Gambling Commission: Health Lottery

Debate between Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Monday 28th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, the raising of the threshold has been under discussion. We feel that at the moment, with the Health Lottery still so new, this is not the moment to change the thresholds for the lotteries as a whole. As I say, though, we are monitoring the situation since, as far as we are concerned, it is a new set-up in the lottery world. We shall wait and see, with the promise of a report of that monitoring early next year.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

When I had the privilege of moving the Second Reading of the National Lottery etc. Bill in 1993, I gave way 28 times in the hour it took me to complete my speech. It was perfectly clear at that time that scrutiny of the lottery was being carried out extremely effectively by Parliament. I hope that the amount of time that we need to scrutinise this new development will be shorter rather than longer.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

I bow to my noble friend’s expertise over many years in this area. I share his hopes that the scrutiny will be shorter rather than longer.

London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (Amendment) Bill

Debate between Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I appreciate that behind this amendment is a concern about minimising the impact of the Olympic route network—the ORN—on people living and working in the areas concerned. I am pleased to be able to assure noble Lords that that is one of our key objectives in implementing the ORN for the 2012 Games and that extensive local consultation and communication are already under way and will continue through to the Games. I am most grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, for her very helpful clarifications on a range of points that were raised by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, in his opening remarks.

The provision of an ORN to facilitate transport of the athletes, officials, accredited media and marketing partners who together form the Games family is part of the host city contract with the International Olympic Committee. The ORN is a tried and tested concept used at previous Games to ensure that all those working at the Games get to where they need to be safely and on time every time, while keeping London moving. In response to the question from my noble friend Lord Brooke, that of course includes all the different venues in and around London.

The vast majority of the ORN roads will be open to all road users. The Games family will be transported as efficiently as possible with most, including marketing partners, travelling by bus or coach; at peak times, on some sections of the ORN, the traffic flow will include a Games family vehicle passing every four seconds.

In response to my noble friend Lady Doocey, where feasible the Games family will be encouraged to use public transport, and Transport for London is working with the London Organising Committee on the supply of Oyster cards for them. Of course, we take into account the problem she highlighted of the stress that there will be on normal travellers on London transport. That will need to be monitored very carefully to make sure that they are not severely disadvantaged by this.

The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, mentioned river services. There will be enhanced river services on the Thames. These may be an attractive option for spectators travelling to the Greenwich venues, but they are unlikely to attract many Games family members due to their relatively low speed and frequency. They do, however, mean that all options for delivering effective Games-time transport are being utilised. The river, of course, provides a particularly appealing way of travelling through London.

The roads forming the ORN have already been designated, and the impact assessments for the designation orders made it clear that there are two stages to implementation of the ORN, the first being the designation and the second being the development of the detailed designs for measures on the roads, which includes the formal consultation on traffic regulation orders required for the measures. I stress that there have been consultations at every stage of this development.

The sorts of considerations listed in the amendment are most appropriate for this second stage. Transport for London is working closely with the boroughs in London, and the ODA and local authorities outside are working through the consultations, which are well under way. There is a wide-ranging programme of information and advice to business about the potential impact of the Games, including the ORN, on the transport system. That started last November, enabling businesses to plan ahead and minimise the impact on their operations. Information and publicity campaigns to the general public about Games transport and the ORN will begin next year.

The consultation process on the ORN measures is enabling Transport for London and the Olympic Delivery Authority to take account of responses from those living on and around the ORN, and those who may be affected by it in the development of the detailed plans. In particular, the ORN traffic regulation orders are going through the standard statutory procedures which include informal and then formal consultation. Detailed plans are being adjusted, where possible, in the light of the comments and representations received, further to reduce the impacts. As an example, as a result of intensive work with the boroughs and other key stakeholders prior to the launch of public consultation, Transport for London has reduced the number of planned pedestrian crossing closures on the ORN from 115 to 48, and received very few requests in the subsequent engagement process for crossings to be reopened. I also assure noble Lords that all the traffic measures are subject to road safety audits.

The ORN will be implemented with the minimum impact on London. Noble Lords asked about the timescale; it is expected to be brought into operation just a couple of days before the Olympic Games and discontinued swiftly when it is no longer needed. The ORN will operate only when and where it needs to as determined by the training and competition schedule. When a competition venue runs for only a few days, the ORN will need to operate only during these periods. The same strategy will be employed for the smaller scale Paralympic route network during the Paralympic Games.

Temporary Games lanes for use by Games family vehicles will be used on the busiest sections of the ORN only at certain times. Where lanes are required, these will tend to be those closest to the middle of the road, helping to minimise disruption to buses, cyclists and taxis. Lanes will not take up the whole road width in any direction. The noble Baroness, Lady Billingham, was very concerned that the wrong people might be seen to be using the lanes. In the case of the sponsors, of course, they are entitled in certain circumstances to use of the Games lanes, because they have contributed very greatly to ensuring that funding is in place for the success of the Games. As a sideline, in that I often have to speak about tourism in this House, if they are staying at the Dorchester and spending money at our hotels it will be an extremely welcome boost to the London tourist industry. So all is not lost if some people who come to the Games are living at central London locations and taking advantage of the facilities available in central London hotels.

At Second Reading and again this evening, noble Lords raised the potential impact of the ORN on taxis. I assure noble Lords that taxis will, like any other vehicle, be able to use the vast majority of the ORN, but they will not be able to use the Games lanes when they are in operation. During their operating hours, Games lanes will be well used by Games family traffic, and if taxis were added to this mix it would be impossible to guarantee journey times for the Games family. But the vast majority of the lanes, as the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, made clear, will be fully usable by taxis.

In line with the overarching aim of seeking to minimise, as much as possible, any adverse impact at Games time, I assure the Committee that we are working closely with the industry on the detailed plans for individual sections of the ORN to plan pick-up and drop-off points and to mitigate, where practicable, the impact of other planned access and turn restrictions. Transport for London is currently reviewing all such suspended turns on the network and examining the impact on traffic flows and journey times before making recommendations for each turn. Transport for London has already agreed to lift a number of such restrictions for taxis and will continue to meet regularly, every month, with representatives of the taxi trade in the run-up to the Games, because we recognise the very important part that taxis will play when we have so many visitors here in London. More widely, information packs are being put together for all taxi and private hire drivers, which will cover the ORN, venues and other details about the Games, ensuring that drivers can operate effectively and make the most of the opportunities that the Games offer.

In response to the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, I can confirm that LOCOG is undertaking detailed planning of the transport arrangements at each venue, which I think I referred to earlier. I think that I have also covered the point on the pedestrian closures, to which the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, referred, and the planned road closures and other traffic measures. The process is expected to be completed by spring next year, when the details should be very readily and widely available.

There were questions on the increase of transport, and my noble friend Lady Doocey mentioned the concern about the numbers that have been mentioned. Under normal conditions, there are 23.8 million trips per day in London, on the figures that I have here, and up to 3 million additional trips in London on the busiest day of the Games, with more than 600,000 people travelling to the Olympic Games on the busiest day. So we will need to reduce non-Olympic demand by approximately 30 per cent to ensure that London can keep moving, although there will need to be large reductions at specific stations and on specific lines, and that scale of reduction has been achieved at previous Games.

One other aspect of that, which was raised just recently, is the anticipation that the standard tourist traffic is likely to reduce during Games time. Concern has been expressed by people in the hospitality sector that, although the traffic coming to the Games will increase, they will lose on the other side people who come for normal tourist activities at that time of year. So there may be some balancing out of the numbers in the city, but we all recognise what an incredibly busy city London is and that there will undoubtedly be pressures on all the methods of transport during the time of the Games.

I hope that I have been able to assure noble Lords that their very reasonable concerns and the issues that have been raised in the course of this debate are under active consideration and the plans of the ORN’s operation are being developed and communicated. Once again, the need for clear communication has been raised by a number of noble Lords. On that basis, I hope that the noble Lord will feel free to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My Lords, I did not interrupt my noble friend the Minister during her speech because I did not want to break her continuity. I have now remembered the question that I wanted to ask; it enables me also to express pleasure in the presence of the noble Lord, Lord Coe, that the name Mandeville was selected as one of the celebrities associated with the Games. On the strength of Mandeville having been included, I paid my first pilgrimage to Much Wenlock earlier this year in order to learn about the Olympian Games in the 19th century.

I have a question for the Minister, who I do not think made any reference to this issue in her response and, therefore, it is possible that it was not a question that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, asked. The Newspaper Society, in addition to all the other what I would call games-related issues, is concerned about what will happen to newspaper deliveries in terms of haulage transport during the Games. The question about which there was concern is, if there are going to be last-minute road closures, it is vital that postcode data relating to road closures are communicated on a website as soon as they are known. It is really a case of whether they will all be done on the same website, which would make matters much simpler from the point of view of anyone relying on that data.

Apportionment of Money in the National Lottery Distribution Fund Order 2010

Debate between Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Wednesday 17th November 2010 Grand Committee

[Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville]

My Lords, perhaps I may declare an interest as having been the Secretary of State responsible for the introduction of the lottery. I emphasise that the interest is emotional rather than financial. Additionality was discussed widely when the Bill was going through in 1993 and 1994. In those days it had the agreeable title of the National Lottery etc. Bill. There was a concern as to whether the charities would lose out through the apportionment, which was 20 per cent to each of the five lottery funds. During the passage of the Bill, the Government made the offer that in any Parliament there could always be a day’s debate to discuss whether the apportionments were in fact correct, and whether the charities were losing out as a result of what had occurred by comparison with the charitable money they had received previously. After 1997, when the Labour Government came in, a general debate did not occur, but there was a consultation to which there were about 600 respondents. It was not wholly surprising, given that the people who replied were mainly producers who would be the beneficiaries of any change in the apportionment, that 90 per cent communicated that they would like the apportionments to be altered.

The noble Lord, Lord Evans of Temple Guiting, alluded to additionality both at the beginning and the end of his speech, and perfectly understandably raised his concerns about the change in the Big Lottery Fund’s resources and that, inferentially, of its initial predecessors. I will say, having sat through the whole of the process between 1997 and 2001, that one noticed that if, for instance, the Department of Health decided that it would be agreeable for there to be a rather larger allocation from the lottery for cancer equipment, one did not hear from the lottery distributors that money was going to be coming to one’s constituency. The first thing one had was a letter from Frank Dobson saying how pleased I must be that money was coming to hospitals in my constituency. I did have to warn the Secretary of State for Health that it looked as though the doctrine of additionality was actually being offended against if he was the first person to communicate the news rather than the lottery distributors themselves.

I conclude by saying that I wholly support what the Government are now doing and I congratulate the Minister on the way in which she introduced the order.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I thank both noble Lords for their comments and I am pleased to respond to the points made. Our consultation has shown that there is wide support for the changes, with many people pleased to see increased lottery funding for the arts, heritage and sport. However, I would acknowledge to the noble Lord, Lord Evans, the contribution made by the previous Government on aspects such as free entry to museums and other measures that were taken during their time in government. I also reassure the noble Lord that, in cash terms, each of the good causes of the arts, heritage and sport should expect to receive well over £100 million a year extra from 2013-14 compared with the present total of an extra £300 million a year. The additional funds will be for lottery-funded projects and need not raise any questions about breach of additionality. On that, I noted with interest the comments of my noble friend Lord Brooke and assure him that lottery projects should certainly be decided by the distributors. We hope, too, that it will be the distributors rather than Ministers who convey information on those projects in order to get the proprieties right. Nothing about this order changes that in the lottery regime.

The economic situation of the country has meant that government funding has to be reduced across the board. The arts, heritage and sport are not being singled out because more lottery money will be available. The noble Lord raised his concerns about that, but I assure him that in cash terms, Big will have much more money in 2012 than now. Between now and then, Big is not restricted to its annual income because it has a balance on which it can draw, so the voluntary sector should not feel the impact too severely. Of course, if lottery income generally falls, there might be a problem, but we are confident from what we hear from the Big Lottery Fund that that is not anticipated in any way.

All lottery distributors, including the Big Lottery Fund, should have more lottery income after the Olympic diversions end in 2012, and the voluntary and community sector will certainly be able to benefit from the extra funds in the arts, heritage and sport. This order will allow a considerable increase in the funds available for additional projects in the arts, heritage and sport, while protecting the funds available through the Big Lottery Fund for the voluntary and community sectors.

The noble Lord, Lord Evans, asked whether there would be an effect on Exchequer cuts. There will be a spending review, and the Government will shortly announce the administration costs of lottery distributors, which relates to another question raised by the noble Lord.

If there are other points that I have not picked up on in my response, I shall of course write to noble Lords. I beg to move.