from the age of four to 15. Primary school teachers are increasingly reporting how children talk of nothing but their parents' stakes and, when asked to do imaginative writing, they write about what they would do with the money if they won.
Mr. Alex Salmond (Banff and Buchan): Given that the programme is watched by children of an impressionable age, is it wise for the BBC to feature the Secretary of State for National Heritage on it?
Mr. Alton: The hon. Gentleman's question raises an important point about how the lottery can be used to create what the Government initially thought would be a feel-good factor, how it can be manipulated for political purposes and how the funds can be used like a pork barrel for the dispensation of goodies to favoured people in various parts of the country.
The lottery is a poll tax in carpet slippers. Once the word "fun" is attached to something, people queue up to surrender their money, which is then dispensed by unaccountable people to people and causes over which the House has no control.
The controversial payment of nearly £13 million for the Churchill archives followed soon after by the suicide of a man who had forgotten to buy his ticket; the repetitive stories of how undreamt of riches have led to broken marriages and families; the obscenity of pay-outs of up to £18 million; the lottery's regressive impact on the poor; its stimulation of gambling; its adverse effects on charities; and the creation of an entire culture based on chance rather than thrift, effort or prudence should surely make us think more deeply about the corrosive effects on British society of what the Secretary of State very foolishly described today as a dream machine. I and my right hon. and hon. Friends will be supporting the motion. 5.52 pm
Mr. Tim Renton (Mid-Sussex): I find the morality of the hon. Member for Liverpool, Mossley Hill (Mr. Alton)
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extraordinarily hard to follow. Why should the lottery have such a corrosive effect on poor innocent Britons when there has been a lottery in Spain, France and virtually every other European country for a great many years?The hon. Gentleman uses the analogy of the United States. I was there at Easter, and I know that virtually every state has its own lottery. Some of those lottery proceeds are used to fund state expenditure, and I cannot say that people there seem especially corrupted or unhappy as a result. What is especially wrong with the lottery that is not wrong with horses, the pools, greyhounds or every other form of betting?
Mr. George Galloway (Glasgow, Hillhead): It is state-sponsored.
Mr. Renton: Yes, but what about the tote? That is supported by the state, and it is a quango. The hon. Gentleman should think through his argument.
All of us wonder whether it is the policy of the Liberal party to do away with the lottery. We should be grateful for some clarification.
What is fascinating to hon. Members of all parties is that we are for once debating a huge success, but Opposition Members clearly find it hard to come to terms with that; hence the concentration on the charity issue. That is important--
Mr. Tony Banks rose --
Mr. Renton: I shall deal with charities later, but I wish to make some other remarks first.
The difference between this debate and one that I might have had when I was Minister for the Arts three or four years ago is that then I would inevitably have been apologising to every hon. Member who asked, like my hon. Friends the Members for Twickenham (Mr. Jessel) and for Gillingham (Mr. Couchman), why some money had not been made available for a particular theatre, dance hall or gallery in his constituency. Today, almost every Back Bencher has said thank you to the lottery, via the Secretary of State, for favours received or favours expected. Leaving charities on one side, the change in the amount of funding now available for the arts, sports, heritage and the millennium is of an astonishing order.
When I was the last Minister for the Arts, between 1990 and 1992, I remember fighting the Treasury and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor), who was then Chief Secretary and who has now left the Chamber. I fought to get a £28 million, or 14 per cent., increase in the Arts Council's budget. When I got it, it was considered so astonishing that it merited a cartoon in the Evening Standard , which I have of course pinned up in the loo at home. Today, that £28 million represents almost exactly what is generated in one day by the lottery for the five good causes. It must not be forgotten that our ability on the back of the lottery--which I, for one, certainly do not find evil--to do constructive work for the cultural and sporting infrastructure of this country is almost infinite. Members of all parties are right to say that we have a golden opportunity, and that we should not make a mess of it.
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We have to come to terms with the fact that we are living with a fantastic success. Who would have thought, a year or two ago, that on the corner of almost every street, like a favourite pub sign, one sees the placard with the navy blue male fist and crossed fingers welcoming us in to the shop to buy a lottery ticket? It has become a familiar household insignia, and is potentially very productive for this country.When I was Minister for the Arts, I had no doubts about the benefits of a national lottery. I knew very well that there was no other possible way that I could get from the Treasury a reasonably large increase for the arts, museums or galleries. I was taken around the Victoria and Albert museum by Elizabeth Esteve-Coll, the museum's brilliant director at the time, who has since retired. She pointed out to me the holes in the roof, from which water was dripping into buckets between the statues. I was taken to Sadler's Wells, and shown the site where the company would have loved to build a new theatre, although there was no possibility of it at that time.
I went backstage at the royal opera house, and was shown the submarine engines, to which my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Putney referred, which were used to move the scenery up and down. People backstage told me that, amazingly, there had been only one fatal accident. That has all changed greatly for the better, as a result of the money available from the lottery.
Also in my position as Minister for the Arts, I remember visiting the Minister for Culture in Greece, who wanted huge sums of money to rebuild the classical amphitheatres along the Mediterranean coast, for the benefit of tourism but also for the sake of Greek history. As we drove from the airport, I asked the question that Ministers for the Arts always asked each other in those days which was, "How are you doing for money?" She said that she was saved by the lottery. It was a phrase that I never forgot.
Mr. Peter Kilfoyle (Liverpool, Walton): The right hon. Gentleman described a moment ago how the lottery and its sign was taking over from the corner pub as something with which people identified, and I am sure that that is true in many areas. Apart from that, what percentage of his income does he spend on lottery tickets?
Mr. Renton: That is a most extraordinary question. I do not think that it is of any relevance at all, but I take it that the hon. Gentleman is referring to the Church's complaint that those people on lower incomes are spending too much of their money on lottery tickets. He should be reminded of the remarks made by the Secretary of State when she quoted research which showed precisely the opposite: the evidence so far is that the amount relatively being spent on lottery tickets by those on higher wages is very much greater. I shall return just for a few moments more to the period four or five years ago. I remember being absolutely thrilled when I was able to persuade my right hon. Friend the Member the Mole Valley (Mr. Baker), then the Home Secretary, that we should look seriously at the question of a national lottery, and when in turn we persuaded the Prime Minister to follow that line.
We faced, I may say, very strong opposition from Treasury Ministers throughout, including the Chief Secretary, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Putney, because they quite simply do not like hypothecation of revenue. They do not like money being
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raised which is going to go to specific causes without going through the Treasury maw en route. But I am delighted that we got the lottery. I know that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Burton (Sir I. Lawrence), the Chairman of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, played a large part in that process too, with his private Member's Bill.Sir Ivan Lawrence: I thank my hon. right Friend for his support.
All the things on the arts front with which I was concerned, which seemed impossible, are now possible, and they are not going to happen only in London, since clearly there is a limit to the number of tattered opera houses to be repaired in London. I have no doubt that, in future grants from the Arts Council, we shall see an increasing spread of the money available throughout the country.
Mr. Robert McCartney (North Down): Do I understand that the argument being propounded is that the ends justify the means? I know from experience in Northern Ireland, which has one of the highest rates of unemployment and poverty in the United Kingdom, that the most excessive gambling, the greatest gambling and the largest amount of money spent on gambling occurs in areas where there
is--literally--no hope of employment. The greatest amount of money is being spent on the lottery in such areas, because it offers a dream or a hope which the Government do not offer through employment and thrift.
Mr. Renton: The hon. Gentleman is trying to make a totally different point: to get the Government to spend more money on encouraging employment in Northern Ireland. I see absolutely nothing wrong at all with a lottery offering hope, fun, and the prospect, if one is lucky, of winning a lot of money, and if one is not lucky, of a reasonable proportion going to good causes.
Mr. Tony Banks: The right hon. Gentleman said that we have run out of decrepit opera houses in London to patch up. If he were devising the scheme for handing out the money, would he change any of the rules to, for example, enable revenue funds to go to arts institutions rather than to the buildings?
Mr. Renton: I think that such changes are on the way already. I know that the chairman of the Arts Council was in the Gallery listening to the debate, but has now left. My understanding is that the rules have been changed, to the degree that, in an application for capital funding--capital funding going on at the moment--20 per cent. of the money allocated can be used for current expenditure. That change has taken place.
If anyone reads the Arts Council News National Lottery Supplement of August and September, they will see that there is a huge disbursement of Arts Council money, to, for example, theatres up and down the country. When I was Arts Minister, the Arts Council had no capital expenditure money available for theatres whatever. I used to be taken to see beautiful Victorian Matcham theatres whose roofs were falling in, which needed x millions of pounds for repair and had no hope of it being done. Against that background, I persuaded Lord Wolfson to make £1 million available for a theatre restoration fund,
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which we matched with £1 million of Government money, in order that there was some money to repair and restore the great Victorian theatres of this country.Now, there are 12 or so theatres on the list of organisations receiving grants. They are in west Oxfordshire, Bradford, Rossendale, Norwich, Southampton, Hull, Nottingham, Leeds, Sudbury, Bishop's Stortford, Barnsley --all theatres receiving lottery money for repair, rehabilitation, new projects. It is a tremendous development. I turn to the charities. It was obvious that the charities would always be the difficult part of this exercise, because everyone has or should have their favourite charity or two, and we always think that the ones that we back or are involved with are the best causes--that is why we get involved with them.
The right hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) forgot to mention that the director general, or whatever he is called, of an individual charity, has an enormous effect on its fund-raising power for the time that he is in office. Why are people employed at reasonably high salaries to run the fund -raising operations of a charity? It is because such people have a track record of raising a lot of money. Some of that salary is often based on the results they achieve. I shall refer to the Royal National Institute for the Blind in a moment.
We should not put all charities in precisely the same box--all suffering, or all benefiting. My hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham pointed out earlier that the British Red Cross has increased its receipts this year. The Macmillan Cancer Relief Fund has increased its receipts. New charities spawn all the time, and in the past year I have become chairman of one new charity and gone on the board or become a trustee of two others--all unpaid, of course. Only a few days ago, I refused to become chairman of yet another charity, because they come along all the time, they always have brilliant ideas, and we are all trying for the same sources for money.
It is not surprising, therefore, that, in the story of charities as it develops, there are failures and there are successes. Many now benefit from quite a different source of money other than the lottery: gift aid, introduced by the Government. The minimum gift is £250, but for every £3 that one gives within that minimum gift of £250, the charity collects another £1 from the Inland Revenue, and--if one is a top- grade taxpayer--the donor gets 60p back. That is also an important new addition to the funds available to charities.
Of course it is a pity that the National Lottery Charities Board did not get going earlier. Many of us would have welcomed the first lottery awards going to charities from the NLCB. But surely, now that it has started, it would be a huge mistake not to allow it to operate for a year or two, but to insist on changes immediately. It would be a huge mistake to dig up the plant and look at the roots to see whether it was living or not. We must let it get on with its job, and trust that, as it gets to know its task and gain experience, it will act not only in a thoroughly responsible way, but in a way with which all of us interested in charities can be satisfied.
I have great sympathy with the communications director of the board, who I heard say on "Call Nick Ross" yesterday that enormous care had been taken in examining the 1,500 submissions received by the board, and that it had taken a great deal of trouble in how it awarded
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money. Obviously, those who do not get any complain, and those who do feel very satisfied. That is the way of the world.It is important that not receiving money from the charities board or, indeed, feeling the pressure from the lottery, should not be used as an excuse, a scapegoat, for difficult decisions that charities should have taken some years ago. I refer specifically to the RNIB, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Mossley Hill, and also by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State.
I have a constituency interest to mention, because the RNIB has just announced that it intends to close the Sunshine House school in East Grinstead that looks after children who are not partially but totally blind.
The children who go to the home are often unable to walk, but, through intensive treatment, they are taught to walk. One parent who came to see me at my advice surgery last Friday said that, when their four-year-old daughter went there, she could not walk at all and was likely to sit on a bean bag for the rest of her life. Thanks to the equipment there, such as multi-ply standing frames and custom-built wheelchairs, she and others are slowly learning to walk. Through learning to walk, they start to communicate, play in groups and so on.
It has been mentioned twice already that the RNIB's income this year has fallen by £500,000, but that is £500,000 out of a total revenue of £42 million. It is using that as a reason for closing the Sunshine home. It has given the parents only six months' notice. It is impossible for the parents to find other appropriate schools for their children by Easter next year. It takes 18 months to have the children re-statemented-- to use the official term.
The absence of lottery funds is being used as an excuse for taking a difficult decision which has been in the offing for a long time. I should like to think that the parents could persuade the RNIB to postpone the decision, and to work with them on a business plan and a means of funding the £300,000 deficit in the home. The institute could then wait to see whether, in next year's round of grants from the charities board, it got the money that it needed. There is a possibility that it will do so, and it would be a great mistake if the home was closed in a hurry.
The Millennium Commission has had its critics. It started as a piece of paper from my desk in 1990 or 1991 to No. 10 Downing street suggesting that it should be set up. I had in mind what had happened in South Kensington after the Great Exhibition, when the spare funds were used to start the building of that great collection of museums. It is enormously important that the funds should be used to build monuments or buildings that will be not only representative of our lives in the year 2000 but signposts for generations to come. In that context, I recommend to my hon. Friend the Minister of State the project at Wakehurst Place gardens, a satellite of Kew gardens, to set up a millennium seed bank.
One specimen each of all British flora and 10 per cent. of the world's flora will be collected, including many of the plants that are now threatened with extinction in the arid and semi-arid regions of the world. Thus, a source of flora will be created that could be of immense help to future generations. People will be able to go to Wakehurst for seeds for propagation.
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That will be not only a fantastic memorial but a great help to future generations in the propagation of plants. It will also meet our commitments under the convention on biological diversity agreed at the Rio de Janeiro conference. It seems to me exactly the sort of project that the Millennium Commission should be involved with. It would be a signpost for future generations of what we are doing now, and it would look ahead to the spirit of the future. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will support it.6.13 pm
Mr. John Maxton (Glasgow, Cathcart): I declare that I was one Opposition Member who voted for the Second Reading of the National Lottery etc. Bill. I would do so again if a similar Bill came before the House. I am in favour of the lottery. It has been a success, although it has its drawbacks. I am an occasional partaker in the lottery. I do not buy a ticket on a weekly basis. When I do, if am in on a Saturday evening, I watch the results. I get a buzz out of the fact that I might just win a large sum of money. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) says, I am not averse to winning a few million pounds if the opportunity arises. I believe that the odds against winning the lottery are slightly similar to those that we would get if we walked into a bookmakers and asked what odds they would give on a spaceship landing and Elvis Presley getting out. Those are the sort of odds we are talking about, but I still get a buzz. I still think that there is a chance that I will be the one who will win this week. I enjoy it. I think that a lot of people enjoy it.
I accept that there will be some problems with addiction. I also enjoy a glass of wine on a Saturday evening, often at the same time as I watch the lottery results, but I am not an alcoholic and nor are most people who enjoy a drink. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Mossley Hill (Mr. Alton) suggested that we should get rid of the national lottery because it encouraged gambling. I am sure that he is not a prohibitionist and would not seek to ban alcohol or tobacco.
Mr. Alton: I would ban tobacco.
Mr. Maxton: There might be a case for banning tobacco, but there certainly is not for banning alcohol.
It is remarkable that the Government are in such deep trouble that, even with a success story, they still manage to come out smelling not of violets but of the reverse. Somehow, the press has picked up the story that the lottery is not a great success. It is constantly on about the failures rather than the successes of the lottery. That may be because the Government are now doomed to failure.
I read things, particularly in the Scottish press, which are entirely wrong. I notice that the leader of the Scottish National party has now disappeared. His spokesman on the lottery carped on about the large sums of money that went to the opera houses in London as if that was money of which Scotland was deprived. She does not even understand that there is a separate Scottish arts fund which has nothing to do with London or the distribution of money in England and Wales. We distribute our own money through a separate arts council. I wish that the SNP would stop that sort of carping, but it is typical of
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narrow-minded nationalism that is based on hatred and envy of one's neighbours rather than love of one's nation. The SNP shows that symptom on all occasions.Scotland has its own allocation of money for arts, sports and charities. Those funds are separate from funds for England. If London was given millions of pounds more or less, it would not make a blind bit of difference to what happened in Scotland. So perhaps some of the press and the SNP should get their facts right before they make the comments that they do.
The lottery is far from perfect. I join my hon. Friends in their criticisms of the profits that Camelot has made. They are excessive. They are not the level of profits that the Government expected Camelot to make when they established the lottery. We may be gambling when we buy a lottery ticket, but no one seriously thought that Camelot was gambling when it was given the right to set up the lottery. If it was, the gamble has paid off enormously.
I tried to intervene in the speech of the Secretary of State to ask her a simple question. She was strong in her defence of the system that we have in place. If she believes that it is so right and if by some very strange mischance--I do not think that it is likely to happen--she was Secretary of State when the contract came to be renewed, would she renew it on exactly the same terms or would she reduce the profit that Camelot could take? Perhaps her deputy will answer that question when he replies to the debate.
I have reservations about the rolling over of the large prizes. I take the Secretary of State's point that when the prize is rolled over there is a 20 per cent. increase in the number of people buying lottery tickets the following week. That may be correct. I gather that that is roughly some £4 million extra, which the right hon. Lady said went to new causes. However, we could do things in a better way. Many people might buy a lottery ticket because they hope to win £27 million but many people still feel that it is wrong. Most people feel that they could get by for the rest of their lives on £9 million and do not really need £27 million. Therefore, we should look at different ways of using the roll- over.
I want to put a proposition to the House that I do not think has been put before. The first prize should not be rolled over or redistributed among the other prizewinners in that particular week. We should take the £9 million or £10 million, which is the first prize in any one week, and simply give it to the charities board for allocation to the charities. That would be simple and clear. It would require a change in the legislation, but it would be immensely popular with the British people and would solve many people's objections to the large rollover prize the following week. Far from £4 million going to the good causes, £9 million or £10 million would go to the good causes, and I should have thought that that was a good idea.
We must also change the rules on revenue and capital spend. The lottery is a bigger success than anyone thought in terms of raising money and the money that it has to give to the arts and to sport. But, as a result, we shall be building and renewing theatres, sports halls and running tracks. I holiday on the Isle of Arran which has a population of 5,500 and, believe it or not, it has been given £650, 000 to build a theatre. That is great. It is
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wonderful. But it is a small area receiving a large sum of money. When all the capital projects have been completed, what will the money then be used for?In Glasgow--I use Glasgow only as an example, not to suggest that Scotland is in any way being deprived--Scottish Opera is in dire financial straits and Glasgow Citizens' theatre, because of changes in local government, is facing cuts in its grant from local authorities. Strathclyde region is disappearing and it is a major contributor to the Citizens' theatre. There is no guarantee that the money given by Strathclyde region will be given by the much smaller local authorities that have been created which may well be more concerned with arts in their own areas than arts in Glasgow. Neither of those bodies has any capital projects in mind. They do not need money for that. Scottish Opera does not want to build a new theatre and the Citizens' theatre has just completed a major overhaul and renovation without the lottery money. What they need is extra money for revenue spend- -more grant for the sort of productions that they want to put on.
I accept the argument that even some of my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Opposition Front Bench have put to me, that the great danger of using such money for revenue is that the Government may say that the Scottish Arts Council or the Arts Council for England do not need any Government grant and can just take funds straight from the lottery. That involves the great risk that if the lottery started to lose money it would not be able to supply the funds.
I hope that we shall have a change of Government in the near future. The Secretary of State may not give a guarantee that that would never happen, because Tories are a bit like that, but my Front Bench can give me a guarantee that if a Labour Government were in power they would not do that.
However, we should also consider how organisations could acquire specific money for specific revenue projects. For instance, if Scottish Opera wanted to do an international tour and needed money for that, perhaps it should be able to go to the lottery fund for a specific grant for that purpose. Or perhaps it could obtain specific grants for the training of its orchestra. That would remove the worry about a general grant.
In sport, I want to see the United Kingdom, its component parts and the British team, enjoying great success. One way in which we encourage more sport in Britain is by building and providing more facilities for our youngsters. But that is not enough. We need good coaches. We need to be able to tell good youngsters coming up that they will be given proper coaching and that they will have an income that will enable them to survive while they are learning to be top sportsmen. The lottery fund should be used for those purposes as well. Those are only some of the ideas that must be considered with regard to the lottery.
I finish as I started. There are criticisms to be made of the lottery, but in the main it has provided valuable income for the arts, sports and some charities, although I accept that there are problems there. I voted for the Bill on Second Reading and I would do the same again.
6.16 pm
Mr. Toby Jessel (Twickenham): It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart
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(Mr. Maxton) who made a notable contribution to today's debate, as he does to the Select Committee on National Heritage on which I serve with him. He makes a regular and sound contribution to the work of that Committee.I want to return later to the hon. Gentleman's point about Camelot's profits at the beginning of his speech, but towards the end of his speech he mentioned the training of orchestras. I should declare an interest as a member of the council of the Association of British Orchestras, which has recently received an Arts Council national lottery grant of £22,000 which will be useful to the association in its promotion of the work of British orchestras. That is just a small illustration of the lottery's tremendous success and the grants that it has been making. I am particularly glad that my right hon. Friend the Member for City of London and Westminster, South (Mr. Brooke) has returned to the Chamber because it was he who masterminded the introduction of the lottery, the placing of the Bill before the House and the setting of its course. I know that neither my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State who took office about three months ago, nor my hon. Friend the Minister of State will mind my saying that. It really has, in the words of the Government's amendment, been a "huge success". It has exceeded all expectations.
I can remember my right hon. Friend the Member for two cities saying, when the Bill was before us, that he anticipated that the yield for good causes would be, on a cautious estimate, £400 million a year--£80 million for each of the five sets of good causes. We are not far short of three times that yield.
When we debated the national lottery in December 1994, we were told that the weekly average for good causes would be £12 million, which would have amounted to about £600 million a year or £120 million for each of the sets of good causes. The latest figure that we have been given is £1,100 million for about 10.5 or 11 months and it looks as though it will be £1.2 billion over the 12 months, which will produce upwards of £200 million for each of the sets of good causes, and perhaps more like £220 million or £230 million in a complete year. That is a tremendous success and it is a great pity that anyone should want to disparage it.
Nearly 30 million people in the over-16 age group who are entitled to play the lottery do so each week, which is about 68 per cent. of the population. Without doubt, it gives widespread pleasure to those who participate and a substantial yield in tax to the Government--at least £500 million a year in direct tax and another considerable sum from the corporation tax levied on Camelot, quite apart from what it throws up in value added tax and the income tax paid by those who work for the lottery. We are approaching a figure of £600 million, which is not far short of 0.5p in the pound on income tax--a worthwhile return to the Government, at which no one should sneer. The lottery can provide a significant contribution to the funds that the Government have to spend on education, health, pensions and so forth. It really is a brilliant national achievement.
The Opposition know perfectly well that the lottery has produced massive new support for the arts, sports and heritage and for the millennium fund and the caring charities. They also know perfectly well that it has produced a big tax yield, that it is highly popular and that
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it gives pleasure to a great many people. The Opposition also know that we would have had to introduce a national lottery because if we had not done so, under European Union law, continental countries could have sold their lottery tickets in Britain and siphoned money off to continental good causes--money that should have gone to good causes in Britain.Mr. Tony Banks: May I take the hon. Gentleman back a couple of sentences? Why should the Government get a tax yield from the national lottery? It then becomes a form of taxation.
Mr. Jessel: Because the national lottery undoubtedly takes some money away from the football pools, on which the profits went to the Government. If the lottery had not yielded any tax, revenue to the Government would have been lost. It had to be done, therefore, and it was right that it was done.
The Labour and Liberal parties know that people like the national lottery, so they do not want to attack it in principle--except for the hon. Member for Liverpool, Mossley Hill (Mr. Alton), who is always serious, earnest and sincere in his approach, although I could not accept his failure to reply when challenged about the moral issues he raised. He said that the lottery is immoral because people bet on it and so it reduces the income of poor families. When challenged by my hon. Friend the Member for Surbiton (Mr. Tracey) as to the difference between the lottery and betting on horse racing and football pools, which are very popular in Liverpool, the hon. Gentleman was able to say only that those are provided by private enterprise, but the national lottery is provided by the Government, which seems to make no difference.
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