Ninth Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation |
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Mr. Swire: The Minister must concede that if the Bill was in front of us—we should be debating it properly on the Floor of the House—none of this need have taken place. Estelle Morris: That was the next point that I was going to make. The hon. Gentleman can choose to believe me or not. If he looks back, the shadow Big Lottery Fund, which is what it should be called prior to legislation, made clear to us that it wanted to move ahead with the transformational grants before the earliest possible date that we could have passed legislation; even if we had had Second Reading in January, when both the hon. Gentleman and I had hoped it would take place. Even if we were discussing the Bill in this period, we would have still brought forward a statutory instrument to get the transformational grants going. I shall provide some information about timing. We estimate that the stage 1 decisions—the shortlist—will be made in about May 2006. The public vote—the stage 2 award—will take place in about May 2007. In answer to the hon. Gentleman’s other question, this statutory instrument could not possibly be about making announcements between now and the general
I accept that some assurances I gave privately about the Second Reading of the Bill have not come to fruition. We are just sitting and waiting for a time when that may happen. I will be honest; I would sooner have seen the Second Reading, and the Bill going through Parliament, this side of the election, but that has not happened because of the pressure of events and so on. Mr. Swire: Let me just make the point for the record that at no stage did I suggest that the Minister had misled me in any way about the Second Reading. What I said was that I genuinely believe that she wanted the Second Reading to happen before the election, as I did. That is obviously not going to happen now. I hope that no one misunderstood. Estelle Morris: I am grateful for that. I was confirming that, even if we had got an early Second Reading, we would still have been discussing this statutory instrument. I have dealt with the timing of the award. The National Audit Office can look at the expenditure. The transparency is no less than anywhere else. Perhaps I can come on to the level of detail. To some extent, that is where I have a difficulty, but not one that I object to. We have made it clear that the relationship between ourselves and the distributors will involve Ministers and the Government setting out the policy framework and allowing the Big Lottery Fund to work up the details. I am not in a position to give more details than are included in the consultation document, because it is not my job to do so. What my job involves, and what the statutory instrument is about, is giving instructions and directions to enable the Big Lottery Fund to carry out transformational grants. It will be for it to discuss the detail. The letter that has gone out for consultation does not cross all the t’s or dot all the i’s, but it gives some description of the sort of project that we might envisage. Mr. Foster: Does not interfering mean that the Government had no say about the five fruit project in schools? Estelle Morris: It was clear in our manifesto in 1997 that we would change the distributors in favour of the Big Lottery Fund. If the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) discusses the matter with his constituents, he will find many that are pleased that the Government decided to award money to many of those things that he read out as being part of previous initiatives. So, I
I am conscious that we are about to go for a Division in the House. I am happy to take an intervention if I have omitted something, but if not I feel that, despite some reservations about detail, there is generally a warm welcome that the sort of transformational grants that were spent by the Millennium Commission
Question put and agreed to. Resolved,
Committee rose at four minutes past Three o’clock. |
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