National Lottery

Lord Stevenson of Balmacara Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, like everyone else I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, for securing this debate. As the noble Baroness, Lady Heyhoe Flint, said, he embodies the spirit and reality of the lottery and is a living example of what it can do for you. Indeed, his speech was, as always, so good that it is difficult to think of anything to say to follow it up. I was only a little surprised that he did not take a leaf out of another book and do a British bake-off to produce a cake with candles. I am still waiting for that because 21st birthdays would not be the same without a cake.

I congratulate the two maiden speakers today. Both noble Lords were able to pull off the difficult trick of respecting the conventions of the House while also raising some quite trenchant issues which will need to be addressed. They both left us wanting more, which is a wonderful trick to pull off if you can.

When you come to your Lordships’ House, you often find that bits of my life come back to confront you, and today is one of those days. I was a director of the British Film Institute, as has already been mentioned, at the time when the lottery was being conceived and developed. For much of the time I was at the BFI my Minister was the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, who spoke so warmly and well about the way she managed the lottery and how it has turned out. I have to say that she and I fell out a number of times. It is difficult to think that that could happen with someone so pleasant and who is such good company, but I wanted the BFI to be a lottery distributor and she did not agree. We disagreed, but actually it worked out well for me because it meant that I could apply for lottery funding, whereas as a distributor I would not have been to do so. I managed to persuade my governors that they should go for a huge amount of lottery funding during my final few years at the BFI, much of which we received.

One of the people who helped us was, of course, my noble friend Lord Puttnam, who not only was involved in developing the way in which funding could flow towards film making, but also was able to provide funds for the IMAX, which now stands on the London South Bank and is a great success. During that time I also went to see the noble Lord, Lord True, in his eyrie at No. 10, although he probably does not remember that. I tried to batter his ears about my problem with my then Minister, but he was very resistant. I thank him for that because again it worked out quite well.

As befits a 21st birthday party, the tone tonight has been celebratory. I think that we should recognise that the lottery had a difficult conception and birth, and those who were involved, including my noble friend Lord Pendry, have given some good examples of why that was. When I was at the BFI we had a problem with one of our board members, Alexander Walker, who was against the whole idea because he did not approve of gambling. Since he was the film critic of the Evening Standard at the time, it was quite difficult to persuade him to keep quiet when it was important that the voices speaking up for the lottery should come through.

But the lottery has grown up well and is now a fit and healthy adult. It is remarkable because it is flexible. It has been able to move and change with the ways in which public and political opinions have moved. It has produced a terrific slew of activity. It has transformed many places—the BFI would not be the place it is today without the funding that has come through that route. As my noble friend Lord Puttnam said, it has produced a range of incredibly good buildings and good works without scandal and without any problems, as far as we are aware.

As the noble Lord, Lord Beith, said, it has reached areas that central funds never would have reached, and that is an important part of it. The concept of additionality is important, but it is probably more abused than used in terms of how decisions are taken. What seems to happen is that, by keeping a separate funding structure for the lottery, decisions made by people involved in it are able to come through in a way that they would not have done if it had been done by central government.

The very distinguished speakers in the list have covered the field where the lottery currently funds and have highlighted the difference that lottery funding has made across sport, the arts, heritage, charity and voluntary work. I hope that the Minister will comment on the points that have been made. I will raise one or two myself and I am particularly interested in the point made by the noble Lord, Lord True, about the restriction on funding abroad, which seems quaint now. If he wants a list, I have one, but I want to add to it the Lines of Torres Vedras, which I raised in this House only a year ago. It seems extraordinary that that great achievement of the noble Iron Duke’s ancestor has been restored entirely without British contributions. There are many graves and memorials there that would benefit from lottery funding. I put my plug in now.

The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, made good points about the way in which sports funding goes, particularly the need to make sure that Paralympic athletes are given a fair crack of the whip at the same time as others are being considered. I should like to add a couple of points that we have made in previous debates about the differential support which appears to be happening in women’s sport, of which I think that the Minister is aware, and the problems that the current funding arrangements through the lottery have for team sports, which do not seem to do as well as perhaps they should, particularly compared to individuals.

We should bear in mind the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, about the risk to many particularly good small schemes. Probably, when looked at from the heights of Whitehall, they do not add up to very much and look very small, and could be scooped up and used for other purposes. Of course, they matter very much in the realisation of the projects that they do in communities up and down the country. It is very important that those of us who care about these areas fight for projects that the Big Lottery Fund and others are able to support.

I end with three issues that perhaps also could be picked up by the Minister. The first is small but important. In his maiden speech, the noble Duke mentioned that there might be an issue about the costs of distributors. We were warned by a previous Minister to have nothing to do with the way in which distributors organise and run things. I want to steer between those two positions. There probably is an issue that could be looked at. If the Minister is going to do so, could she look at the various remits adopted by the organisations concerned? I just happened to notice, for instance, that Arts Council England’s remit is a mission to provide “great art for everyone”. Obviously, the lottery side of that would be different but it is still within the overall ambit of the Arts Council England. The Arts Council Northern Ireland says that it is,

“the lead development agency for the arts in Northern Ireland”.

There is a world of difference between those two approaches. I wonder whether that is being brought through in the way in which lotteries are being distributed.

Secondly, several noble Lords raised the matter of threats to the National Lottery, which is a nationalised industry in the sense that it is the one organisation which has the ability to raise funds for good causes and is protected by legislation for that reason. But it will come to nothing if the other society lotteries, such as the Health Lottery and the People’s Postcode Lottery, are to be given the same abilities to operate as the National Lottery. It would just mean that the money is not as well spent. If we do not attack the questions of cost base and profit making within those society lotteries, we will all lose as a result.

As the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, said, we need to think quite carefully about the connection now developing between lotteries and gambling. It has been going on for a long time and he was right to say that, but it has reached new heights and there is an issue here which could spoil what we have and we would not want to do that.

My third and final point is about the imbalance of spending by the lottery across the country. Although the lottery is very good at reporting back to the areas where it is spending money to make sure that those who buy tickets know where that money is going, recently there has been a report by Peter Stark, Christopher Gordon and David Powell which shows that spending by Arts Council England has consistently favoured the capital as against the rest of England. The report is available and should be read. The headline figure is that 61% of the spend currently goes to London and only 39% goes to the rest of England, but London has only 15% of the population. Something ain’t right there.

Anyway, happy birthday National Lottery. It was said, “It could be you”. It has never been me but the combination of a flutter and a feeling that, by playing the lottery or buying a ticket, you are helping good causes is a very powerful way to make sure that money goes in the way that it should to good causes—and long may it last.