National Lottery: 20th Anniversary

Lord Gardiner of Kimble Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on securing this debate so soon after the 20th anniversary of the first National Lottery draw, and thank all noble Lords for such an exceptional debate. They have come with such experience across the House.

As my noble friends Lady Rawlings and Lord Holmes of Richmond remarked, when a national lottery was first proposed, it is fair to say that there was scepticism, verging on strong opposition, about the proposal. We can now see what a success it has been. In preparation for the new lottery, Sir John Major’s Government did some work to assess how much it could raise for good causes. The best-case scenario that officials envisaged was a lottery raising £1 billion a year. In fact, more than £32 billion pounds has been raised for good causes since the start of the lottery. This is a truly staggering sum of money, equating to £4.5 million every day.

However, as a wise man once said, it is not necessarily the size that matters but what you do with it that counts. More than 450,000 grants have been made to good causes. That is an average of 692 per parliamentary constituency. My noble friend Lady Rawlings and the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, have already set out many of the facts and statistics regarding the scale of benefits of the National Lottery. As a result, one sees the National Lottery crossed-fingers logo right across the country in galleries, museums, churches, sports facilities, villages, market towns, suburbs and cities. Some of those buildings have been built, saved or renovated thanks to lottery funding.

The National Lottery has enabled the fulfilment of very large projects in major cities. In London, the National Lottery has funded the rebuilding of the Royal Opera House and put a new roof on the British Museum. The lottery has funded the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Arts and the Sage—both in Gateshead—the Museum of Liverpool and the Lowry Centre in Manchester. In Scotland, it has funded the refurbishment of the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh and access to the Glasgow School of Art. In Wales, it has funded the Millennium Centre and, in Belfast, the refurbishment of St George’s Market.

The National Lottery also funds events of national significance. There were, of course, the unforgettable 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. How fortunate we are to learn from the experience of my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond as a recipient, distributor and administrator. The National Lottery funded not only the infrastructure and staging of the Games but the athletes who competed so memorably and successfully. How proud our country was of them. One cannot adequately describe the euphoria felt across the whole nation, let alone in the stadia of the Games and the sense of a proud, tolerant and united country. So, onward to Rio. In addition, the lottery funded the cultural Olympiad and continues to fund Olympic legacy projects to this day through the Spirit of 2012 Trust. The noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, raised this particular point.

Recently, the National Lottery has been integral in the commemorations of the centenary of the start of the First World War. The Heritage Lottery Fund awarded over £60 million to more than 1,000 First World War centenary projects, covering nearly three-quarters of constituencies across the UK. One grant for over £12 million enabled the National Museum of the Royal Navy to turn HMS “Caroline” into a visitor attraction in Belfast in time for the centenary commemorations of the 1916 Battle of Jutland.

Those projects are but the tip of the iceberg. In fact, less than 1% of all National Lottery funding is spent on projects over £1 million. The overwhelming majority of people have benefited from the National Lottery at community level, to which your Lordships have alluded. People across the country have had their lives enhanced through grass-roots organisations in villages, suburbs and towns. I urge noble Lords to visit the National Lottery Good Causes website, where the projects that compete in the National Lottery Awards can be found. The successful projects give a sense of the extraordinary range stressed by the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Finsbury.

I will give a flavour of some of the projects that were nominated for awards this year. Come Eat Together is a project helping older people to get together and enjoy healthy food as a community in County Durham. Active East is a project in the east of Glasgow encouraging young people to engage in more sports and activities. Hooray for Homework, a project in Mansfield, gives children a safe space where they can go after school to do their homework. I hope that my noble friend Lord Addington will be pleased to hear about Carry a Basketball, Not a Blade, a project in east London helping to reduce knife-crime-related violence among young people. The Jubilee Sailing Trust gives disabled and able-bodied people the opportunity to sail tall ships together. The noble Lord, Lord Smith of Finsbury, mentioned the work of the Wordsworth Trust, with which he is most familiar.

However, even these awards fail to capture the impact that the National Lottery has had at the grass-roots level. In the constituency of Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, in which I live, the National Lottery has funded this year: the refurbishment of the Debenham community swimming pool; two community events aimed at involving people with disabilities in fun activities; a project remembering the First World War in Bramford; the staging of the Hoxne music festival; the refurbishment of Bredfield and Cotton village halls; purchasing computers for Worlingworth Primary School; and a number of other art and community projects. This is a snapshot of what is happening across the country. The National Lottery is supporting projects that are put forward by local communities for the benefit of their communities. Over 90% of grants from the National Lottery are for projects less than £100,000, and most projects receive a great deal less than that.

I thank my noble friend Lady Rawlings for this debate because it has provided an important opportunity for your Lordships’ House to mark the National Lottery’s extraordinary success. It has benefited thousands of people across the country and transformed their lives over the past 20 years. Furthermore, the prospects for the future look positive. Ticket sales are strong, on track to be at least the second highest ever. Camelot, the National Lottery operator, continues to build on the success that it has had in running the lottery for 20 years, managing one of the most widely-played and cost-effective national lotteries in the world.

My noble friends Lady Rawlings and Lord Addington and the noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, expressed some caution—perhaps I am understating that—about competition from society lotteries, with particular reference to the Health Lottery. The Government agree with this sense of caution. We will shortly issue our call for evidence on society lotteries, which explores how we can ensure that society lotteries continue to raise funds for good causes but only in the context of a single, successful National Lottery. We must not, and will not, put the National Lottery at risk. The noble Lord, Lord Collins of Highbury, mentioned gambling products, external lottery managers and the Health Lottery. We will ensure that these important points are involved and fully represented in our call for evidence.

My noble friend Lord Addington asked about the “cutting of the cake”. The Government do not have any plans for changes. It is fair to say that at the beginning of this Parliament the Government restored the shares of the arts, heritage and sport good causes to 20% each, up from 16.7%. That, along with ticket sales growth, meant that arts, heritage and sport together received more than £200 million in 2013-14 than was predicted in 2010. This afternoon, all of us have stressed the enormous benefits that have been seen across the country because of that.

My noble friend Lady Rawlings and the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Finsbury, mentioned distribution bodies and making decision-making more transparent, simpler and more user-friendly. Again, the Government agree with that, and we will continue to work with distributors to improve application processes. Distributors are currently running a pilot in Doncaster—not far from Barnsley, of course—to encourage more people from disadvantaged backgrounds to access National Lottery funding. That is extremely important.

The Government will work to ensure the continued success of the National Lottery. We want to build on the success of the last 20 years for the next 20 years and beyond. We started this debate by referring to Sir John Major. There can be no doubt that we owe him all the accolades that he richly deserves. We now witness the extraordinary contribution that the proceeds of the National Lottery make to the lives of so many people. Sir John’s legacy extends to every part of this country—it is a force for good. I cannot think of a better legacy for a Prime Minister.