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Mr. Peter Ainsworth (East Surrey): I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and for the brief advance notice that we received of it.
Progress towards the statement has followed a familiar pattern. There are, in descending order of accuracy, accidental leaks, deliberate leaks and leaks from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Leaks from the Department are designed to create headlines such as "School Sport Cash Bonanza" and "£100 million boost for arts in UK". I have to give it to the Secretary of State: he has become rather good at headlines, but he has been up to his old tricks again. The spending figures that he has announced today have been fiddled, spun and inflated out of all recognition.
Two years ago, many people were prepared to give the Secretary of State's extravagant promises the benefit of the doubt. Two years ago, we were also told of a cash bonanza for the arts and sport. What have we had since then? We have had theatres closing, orchestras closing, cultural vandalism, playing fields still being sold off, less sport in schools, thousands of heritage sites officially "at risk" and a near trebling of the balance of trade deficit in tourism.
What has the Secretary of State brought us? He has brought us any number of eye-catching initiatives with which he is personally associated--such as the shambles over the United Kingdom Sports Institute, the fiasco over Wembley stadium and the prospect of having to host the world athletics championship with nowhere for it to be held. He is also associated with a world cup bid that, according to the Minister for Sport, was doomed from the start, and, of course, with the dome--that perfect emblem of new Labour.
Ministers farcically still maintain that the dome is a huge success, although it has swallowed £140 million in extra funds in the past year and is again teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. The Secretary of State will have no compunction at all about bailing out the dome with money that could have been used on any number of good causes, including regeneration.
The Secretary of State runs a Department for Culture in which there is a culture of dither, delay, incompetence and confusion. He stands accused of presiding over a Department where there is
- an us and them mentality which divides the Department and its stakeholders all the way down.
Who has levelled these accusations? They are from an internal review by a panel chaired by the head of Inland Revenue, whose report on the Secretary of State's Department is entitled "The Pale Yellow Amoeba". The Secretary of State has turned his Department into something resembling the lowest form of life, with no backbone and a tendency to spread itself by random osmosis. However, the arts, sport, heritage and tourism deserve better than that. They also deserve more honesty over their funding arrangements.
According to the Secretary of State's mathematics, his departmental expenditure will increase by £225 million by 2003-04. Someone, however, has been spinning, and that figure miraculously ballooned into £485 million, as reported in some newspapers and on BBC Online--which should know better. As I am sure that the Secretary of State would not wish to be associated with an artificially inflated figure, I hope that he will take the opportunity shortly to repudiate it.
While entering a general caveat that, like the rest of the country, the Opposition are increasingly sceptical of any figures from the Government, I shall make a leap of faith. I shall assume that the Secretary of State's figure for departmental spending next year--stated at £1.12 billion--is correct. Will the Secretary of State confirm that, on page 175 of his recent annual report, his departmental spending is shown as £1.1 billion? Will he therefore confirm--it is not a very difficult sum; he should not have too much trouble over this--that the difference between the two is £20 million? Will he comment on that in the light of his own admission that £60 million of next year's funding has already been announced?
Looking further ahead, the Secretary of State predicts total departmental spending of £1.24 billion in 2003-04. Will he confirm that that is an increase of £140 million over three years, not £225 million, let alone £485 million?
Will the Secretary of State also take into account the impact of the Government's raid on the national lottery, which was established by the previous Government--whom he so derided today--and which so far has produced £1 billion for 3,000 sport centres and projects across the country and millions of pounds for the arts and heritage? Is it not the case that, on the assumption that levels of play remain constant, the lottery beneficiaries will be denied about £130 million annually which they had every right to expect would be theirs?
The raid on the lottery, coupled with a decision to transfer all the Millennium Commission's share into the new opportunities fund from next year, means that, having taken account of the consequences of today's announcement, the arts and sport can look forward to a net reduction in their expected total funding of almost £300 million and £360 million respectively over the next three years. Stripped of spin, that is the sum of the right hon. Gentleman's achievements--some bonanza!
No wonder the Government have chosen today to claim credit for the news that, in 1997, the football authorities agreed to plough 5 per cent. of their television rights money back into the grass roots of sport. When the football posts go up in the garden of No. 10, we know that things must be really bad. It is typical of a Government who take credit for everything, but take responsibility for nothing.
Instead of devoting so much of his statement this afternoon to misleading attacks on the previous Administration and the Opposition, why does the Secretary of State not get his act together? We are more than three years into this Government. People in sport, the arts, heritage and tourism are looking for delivery, not promises; results, not spin doctoring; clarity, not confusion. They will get none of those things from the "pale yellow amoeba", and it is time the right hon. Gentleman was written out of the core script of government.
Mr. Smith: It is perhaps no accident that the hon. Gentleman wanted to talk about absolutely anything but the statement that I have just made. He gave us a little tour of the horizon. He touched on the dome, which of course has no Exchequer funding. He speculated about misleading newspaper reports, for which presumably the editors of the newspapers are responsible, not me. He alluded briefly to the excellent and extremely positive peer review report on the workings of my Department,
and then he gave us the tired old story about the national lottery, ignoring the fact that the arts and sports were each promised £1.8 billion at the outset of the lottery from the seven-year period of funding. They are now set to receive more than £1.8 billion each.In addition, the hon. Gentleman ignored the fact that the new opportunities fund, which we have been able to create with the additional funds that have come into the national lottery, has provided money to put into after-school clubs, school sports co-ordinators, drama, music and arts for schoolchildren; and, through the new opportunities fund green spaces initiative, to bring back some of the playing fields that were sold off under the Conservative Government. I presume that that is money that the hon. Gentleman derides, as he did at the Tory party conference, when he said:
- A new pot for health and education, things that shouldn't be funded by the Lottery.
The hon. Gentleman had the gall to say that playing fields were still being sold off--this from the party that sold off 5,000 playing fields during its time in office. In that time, the average number of sales was running at 40 a month. I am pleased to say that it is now down to three a month. That is still too many, and we are working on that, but it is a considerable improvement on the record of the previous Government.
I can confirm to the House that this settlement from the Chancellor--new money announced in his statement last week--amounts to £20 million in the first year, £130 million in the second year and £200 million in the third year. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for calling it a bonanza for school sport, because that is precisely what it is.
Mr. Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton): Is my right hon. Friend aware that in that outpouring of inarticulate rubbish which, unbelievably, he must have spent some time preparing, the Opposition spokesman has explained why the people of Manchester have thrown out every Tory Member of Parliament and councillor?
The hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth) failed to mention the Government money that is going towards the opening and closing ceremonies of the Commonwealth games, which is important for the Queen's golden jubilee games that will be staged in Manchester in 2002. Is my right hon. Friend aware that in a city such as Manchester we are highly gratified that, by assisting school sport in the country's premier sporting city and by connecting schoolchildren with the arts, he is providing hope, training and a future--cultural and sporting--for the children of this country, who suffered so badly under the Tory Government? His statement is excellent and we look forward to the next review, when we are sure it will be even better.
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