National Lottery Reform

Mark Field Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2010 Westminster Hall

[John Penrose]

As I have said, an important principle at the heart of the national lottery is additionality, which should already be enshrined in the grants that DCMS makes and that the relevant national lottery distributors make, so there should be a firewall between the two. We must ensure that any proposed changes do not breach that firewall or that principle. All Ministers in the Department are trying to ensure that we do not breach that principle as we grapple, along with Ministers in other Departments, with the problems of dealing with the spending review. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman and others like him will scrutinise closely any announcements that are made to ensure that we are true to our word. I can assure him that we are being scrupulously careful about that.

[Mr Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

The Minister will appreciate that he told only part of the story on moneys being transferred to the Olympics, because from the mid-1990s significant moneys went into the millennium fund, which came to an end shortly after the turn of the century. Many of us have been concerned for some time about the emergence of the Big Lottery Fund. There seems to be a grey area in relation to political interference and additionality, because moneys have been going into a range of projects related to health and education that many people feel should be, and probably in the past were, funded through general taxation. Will the Minister pledge to ensure that the Big Lottery Fund as it currently stands will be diminished, if not abolished, so that the arts, heritage and sport can be restored to their former glory?

[John Penrose]

I am afraid that I cannot pledge to abolish the Big Lottery Fund, but I can assure my hon. Friend that we share his concern about question marks over some of the donations from the Big Lottery Fund to individual projects in the past 10 years, and we are determined to ensure that such questions should not be asked in future. It is vital that Big continues to donate to the voluntary and community sector—it is an essential piece of the Government’s agenda for the big society, as a way of building up and maintaining the kind of voluntary and local community action that is central to the Government’s vision. Big, if managed properly and in the pure form we hope to get it in, has a tremendously important future. It will be refocused, sharpened and—if I may put it like that—purified, to match an agenda such as he has set out.

[Mr Field]

Without wishing to steal the Minister’s thunder, or get in the way of other contributions, might an element of rebranding be in the Government’s mind? Perhaps the Big Lottery Fund will be rebranded as a big society fund to achieve the very goals he mentioned.

[John Penrose]

I have to confess that we have not discussed the notion of the label on the door in any great detail so far. I thank my hon. Friend for his suggestion and am sure that it will be taken on board.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Penrose]

I completely agree with and accept the hon. Gentleman’s point about the enormous amount of good will and love for how the lottery distributors have managed to fund all sorts of important good causes ever since the lottery began.

My party has criticised the fund in a small number of cases which, none the less, are important because of the risk to the reputation of the lottery. I do not want to go into huge detail now, unless pressed or provoked, but additionality was the issue on a number of occasions, potentially leaving the way open to damage of the lottery’s reputation. None of us would want that to be a possibility even. It is important for the lottery to be like Caesar’s wife and seen to be above reproach.

I will give way once more, but then I must make progress, because other people want to speak.

[Mr Field]

I would like to reiterate the sentiments of the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly)—he is right. A small number of individual cases have been the subject of a hue and cry in the tabloid press. I once shadowed this role, as the Minister knows, and the point that I would like to make is more philosophical—it is about additionality.

One concern, worthy though much of the work is, is that perhaps the work funded by the lottery is taken out of the health, education or other government budgets. At the outset, the very idea of the national lottery was to provide additional money in areas that would otherwise not qualify for taxpayers’ money, that are not run of the mill. Especially in such fraught economic times, which we have not seen in the past decade and a half, the danger remains that, however worthy many of the Big Lottery Fund’s projects might be, we are essentially denuding arts, sports and heritage projects of money that they would otherwise receive.

[John Penrose]

I completely take my hon. Friend’s point. I come back to the point that distributors such as the Heritage Lottery Fund—one of the lottery distributors that I am particularly involved with—are required at the end of every year to sign a piece of paper saying that they have satisfied the principles of additionality. The chief executive signs that piece of paper, taking personal responsibility. I am sure that that test will be applied to all the lottery distributors. Even if it was not part of the audit trail, if I may put it that way, I am sure that all hon. Members would want to make sure that it is maintained.

I want to move on quickly, because I am conscious of time and I want to leave time for other contributions.

I have mentioned a number of things that we would like to change, update and alter. I will mention one more. We want to ensure that the lottery distributors are a little more efficient and effective at distributing the cash at a lower cost. All of us are conscious that we live in an age of austerity. We all know that we are having to tighten our belts. We all know that we are all in this together—to coin a phrase—and we have to make sure that we are doing more with less. It is reasonable to ask the lottery distributors to ensure that they are as efficient as possible in distributing funds so that the largest possible proportion of the money reaches the good causes for which it is intended.