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My concern is with the traditional areas for the lottery, which will be squeezed by these proposals. We can see that under clause 7 half of the amount will go to the new purposes—health, education and environment, of which the first two are likely to be the dominant ones—and the worry is that arts, heritage, sports and charities will be squeezed. Why were they identified as suitable areas for lottery funding—attracting cross-party agreement—in 1992-93? It was because the state was not dominant in those areas. The state is not the main provider of arts, heritage, charity or sport in our country. There are huge amounts of private money in sports such as soccer, mostly from television companies, huge amounts of voluntary donations to charities, and arts and heritage attract a great deal of private money from rich companies and rich individuals and the many of our constituents who visit them and pay fees for the privilege of doing so. The amounts provided by the state to those areas were not huge and the state did not dominate funding, so it was possible to identify smaller community projects or larger tasks that needed additional money, to which the lottery could make a real difference. We all have examples of the lottery’s success in achieving just that.
The worry is that if we allow Ministers to get away with providing money from the lottery to health and education without proper rules on additionality, there will be backsliding, so that matters that we agree should properly be paid for in the normal way by the taxpayer take money and detract from the amount available for the other good causes for which the lottery has become famous and which it should fund in the future.
I face a
conundrum when asked to approve the amendments. My hon. Friend the
Member for Cities of London and Westminster says that they are the best
that we can do and I am often swayed by him, but it would give me and
many others for whom I speak greater comfort if the Minister could give
us a better insight into the sort of prescriptions that the Secretary
of State will produce if she is entrusted with these powers. It would be
helpful if we had before us a clear definition of additionality that
made sense and could provide a way to police the operation of these
clauses.
The Minister may think that the Big Lottery Fund has the common touch, although people might consider the name to be a tad vulgar for something so well intentioned. It is certainly ambitious and presumptuous, but I hope that people realise that they need to keep on buying tickets if it is to stay big.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink) said, many people will want reassurance that the lottery will not become a cheap trick for a Government who have run out of money. They have spent a very great deal on the core purposes of health and education without achieving all that they wanted. The proper purposes of the lottery were defined on a cross-party basis when it started, but those purposes may be put under pressure and begin to wither. We must not get into the sort of vicious circle that my hon. Friend described, with people’s lack of enthusiasm causing contributions to fall.
Moreover, I should be reluctant to get into a pincer movement, with health and education taking more and more, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster implied could happen. All too often, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence makes judgments about remedies that doctors and patients in my area think could be valuable, and then says that they will not be available on the NHS. If the lottery were to begin making up for NICE’s meanness, it could be very expensive. It might be popular, but it would not be in the spirit of additionality, and the Government have given no reassurance on the matter.
At the risk of damaging the wonderful spirit of consensus evident in the debate, I urge the Government to think more clearly about additionality, and to offer more reassurance in that regard. The Bill is another example of Henry VIII legislation, and a lot remains to happen after it has gone through the House.
Mark Fisher (Stoke-on-Trent, Central) (Lab): I am grateful to be able to say a few words in this debate, and to follow the interesting remarks made by the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood). I share some of his concerns about the general drift of matters to do with the national lottery. There is an acceptance in the House that the Government are moving in the right direction with the lottery, certainly compared with their original plans. However, many people outside the House are very worried about funding for the arts and heritage, which over the decades have tended to be underfunded by Governments of all parties.
The
lottery was originally intended to bolster the funding for heritage and
the arts, and very good work was done in the early days, specifically
in connection with the acquisition of objects and works of art for
museums and galleries. There was a time when the Department
responsible for the arts—it used to be the Department of
National Heritage but is now the Department for Culture, Media and
Sport—earmarked money for our national galleries so that they
could acquire objects and works of art. That has been frozen
or even eliminated in some cases, so that now even the British Museum
and the National Gallery have almost no money at
all.
We are approaching the Olympics, when the eyes of the world will be on us. I hope that Ministers will take pride in the fact that this country has some of the greatest museums, galleries and arts organisations in the world, and that they will use the opportunity to talk up, praise and value our extraordinary cultural riches and heritage. However, that approach is slightly undermined by the fact that the Government have almost ceased to help our museums and galleries to make acquisitions. The two organisations that were preventing museums and galleries from being simply unable to acquire new objects and works of art were the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Heritage Lottery Fund.
I fear that a terrible drift has taken place in recent years, and that it is embodied in the Bill and in the attitude of the DCMS. Guidance has been given to the Heritage Lottery Fund that it should turn its attention away from the arts and heritage in general, and away from acquisitions in particular, and towards the Olympics, sport and socially desirable programmes. Nobody disputes that those things are valuable and desirable. Everybody wants the Olympics to be a success, but the idea that they can be a success only at the expense of our cultural life and of our major museums and galleries being able to make acquisitions is very regrettable. The Bill does not, in itself, further that trend, but it does nothing to balk a trend that is extremely undesirable. Anyone who has paid any attention to these matters will have heard the articulate pleas of Mr. Neil MacGregor, the director of the British Museum, and Mr. Charles Saumarez Smith, the director of the National Gallery, that important acquisitions that they ought to be making on our behalf cannot be made.
4.15 pm
Mr. Redwood: The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful case and I have a lot of sympathy with what he saying about the arts and heritage. There is a problem with the Bill. We all accept that the Olympics are an important one-off event and that a case can be made for more money going into sport in the run-up to them, to give sport a better chance and so that we can all be proud of our athletes as well as our facilities. However, it is a one-off event and it will end. The problem with introducing health and education is that they could prove to be a permanent addition, and they may grow and grow because their appetites are so large. They could be far worse at squeezing what the hon. Gentleman values than sport, in its temporary phase of ascendancy, will be.
Mark
Fisher: I absolutely agree. This whole area of concern
puts the finger on something that has always bedevilled politicians and
Governments in their support for the arts and for heritage. The public
are asked the perfectly understandable rhetorical populist question of
whether they would prefer to help people who are dying and have huge
“help” problems, or to help our young get a good
education, or to buy works of art for a gallery, works of archaeology
or objects. Almost everybody, of course—no matter how
passionate a supporter of the arts and our cultural
heritage—would ask how one could possibly resist supporting
people in severe ill health or who need better education. But it is not
a proper question—it is a fake question, and one that should not
be asked.
In any civilised society, we need both: of course we need good health care and education, but we need great art galleries to express what this generation cares about and to pass that on to our children and grandchildren. The danger of the Bill—and to the lottery, which has been, in our lifetime, the one bulwark against that populist question—is that undermining that bulwark by general drift will leave us all poorer. The lottery may, as a result of the Bill and the Government’s action, do very good work in health and social inclusion programmes, and in the Olympics and sport. However, our children and our grandchildren will ask what it was that this generation cared about in our cultural life and how they can see it when they go to our major galleries and museums. They will ask what we collected and what we wanted to do, and there will be a terrible, gaping hole.
Virtually no contemporary fine art is being collected in this country. One of the few bodies that supports it—the Contemporary Art Society—has minuscule programmes and a tiny handful of money every year. In 50 years’ time, we shall be in danger of their looking back at our generation and saying that we cared so little for our arts and heritage and cultural life that nothing remains that there is a gaping hole in our museums and galleries. [ Interruption.] Does the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Jonathan Shaw) want to intervene?
Jonathan Shaw (Chatham and Aylesford) (Lab): No.
Mark Fisher: Interestingly, I thought that someone on the Treasury Bench wanted to intervene. I would willingly have given way if the hon. Gentleman had wanted to contribute to the debate.
Mr. Mark Field: I fear that an intervention from the Opposition Front Bench will be second best, but I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way to me instead. He is making a powerful contribution. We, too, have expressed the concern that the more we have to justify expenditure on the arts and heritage in relation to extraneous elements such as education, law and order and the like, the more dangerous the path. As he rightly points out, in times of difficult financial straits for the country—whether or not they actually come to pass—if we have to justify expenditure on the arts and heritage in relation to money and goods for health and education there will be something of a disaster. Inevitably, money will go to health and education, not to the all-important artistic heritage that he rightly promotes and praises.
Mark Fisher: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. As he says, the Opposition Front Bench is second best and I would have preferred to take an intervention from the Treasury Bench, but his observations were interesting and helpful.
I am simply
making a plea to my right hon. Friend the Minister. He is a civilised
man who comes from an
extremely civilised city, which, ironically, embodies the best of the
trend and its dangers. Sheffield has some of the finest regional
galleries and museums—Weston Park and the Graves have wonderful
collections—which have benefited hugely from lottery money and
are the better for it. There is a fine director, Mr. Nicholas
Dodd. However, the danger is that there will be no
acquisition money. A small amount is available through the renaissance
fund—indeed, Sheffield is a hub for that—but the money
has to be disbursed around the
region.
The galleries and museums of Sheffield, the Minister’s own city, will be in fine physical condition, but we shall not be refreshing and renewing their collections. I hope that my right hon. Friend shares my concern that such a wonderful city could be left in that position. Will he make sure that he does not increase pressure on the Heritage Lottery Fund by encouraging it to move too far away from help for the arts or heritage, especially for acquisitions for our museums and galleries? We need that help, and if the Bill is to do the good work that it should it must not move away from it.
Mr. Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con): The hon. Gentleman’s comments are music to the ears of many of us on the Opposition Benches. He is aware of Sir Nicholas Goodison’s report and its recommendations, although sadly few of them have been implemented by the Government. Does he share my concern that if the Government move towards an acquisition fund they should not raid existing funds or divert money from the Heritage Lottery Fund or the National Heritage Memorial Fund, but should find new sources of funding, if they can, to solve the acute acquisitions problem?
Mark Fisher: That would be the ideal solution; there should not be raids on other areas. I am going slightly wide of the debate, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I hope that the Minister heard what the hon. Gentleman said about Sir Nicholas Goodison’s report. The whole world outside this place has been waiting for a positive response to at least some of its very practical recommendations. That is one way—other than the lottery—in which we can help those causes that does not involve general taxpayers’ money. I hope that the Treasury, through the Minister, will hear those points and will recognise that tax forgone works extremely well in the acceptance in lieu scheme, whereby about £30 million goes to our galleries and museums every year. A general approach, such as Sir Nicholas Goodison recommended, would be an ideal addition to money through the lottery, which we are considering today. I hope that I am still in order when making that point, linking—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman should not push his luck.
Mark
Fisher: I hope that I was pushing my luck with great
gentleness, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and that I was teetering on the
borderlines of being in order, because there is a relationship between
tax forgone and the concerns that are directly being debated today
about heritage. Those things need to be considered together. One of the
ways in which we could strengthen the Bill would be through tax
forgone. I trust that the
Chancellor—particularly if he has wider ambitions in the
future—will realise the good and sensible ways in which he can
assist without putting a further strain on the taxpayer.
To return to the heart of today’s considerations, I hope that the Minister has taken on board some of the concerns from both sides. Although I welcome the general drift and direction that the Government are taking with the Bill, I hope that we are not going to fall into the trap of ignoring the needs of the culture of this country and that we will not sell future generations short.
Mr. Caborn: That was a tour de force of special pleading. There was some slight straying from the amendments— [ Interruption. ] I will answer the questions. The hon. Members for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) and for Bath (Mr. Foster) have been involved in the passage of the Bill over many months and I welcome what they have said. We have responded to and rightly addressed some of the concerns that have been expressed here and in another place, and the amendments before the House reflect that. I do not say this disrespectfully, but some hon. Members who were not on the Committee may not quite appreciate how we have evolved the Bill. It was against the background of a wide consultation that we came to bring in the Big Lottery Fund and to give a clear indication to heritage, the arts and sport regarding their proportions and a clear ongoing commitment in relation to licensing and the proportions thereon.
I should tell my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mark Fisher) that, interestingly, there was strong support for heritage in that consultation. That is reflected in what we have said in the Bill about the arts, heritage, sport and the Big Lottery Fund. However, I am also bound to say that there was a tremendous amount of support for education and health. Sometimes we get those in a narrow band.
One of the areas in which the lottery has been hugely successful relates to sport, education and health. We have 3,000 or so school sports co-ordinators who are operating effectively in the 400 or so school sports partnerships. They were funded by the lottery, but because they became so important to that project and the development of the two hours of quality physical activity and sport for every child every week from the age of five to 16, that aspect has been taken away from the lottery and put into mainstream spending—into Exchequer expenditure. Sometimes we can experiment and put pilot schemes in place to develop ideas and concepts, and the lottery can be a useful financial mechanism to do that. Eventually, the projects can transfer to mainstream spending.
It was clear from the consultations that people thought that it was useful to use lottery money—we are talking about people who play the lottery—for health and education and to have part of the funding from the lottery. That would be additional. I repeat that through the annual reports that will be presented to Parliament, the lottery distributors will have to show how they believe that that additionality has been used. Indeed, if it is the desire of hon. Members, that can be scrutinised. The measures in the Bill on additionality respond to many concerns that Members of both Houses have expressed.
4.30 pm
It would be wrong to say that the Olympics will be a distraction. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central is an expert on the history of art and heritage. Gold, silver and bronze medals were awarded in the ancient Olympics for works of art and culture. As we come up to 2012, I hope that we will see in this country the important cultural aspect of the Olympics that makes them successful. With the London organising committee for the Olympic games and other bodies, such as the nations and regions committee, the Government intend to ensure that the Olympics are not London-centric and that we use the vehicle of the Olympics to bring art and culture, as well as sport, to all parts of the kingdom. It is pleasing that the trust that we are setting up with lottery money from not only the Millennium Commission and the Big Lottery Fund, but the arts lottery, is seen as a good way of using the platform of the Olympic games to get out to the British people. Money is being used in many and varied ways, so there are dangers in trying to departmentalise through legislation, as hon. Members sometimes try to push Ministers to do. The Olympics will be used for not only sport, but art and heritage as we move towards 2012.
I do not know whether the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) has read the draft statutory instrument that we have published alongside the Bill. Hon. Members said that they wanted to read such a document, so we have produced a draft order on national lottery prescribed expenditure. I will not read it out, but I hope that it gives the House a guide to the measures that we would expect to be in such affirmative statutory instruments. I think that right hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but the draft is a good guide to what we are trying to do. We are trying to be as transparent and open as possible. I hope that the House will support the motion.
Lords amendment No. 2 disagreed to.
Lords amendment No. 6 agreed to.
Lords amendment No. 7 disagreed to.
Government amendment (a) in lieu of Lords amendment No. 7 agreed to.
Mr. Caborn: I beg to move, That this House agrees with the Lords in the said amendment.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this we may consider Lords amendments Nos. 4 and 5.
Mr.
Caborn: The Government’s amendments concern the
proposed reserve power to reallocate an excessive national lottery
distribution fund balance from a lottery distributing body to another
body. The
proposed new power has been the subject of extensive debate at all
stages of the Bill both in this House and in another place.
Ministers have given repeated assurances that the Government would seek to use the proposed new power only as a last resort against a distributor that had failed over an extended period to tackle an excessive NLDF balance and had refused to take steps to manage that balance down to a reasonable level. Those assurances were not accepted by some Members, particularly those in another place, which is disappointing to me as it feels like an attack on my integrity, and I am deeply hurt. To get into such a dismal position a distributor would need to have ignored not just the Government’s guidance, but, as I have said on a number of occasions, the recommendations of the National Audit Office and the very powerful Public Accounts Committee.
I emphasise again that at the moment I am very pleased with the progress that distributors have made to get lottery money out of the bank to where people need it to do good. As things stand there is no question of our exercising the reallocation power in relation to any of the distributors.
The Heritage Lottery Fund has often been mentioned in our debates. I want to pay tribute to the trustees of the Heritage Lottery Fund and their chair, Liz Forgan, for their wisdom in choosing the best projects to support. They have balanced care in the selection process with a higher rate of spend, and they have reduced the balance from a high point of over £1 billion in early 2003 to just under the target of £800 million by the end of the 2005-06 financial year. In the two months to the end of May the balance came down by a further 4 per cent. to around £764 million. That is a significant achievement by the HLF, and I understand that it plans a further significant reduction in the balance over the next three years or so. That is genuinely to be welcomed.
No distributor that manages its balance down in a sensible way has anything to fear from the proposed reallocation power. I should also remind hon. Members that the power is framed so that it cannot be used to transfer lottery proceeds away from any one good cause, whether it is the arts, sport, heritage or causes supported by the Big Lottery Fund. It can be used only to transfer a balance from one body to another within the same good cause.
In the reallocation power as framed in the Bill as it left this House, the Secretary of State would not have been able to exercise the power without first consulting the body from which the NLDF balance, or part of it, was to be transferred, and the body to which it was proposed to reallocate that money. The Secretary of State would also have been obliged to consult the devolved Administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Neither of these requirements has changed. Nor was there anything in the Bill as it left this House to prevent the Secretary of State from consulting more widely if she so wished. The Government fully recognise that there would be legitimate wider interest in any proposed use of the new reallocation power.
Any use of the
new power would be subject to affirmative resolution. There would be no
question of the Government being able, somehow, to exercise the
power in secret or without giving people time to make representations.
However, there was no provision specifically enabling the Secretary of
State to consult more widely. The desirability of clarifying that point
was pressed on the Government at various stages of the Bill’s
passage in another place, and, indeed, in Committee in this place. In
response, the Government agreed to table appropriate amendments to
require the Secretary of State to consult more widely before she can
exercise the reserve power to reallocate balances. I trust that hon.
Members will agree to amendments Nos. 3 and
4.
On amendment No. 5, I think that there is now general agreement about the benefits of wider promotion by lottery distributors of the benefits of the lottery good causes funding. Our research tells us that people are much more supportive of the lottery and its benefits when they know how the money has been spent and why. But concerns have been expressed both in this House, notably by the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster), and in another place about the original drafting of new section 25E(c) of the National Lottery etc. Act 1993, inserted by clause 11, which refers to
“encouraging participation in activities relating to the National Lottery in general”.
There was concern that that could give lottery distributors the power to encourage people to play the lottery, but we have repeatedly pointed out that there was no such intention on the Government’s part. We included that provision because we wanted to make it clear that lottery distributors have the power to encourage participation in activities related to the promotion of the lottery good causes funding, such as national lottery day and the national lottery awards. Those activities are more successful in conveying the way in which lottery money has been used if more people become involved. That is different from merely publishing information about the way in which the good causes money is spent, although it is still related entirely to the good causes funding. Hence the amendment, which makes it clear that the encouragement activity is restricted to
“distribution of money under this Act”.
That money, of course, is good causes funding. With that explanation, I trust that hon. Members will support the Lords amendments.
Mr. Mark Field: As the Minister pointed out, Lords amendments Nos. 3 and 4 require the Secretary of State to consult other persons as she thinks appropriate in the extreme circumstance that she decides to exercise the balance relocation power in clause 8, which is a common-sense safeguard. Similarly, the Government proposal in Lords amendment 5 to make it clear that the powers in clause 11 cannot be used by lottery distributors simply to promote their own lottery games makes sense, especially if there is to be more effective competition in the lottery in the next decade. We welcome those minor amendments, and we will not press them to a vote this afternoon.
As we are debating national
lottery issues, I wish to put two of the Opposition’s
longer-term concerns on the record. Like the Secretary of State, I am a
London Member of Parliament. Our capital city has every reason to be
proud of securing the Olympic games for
2012, but I agree with a number of concerns expressed by the hon. Member
for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mark Fisher). Serious questions remain
about the means of funding the Olympic games. Given the track record of
all recent Olympiads, with the exception of the two held in the United
States—Los Angeles in 1984 and Atlanta 12 years
later—there is a significant likelihood of a substantial cost
overrun. One need only look at the experience of the hapless council
tax payers of Montreal who, 30 years on, are still paying the price of
their Olympic games, to understand that risk. Even the much admired
Sydney Olympics six years ago cost almost three times as much as the
initial budget. As the Minister will be aware, the current arrangements
place the burden of any cost entirely in the hands of London council
tax payers. Realistically, for political as well as economic reasons,
that is unlikely to come to pass. There is little doubt that a cost
overrun will partly be met by the national
lottery—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I have an uneasy feeling that the hon. Gentleman is moving on to a quasi-fourth reading speech, and I cannot allow that on this group of amendments.
Mr. Field: You are right to upbraid me, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It may even be a fifth reading speech, given the length of my contribution. As I have just used the words, “national lottery”, you can be assured that I shall address one or two issues to do with the lottery. While welcoming the capping of liabilities for many central London constituents, I am deeply concerned that countless millions of pounds of lottery money earmarked for arts, heritage, charities and general sporting expenditure may be transferred to an avaricious London Olympic monster. The Opposition are concerned about plans for the hypothecation—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I have been generous in allowing the hon. Gentleman to express one concern, but we must maintain the general rules on keeping the debate in order. The hon. Gentleman would be out of order if he proceeded to make more general comments than this group of amendments will stand. I therefore suggest that he wind up his remarks quickly.
Mr. Field: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for your comments. I understand what you are saying, but I simply wanted to say that there is a strange paradox. We have discussed the tick-box culture and the hypothecation of the national lottery, so it is important that the Government accept the Lords amendments and the independence of the operation of the Big Lottery Fund. Distributors should be free from political interference; otherwise I fear that many initiatives would be open to hypothecation.
As the Minister is aware, the bidding process for the third franchise, which now involves a 10-year term rather than a seven-year term, is already under way. The decision will have been made by this time next year, with the new lottery term beginning in February 2009. I hope that in the next six months we can debate in Government time the broader national lottery issues that I have tried to touch on in this brief contribution.
As I have said, the Opposition have no objections to this group of amendments. I suspect that the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) has a few more words to say, although I do not want to steal his thunder.
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