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28 Feb 2003 : Column 538—continued
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. I should tell the hon. Gentleman that my son's girlfriend is currently in Peru, but that has as much relevance to the debate as his comments.
Michael Fabricant: I am fascinated to know that, Sir. I only hope that your son's girlfriend does not try a giant guinea pig in Peru or elsewhere.
We must think wisely and carefully about where the money goes. It is particularly poignant to learn that the Royal British Legion was refused £500,000 for a residential home and that the Battle of Britain Historical Society was refused money for a memorial. We must always consider carefully how the money is spent. On balance, the Bill is overdue. Personally, I think that it should not be called the National Lottery (Funding of Endowments) Bill but simply the Norfolk Bill. I commend all Norfolk Members as well as the Eastern Daily Press on being its progenitors.
1.26 pm
Mr. Bill Wiggin (Leominster): It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant), who is fast becoming a national treasure. I wish that he had time to tell us how the guinea pig tasted before he was stopped in his tracks.
The lottery has not always been disastrous in its handing out of funds. I should like to touch on one or two successful appeals in my constituency. Herefordshire Headway provides education, day care and rehabilitation for adults with brain injury, and was lucky enough to receive £198,000. Bromyard public hall, Age Concern Leominster, and North Herefordshire and Tenbury area council for voluntary service all received lottery funding, for which they are extremely grateful. I was deeply concerned that my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson) found that it was occasionally difficult for a Member of Parliament to be constructive. I suspect that he was referring to his time in the Whips Office.
It is important to declare my interest as a trustee of the Eveson charitable trust, which gives large donations to charities. The Bishop of Hereford, other trustees and I spend a great deal of time and effort to try to ensure that the best causes receive funding and focus particularly on who will do the most good locally. I do not envy people who have the job of making such decisions on behalf of the lottery. It would be a tragedy if they were prohibited from giving endowments, so I hope that the Bill is successful in altering that. I should also like to declare an interest as someone who has been lucky enough to get five numbers in the lottery. Unfortunately, I was part of a large syndicate of 18 colleagues, and we won the princely sum of £25 each. I sat next to the young man who chose the numbers and I was appalled to overhear a colleague say, "Well, why didn't you get the sixth one right, you idiot?" That just shows how ungrateful some people can be.
When looking at endowments to charities, we should remember that their purpose is to ensure that charities' good work continues. I recall a visit to the volunteer
bureau in Leominster, where I witnessed something that most Members who have visited such bureaux will have witnessed. People were trying desperately hard to do something good—working hard for charity—only to find that halfway through their term they had to turn their attention away from charitable work and start to concentrate on funding their work for the next three years. Endowments would make that unnecessary, so the proposed change is thoroughly commendable.I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield for mentioning the hospice movement. I am a patron of St. Michael's hospice in Bartestree in my constituency. Palliative care touches people so intensely personally, and the Government should consider the funding of it.
I am pleased to have had an opportunity to speak on this important subject. Like all those involved in charitable work, I believe that we should do it to the best of our ability and ensure that the work continues unabated. To that end, I support the Bill.
1.30 pm
The Minister for Sport (Mr. Richard Caborn): I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson) on his successful introduction of the Bill. As many hon. Members have said, it is pleasing that he took the opportunity afforded to him to bring the Bill before the House. I know how much the issue addressed by the Bill means to the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues in the wider Norfolk constituencies, many of whom are present and have contributed to the debate.
I put on record a tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson) who, as has been mentioned, introduced a similar Bill back in 2001, seeking at the time to apply the Bill's provisions solely to the Community Fund. My hon. Friend's Bill reached its Third Reading before the general election intervened to prevent further consideration. That was unfortunate, to some more so than to others. Although we believed the Bill to be technically flawed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) explained from the Front Bench, we were sympathetic to the principle. That, together with the help of my Department, has enabled the hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk to produce a Bill that is technically sounder than the previous one.
It would be remiss of me not to mention the comments of the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) about the lottery in general and the subject of good causes in particular. Several hon. Members have referred to their experience with the lottery. I remind the House what an institution the lottery is, and credit for its existence is due to both sides of the House. The lottery has raised £12.4 billion for good causes. One or two have been highlighted today, including guinea pigs in Peru. That £12.4 billion has benefited 127,000 individual projects. Independent audit has shown the UK lottery to be among the most efficient lottery operators in the world, and it is considered to return more money to good causes than do lotteries in many other countries. The lotto, which is a large part of the portfolio—Camelot is looking into that—ranks in the top two lottos in the world. By any standards, it has been a huge success.
Bob Spink (Castle Point): I am listening carefully to the Minister. Does he accept that it would help the
lottery to get more money in and facilitate endowments under the Bill if we could attract more support for the lottery? One way of doing that is to ensure that the lottery money is spread more evenly among the constituencies, and that constituencies such as mine, which receive only the bottom 5 per cent. of receipts, receive more lottery funds.
Mr. Caborn: The hon. Gentleman was successful in raising questions on the matter a little while ago, and I responded in detail. He knows that, with agreement across the House, we have tried to refine the distribution of lottery receipts for good causes, and we will continue to work at that. I told him that I would write to him about the possibility of his constituents making more applications—they can get the money only if they make an application, and unfortunately his constituents had not made as many applications as others.
Finally on that point, I have had discussions—as late as this week—with Camelot about hon. Members' genuine concerns about the decline in lottery sales, although, as I say, such things are relative and must be put in context. Camelot is very mindful of that and, I think, will produce some innovatory ideas about how it can return to the growth path and encourage more people to participate.
I wish to say very genuinely that although it is easy to make fun of one or two of the causes being supported, it is incumbent on all hon. Members to get behind the lottery because at the end of the day all our constituents gain from it. If hon. Members on both sides of the House can agree on that, it will be a win-win situation for everyone. Indeed, at the beginning of this month the tally was that about £135 million had been awarded to good causes just in Norfolk, including £21.6 million from the Community Fund to charitable and voluntary bodies.
We have heard very firmly that the Bill was originally inspired by the Eastern Daily Press "We Care 2000" appeal, which was launched back in October 1998, with the aim of raising £1 million to establish an endowment fund entitled "The Norfolk Millennium Trust for Carers". So I join many hon. Members in saying "Thank you very much" to the Eastern Daily Press, particularly its editor and deputy editor, as well as the fund's trustees who have undoubtedly done a sterling job.
It is pleasing that, from time to time, the House focuses on groups of people throughout the country. We sometimes forget carers. Indeed, they are the unsung heroes who deserve our admiration and support for the work they do week in, week out; year in, year out. It is great that the House can acknowledge that, and a paper, such as the Eastern Daily Press, can bring that to the fore.
It is unfortunate that the existing lottery legislation does not expressly refer to the power of distributors to fund endowments. I am sure that it was not the deliberate intention, when the National Lottery etc. Act 1993 was originally drafted, to prevent any distributor from awarding grants to establish or augment endowment funds, so it is good that we can take this opportunity to tidy up the legislation in the way that the Bill will allow.
I asked my office to take a quick look at the other endowments, as we tend to home in on the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts,
which is the big one. I wish to say briefly that the New Opportunities Fund has given £50 million to a 10-year endowment, as part of the fair share initiative. The Millennium Commission has awarded £16 million, as a 10-year expendable endowment, to the millennium seed bank. Under the stabilisation and recovery programme, the Arts Council of England has given three awards to endowments, totalling less than £2 million. The Heritage Lottery Fund has also given a few awards to endowments—probably three or four—totalling about £15 million. So we can see that endowments have been used effectively to top up or stabilise certain funding.I hope that we can tidy up the legislation that is already on the statute book That is why I welcome the Bill, which expressly provides all distributors, including the Community Fund, with the power to use lottery money to set up or contribute to endowments if they choose to do so. As the hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk has highlighted, the Bill will clarify that all the distributing bodies have powers to fund endowments, so it will ensure that charitable bodies are not put at a disadvantage in gaining access to lottery funding. Expressly enabling charities to create or augment endowment funds through lottery money would allow voluntary sector organisations to manage their funds much more effectively.
The Bill also fits in well with the key theme emerging from the Department's review of lottery distribution, and I refer the hon. Member for Twickenham to the review that we have undertaken. A number of announcements have been made earlier this week, including on bringing together the community programme and the NOF.
The general thrust of that consultation has been mentioned in the debate, and we must ensure that lottery decision making ties in with what people believe the lottery should be used for in their localities. That would help to bring certainty back, and we will endeavour to achieve that over the coming months and years. Making lottery funds more responsive to the needs and priorities of local communities is important. Giving distributors express powers to fund endowments will give them much more flexibility to respond to the needs of applicants and help to give charitable organisations a little more flexibility in managing their resources.
I would now like to respond to some concerns highlighted in the debate. Several hon. Members asked about the powers that we would have to make sure that the moneys would continue to be spent well. Section 23(3) of the National Lottery etc. Act 1993 gives the Secretary of State the power to issue a statement on financial requirements to each distributing body. It is quite a wide power, so the House can be reasonably certain that we will keep control of the matter. However, it is always possible for the House to challenge the Department or the Secretary of State.
We recognise the concerns expressed over the value for money of grants to endowment funds. Although endowment funds can be a useful way of providing long-term revenue funding for voluntary bodies and enable them to manage their funds in a more effective way, it is true—we have had experience of this—that they require large sums of money up front to provide a reasonable
level of revenue in the longer term and that future income levels are subject to variations in interest rates. Nevertheless, I do not believe that those factors should prevent us from clarifying the powers of distributors in this area. As has been suggested, this is a permissive, rather than mandatory measure, enabling distributors to grant funding for endowments should they choose to do so. It will be a judgment for the distributors.There is little evidence that distributors intend to use the power on a regular basis or that they would be flooded with applications for grants to endowment funds. Nevertheless, I can announce that, should this Bill proceed—I hope that it will—my Department will issue guidance to distributors on this matter, and that a draft of the guidance will be made available to peers during the Lords stages of the Bill.
Another related issue has been the effect of the measure on non-endowment applications. As I have already said, endowment funds can and do tie up large sums of money in the short term. This is, however, a factor that distributors will need to bear in mind in the grant assessment process against other, non-endowment applications. I expect this issue to be flagged up in my Department's guidance note to distributors. Distributors will need to make difficult decisions on the best use of lottery funding, but it should be remembered that they already have to make hard choices in assessing grant applications. The contributions of hon. Members have already made that clear, and there will be nothing to prevent bodies from applying for non-endowment funding.
This has been a good debate and the Bill has received all-party support. However, when I read the Hansard report of the previous debate on the issue, I saw that the then right hon. Member for South Norfolk—now Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market—made a number of predictions. I see that the hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk has not gone that down route, but Lord MacGregor responded to the statements that my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson) had made in the opening remarks of that debate by saying:
- "I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his success in the ballot, and I am delighted that he has chosen this subject. I agree with everything that he said, apart from two points. In his tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Mr. Prior), he suggested that his seat might be in jeopardy. I assure him that that is not the case. My hon. Friend has done remarkable work in his constituency, which will be well rewarded by an increased majority."
- "The other point on which I disagreed with the hon. Gentleman was when he said that he hoped to be performing in one of the appeal's charitable concerts in the summer. I do not know when the election will be, but I am sure that he is hoping that it will be way beyond the summer, because I am sure that he will not want to participate as an ex-Member."—[Official Report, 23 March 2001; Vol. 365, c. 587.]
In our view, the Bill is compatible with the European convention on human rights. As the hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk said, my Department has also prepared a regulatory impact assessment for the Bill that I will place in the Libraries of both Houses.
We consider the Bill useful, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for introducing it. It will clarify the powers of all distributors to fund endowments should they choose to do so, and will put charities on a footing equal to that of other applicants for lottery grants. I am happy to offer the Government's support.
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