Examination of Witnesses (Questions 34
- 39)
TUESDAY 13 JANUARY 2004
NCVO AND THE
COALFIELD COMMUNITIES
CAMPAIGN
Q34 Chairman: Ladies and gentlemen,
welcome. We are very pleased indeed to see you here today. I gather
that you would like to make an opening statement.
Mr Robb: A very brief one, if
that is all right with the Chairman.
Q35 Chairman: You are very welcome
to do so, Mr Robb.
Mr Robb: Thank
you. We represent the National Council of Voluntary Organisations,
who represent about three and a half thousand large and small
voluntary organisations across England, and the National Lottery
provides a very significant income stream for those members and
charities and voluntary organisations. Our submission to the Committee
is premised on the belief that lottery funding should be independent
from government but accountable to Parliament; that it should
be additional to what should be properly spent by government and
not a substitute for it and that lottery distributors should support
the development of a sustainable funding environment for the voluntary
sector. We have yet to be convinced that the proposed changes
to the distribution of lottery funding will lead to more resources
for good causes. Indeed, we believe that three of the proposed
changes could have a detrimental effect on returns. These would
be an Olympic Lottery Fund and hypothecated Olympic Lottery Fund
games, the merger of the Community Fund and New Opportunities
Fund and efforts to promote the Lottery. We agree staging the
Olympics in the UK is a very exciting prospect, but we have serious
concerns about the decision to develop an olympic lottery fund.
New hypothecated lottery games to support the Olympics must not
undermine income for the existing good causes, and yet the current
estimates from the DCMS suggest that least 59% of the £750
million to be raised from an olympic lottery game might come from
sales diverted from existing games. We also believe that merging
the Community Fund and NOF provides an opportunity to create a
new, dynamic distributor which is greater than the sum of its
parts. However, we have seen no evidence as yet from the Government
to suggest that the costs of merger—including the costs
of undertaking the number of different activities and tasks that
are being allocated to the new distributor—have been estimated
or, indeed, what the long term savings will be. These costs must
not eat into the fund for the good causes, and the new distributor
should continue to fund voluntary and community organisations
to at least the level that is currently allocated by the Community
Fund and NOF. Finally, we therefore believe the time is right
to reassess the use to which the 12% lottery duty on each ticket
is put. One way to do this that we have suggested is by redirecting
half the duty to players in the form of prizes and by redirecting
the remaining half to the existing good causes. The new distributor
could commit a proportion of its money to pay for the costs of
merger and other activities it is being asked to undertake. Finally,
I would like to say that there are a number of risks and opportunities
associated with promoting the Lottery. Our concern is to ensure
that extreme care is taken not to promote the National Lottery
as an effective way of giving to charity. A pound given directly
to charity, tax effectively, is worth £1.28 to the charity,
whereas only 28 pence in each lottery pound goes to the good causes.
Thank you for the opportunity.
Q36 Chairman: Thank you very much
indeed, Mr Robb.
Mr Flanagan: Could
I perhaps say a few words.
Q37 Chairman: Yes, of course, Mr
Flanagan.
Mr Flanagan: I
will say who we are, Chair, and then I will ask my colleague,
Barbara Edwards, who is the Deputy Director, to give our opening
statement. The three Cs, Coalfield Communities Campaign, is an
organisation which represents local authorities. We are a local
authority organisation, we are non political. We represent all
those authorities that had, and some still have, coalmining. We
represent 88 authorities in England, Scotland and Wales. There
are about five million people who live in those authorities; In
total we are as big as a small region. Eighteen years ago, when
the pits shut, we lost a quarter of a million jobs and subsequently
we have lost a few more with further closures of collieries. We
are tremendously blighted. Mining is not a skill which can be
transferable, so they cannot go off and do other jobs. We are
areas of low education attainment because in the coalfields education
started once you start work. We are high in ill-health. We have
early deaths. We have a poor environment. We have virtually negligible
transportation and we have low educational achievements. All in
all, whatever help we get, we are entitled to. We are Objective
1 in most of South Yorkshire and Wales, the rest of us are Objective
2. We get good monies from them. We do alright from SRB money.
Lottery monies, when Chris Smith held his first conference in
the coalfields in 1997, we were getting 45% of national average,
London is probably three times the national average. By the time
that Tessa Jowell held her meeting, we were up to 74% of the national
average so we are still losing three quarters of a million pounds
per year on average against the average. That is the position
that the coalfields find themselves in. What might help us, the
points are going to be made by Barbara Edwards.
Ms Edwards: Thank
you. Our key aim is fairer distribution of Lottery money. As Councillor
Flanagan has just said, coalfields are serious losers in the Lottery.
By our estimates we have lost £500 million since the Lottery
began, that is a huge chunk of money which could be obviously
deployed usefully in regenerating communities. That £500
million is based on population, nothing to do with deprivation.
The index of deprivation that the Government did recently shows
that 50% of coalfield wards are in the worse 20% of wards nationally
so there really are serious problems. Basically we have put forward
four proposals which are included in our submission. Firstly,
we would like guideline indicative allocations of Lottery money
to each area. This will highlight the difference between areas.
It is not only a guideline; it is a ceiling and not a fixed amount.
Certainly it will bring to the attention of the distributors and
the public what the variations are. Secondly, a single point of
entry to simplify the Lottery process in favour of the applicant.
We feel far too much responsibility is on the applicant at the
moment and the distributors do not really have all that much responsibility.
Thirdly, development support, which is key because the social
infrastructure in coalfield areas is not as high as in some areas
and that is a key thing to build up capacity. Lastly, and probably
as important as anything, is longer term revenue support. It is
no good setting off lots and lots of projects if after the funding
runs out they fail to get mainstream funding. We would like to
thank the Committee for inviting us to give evidence and also
perhaps point out that there are quite big areas on which we have
no position particularly in terms of licensing and regulation.
Thank you.
Chairman: Thank you. Chris
Bryant?
Q38 Chris Bryant: Can I just go with
both of you to the issue of whether you believe that every constituency
in the land should have roughly the same amount of money given
to it from the Lottery?
Mr Robb: I am happy
to go first. I think we start from a premise that everybody should
have equal access to the ability to get money. I think a lot of
the work that has been done by a number of the distributors is
to make it easier and some of the suggestions in the merger process
are to allow people to have access to the ability to get it. I
think equally distributing the money is more difficult, by constituency
or any other way. We would like it to see it as equally distributed
as possible. I think part of the Lottery's strength over the ten
years has been its ability, as you raised before, to fund not
necessarily those things which are most popular but to fund those
things that are sometimes more difficult and those that are not
necessarily distributed equally around the country. Whilst we
want to see as much equal distribution as possible, I think setting
quotas for each area may prove more difficult and actually more
difficult to administer and difficult to apply than a fairer and
equal ability to get to the money and an ability to look and make
sure the distributors are looking and seeing if there are cold
spots where people, for example—I am sure the Coalfield
Communities Campaign will argue this—are not applying and
where money is not going and why that is the case.
Mr Flanagan: From
our point of view, no, we do not think you can distribute it equitably.
There will always be the large cities that are the centres for
people from rural areas and they will go there: Manchester, Leeds,
Birmingham and London. They are not much use to the people who
live in mining areas. Mining is an agricultural industry; they
were sunk in the farmlands. To build, say, the Dome or even the
one in Hull, which is about as accessible to us, one to the other,
we just cannot afford to get to them so do not think we will swell
the attendance figures because we just do not go. There are smaller
things that we can do, things for the scouts, things for the brass
bands, we do not always have to visit Covent Garden and the new
Tates.
Q39 Chris Bryant: Everybody is agreed
that an absolute mathematical equality would not be right. I just
did some totting up of the figures beforehand and I know that
the statistics about individual constituencies are always slightly
misleading for all sorts of different reasons. You may have an
organisation whose headquarters is in one place and so the money
is listed under that constituency but actually all its work is
elsewhere. Broadly speaking, if you add up the four Cardiff constituencies
they have had £120 million, if you add up the Four Valleys
constituencies, which are just north of them, which are all former
mining constituencies, they have received £28 million, in
other words I make that less than a quarter across the same period
whereas Newport, its two constituencies with a smaller population,
half the population, has received £28 million. There seems
to be a strong principle where lots of money goes into the bigger
cities and I just wonder whether for the NCVO that means that
smaller organisations that serve rural or semi-rural or semi-urban
communities find it much more difficult?
Ms Bush: I think
the key here is about the capacity of organisations to apply to
the Lottery. I think the reason that perhaps organisations in
Cardiff are accessing the Lottery is because they have got greater
capacity, probably because of where they are located and that
is why they are located there. Some of the small organisations
in the smaller communities are less able to apply, they do not
know the ropes as well and are, therefore, less successful. I
think one of the things that certainly we have talked about in
terms of reforming the Lottery is about providing more hands-on
support to organisations, the actual Lottery distributors providing
more support to organisations in the application process as well
as the single front door.
Mr Robb: Can I
just add as well, it might be the case, and I do not know Cardiff,
it might be actually be the number of grants made as well. For
example, the Community Fund has moved very well and there is another
distributor, an Awards for All scheme, where a lot of very small
community organisations apply for £500 or £1,000 and
that is what they want, they want a small amount of money to do
something, to build a new hall, to get something going. We see
that as being very important. It might be that of that money which
went to Cardiff, £60 million of it went on one project, I
do not know if it did.
|
