House of Commons Hansard Debates for 7 Apr 1998 (pt 9)

Mr. Francis Maude (Horsham): Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Smith: The Opposition stance on this is disingenuous, to say the least, and will continue to be so when the right hon. Gentleman intervenes.

Mr. Maude: I anticipated that the Secretary of State would raise that issue, and I can imagine the thrill of delight, in the team meeting that he must have held at the Department, on the discovery of that fascinating precedent, which he must have thought proved his case. Sadly, it does not, because it is an utterly different case.

On that occasion, I was talking about a retrospective measure which decided not to take from people tax that would otherwise have been taken. The Inland Revenue has always had a power, by way of extra-statutory concession, to do that. There is nothing revolutionary about that, and what I said at the time was correct.

However, it is unprecedented for the Secretary of State to take a decision without parliamentary sanction--without legal backing--to take money from existing good causes to give to a good cause that has not even been set up. It is not even a question of waiting for the ink to dry; the thing was not even written.

Mr. Smith: I am afraid that the right hon. Gentleman is wrong--and he has not been listening. We are putting in place a shadow accounting procedure, which will be activated only with the authority of Parliament--if the Bill is passed and receives Royal Assent. No money will be spent, and, if the Bill is not passed, nothing will change.

Mr. Maude: Will the Secretary of State give way?

Mr. Smith: I add, before I give way again, that the arrangement received the approval and acceptance of all existing distributors.

Mr. Maude: The Secretary of State is being slightly disingenuous; he is saying that this is a paper transaction. We are discussing real money, which would otherwise be available to the existing distributors to distribute, and which, because of his executive action without legal backing, will not now be available to them. There is nothing shadowy or technical about this; this is real money.

Mr. Smith: This will be real money when the Bill becomes law. At present, it is simply an accounting procedure in preparation for the event of the Bill's becoming law. I am surprised that the righthon. Gentleman--who, supposedly, has a financial background--cannot understand the simple process that is in operation.

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I shall now say what we are doing to improve the way in which lottery money is used to benefit good causes at the moment. The third section of the Bill--clauses 8 to 12--requires all lottery distributors to produce strategic plans showing how they intend to address the needs of their sectors. It also gives them new powers to solicit applications; to delegate decision making; to support projects in more flexible ways, such as by providing vouchers instead of grants; and to work together on joint schemes.

Fiona Mactaggart (Slough): Those clauses are very important. Is the Secretary of State aware that, in constituencies such as mine, we have not had enough resources to make bids in the first place, and that we want help to ensure that lottery money is directed to where it is most needed?

Mr. Smith: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Our proposals are designed to ensure that lottery money not only gets distributed more fairly around the country but goes to meet real needs on the ground.

Taken together, our proposals mean that we are asking and helping distributors to be more strategic and proactive in their use of lottery money. We are streamlining the applications system and helping to cut through the bureaucracy to make it easy for small community groups to find out about the lottery and receive grants.

Mr. Allan Rogers (Rhondda): This is an extremely important point. Although the lottery officials in my constituency are extremely helpful in providing advice, at the end of the day, the organisations must find substantial sums of money to work up their individual schemes. Sometimes, the technical demands are such that organisations must raise the money before they are included in the selection process. As I understand it, those moneys are attached to the grant that is finally awarded, but, as my right hon. Friend said earlier, many small organisations cannot afford that seedcorn. The Rhondda and other valleys in south Wales receive little lottery money because of that problem.

Mr. Smith: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The changes that we propose in the Bill will tackle those problems precisely. It is extremely interesting that, while Opposition Members are concerned--and wrongly concerned--simply about the theology of the principle of additionality, Labour Members are worried about real people in real communities up and down the country.

Mr. Robert Key (Salisbury): When my right hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke) and I took the original legislation through the House, we acted on the best evidence provided by our officials. Our decisions were based not on some dogmatic dislike of what the Secretary of State is now proposing, but on strong evidence from lotteries around the world as collated by our officials. That led us to conclude that breaching the principle of additionality would reduce the revenue from and attractiveness of the lottery. That was our principle and that is why we always entrenched additionality. What has changed?

Mr. Smith: For a start, we are not breaching the principle of additionality. I am sure that the hon.

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Gentleman and his right hon. Friends brought forward the original legislation acting on the best advice available and on the best assumptions made at the time. However, I am afraid that they did not get it completely right. We are trying to correct some of the problems that have arisen since then.

Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover): It must not become part of House of Commons folklore that, somehow or other, the Tory Government ensured that everyone got a fair crack of the whip on a regional basis. The truth is that my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Derbyshire (Mr. Barnes) checked the figures in the Library not long before the general election when the Tories were running the show. He found that the three constituencies of North-East Derbyshire, Bolsover and Chesterfield--which were represented by three left-wing Members of Parliament--were in the bottom 10 per cent. of recipients of grants handed out in Britain. On the other hand, Westminster received grants left, right and centre. The Tory party handed over the money--£12 million--for the Churchill papers. I am looking to my right hon. Friend to change that bias and award some grants to constituencies represented by my hon. Friends.

Mr. Smith: My hon. Friend is not quite right: the Churchill papers were bought with a grant of £13 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Since 1995, some 15,000 people have viewed the Churchill papers--which amounts to a cost of £840 per visitor from the fund.

Mr. Christopher Fraser (Mid-Dorset and North Poole): Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Smith: No, I must make progress.

We want to ensure that decision making on lottery funds is pushed down nearer to the grassroots. All that has been welcomed by the distributors, but another element, which is not in the Bill, is equally important if we are to ensure that people have confidence that lottery money is going where it counts.

Under the 1993 Act, I can direct distributors on various matters that they must take into account in distributing lottery money. The policy directions that were introduced by the previous Government set a framework that is no longer appropriate. They restrict much of lottery funding to capital projects; they fail to tackle the social and geographical inequities in the system of distribution, which are apparent to us all; and they place too great an emphasis on the need for partnership funding.

I am, therefore, pleased to announce that I have written today to the Arts and Sports Councils, the National Lottery Charities Board and the Heritage Lottery Fund, to open formal consultation on a new package of policy directions that will reflect new priorities. I am publishing those letters and the draft directions today--copies will be available in the Libraries of both Houses. My right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Scotland, for Wales and for Northern Ireland will be writing in parallel to their arts and sports distributors with draft directions.

The new directions establish a completely different framework for lottery funding. They shift the focus from the capital revenue debate and concentrate instead on ensuring that lottery money addresses the real needs of communities and that projects will make a real difference

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over a specific period. They encourage the distributors to lend support to people and to activities, not only to bricks and mortar. They highlight the importance of promoting access to the arts, sport and heritage for people fromall sections of society, wherever they live. They acknowledge, in particular, the need to focus on children and young people. They are intended to ensure a fairer geographical spread across the country.

The directions remove the requirement for significant levels of partnership funding in every case, emphasising instead the importance of assessing each application on its merits and on the scope for in-kind contributions--for example, by involving volunteers. The directions will, for the first time, require distributors to consider how their strategies will contribute to sustainable development, and encourage them to look at what contribution they can make, through the good causes, to reducing economic and social deprivation. I am confident that the distributors will respond positively to those opportunities.

The new framework, which I hope will be in place before the end of May, will open up the lottery for the benefit of everyone. That will mean more projects focusing on people, rather than on buildings, such as the Sports Council's support for amateur coaches or the Heritage Lottery Fund's £7 million for museums access, which is complemented by the Government-funded £2 million challenge fund to secure free admission to our great non-charging national collections.

Part II of the Bill creates NESTA--the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts. The creativity of the British people is second to none, but we do not encourage, develop or exploit it as well as we should. Too often, the talented are unable to win through, or have to go abroad to do so. NESTA will help to put that right. Following debate on the Bill in another place, we have tightened up NESTA's remit. Its aims are simple: to support and promote talent, innovation and creativity in science, technology and the arts.

To do that, NESTA will be able to help talented individuals or groups of individuals to realise their potential and to turn good ideas into good businesses. It will also help to make everyone aware of the essential roles that science, technology and the arts play in our lives, and it will, I hope, help to break down those artificial barriers that have existed for too long between the arts and sciences. Those were false barriers in C.P. Snow's time, and in a multi-media world they are now even more irrelevant.