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4.27 pm
Mr. Francis Maude (Horsham): May I join the Secretary of State in the generous tribute that he paid to my right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major)? It is good to see my right hon. Friend here, together with my right hon. Friends the Members for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke) and for South-West Surrey (Mrs. Bottomley). Against the background of much criticism, knocking and denigration, they did a huge amount to make the national lottery such an extraordinary success. It is ironic that their success enables this Government, with the Secretary of State as the hapless tool of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to treat the lottery as their re-election fund.
Contrary to what the Secretary of State says, no one claims that everything about the lottery as originally set up was perfect. It would be astonishing if it were. Obviously there is scope for change and improvement. It is hundreds of years since the last national lottery in this country, and it would be extraordinary if we had got everything right the first time.
Some of the changes in the Bill are welcome. We support some clarification of the regulator's powers, and we shall look carefully at the Secretary of State's plans for the new commission. There are clear arguments in the later part of the Bill for allowing the distributors to delegate grant making in some circumstances.
However, most of what the Bill proposes is wrong, because it attacks the very basis on which the lottery was founded and which made it so successful. It puts at risk the success of the most successful national lottery in the world, and we shall oppose it.
Please, let the Secretary of State spare us this insulting rubbish about it being the people's lottery supported by popular acclaim. Let us be quite clear: it is the
Government's lottery--by the Government, of the Government and for the Government. If his new commission is, as he so portentously claims, to be the people's watchdog, it is lamentable that he has now become the Chancellor's lapdog. It is the Chancellor's lottery.
I shall speak briefly about the part that the Secretary of State rightly prefigured--a matter of some interest, the dog that did not bark, the most startling omission. Labour's manifesto contained a commitment to
Mr. Robert Maclennan (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross):
On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it a parliamentary epithet that the House would regard as acceptable to describe an hon. Member as a poor sap?
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Lord):
It is not unparliamentary, but I suspect that it is not language that the House would expect.
Mr. Maude:
If it is at all unparliamentary, I immediately withdraw it. It was not meant to be a phrase to denote insult; it was one of sympathy for the Secretary of State.
The Secretary of State went ahead with the desire to enact the commitment, regarding it--as most people would have done--as clear. He had not been told that it was only a vehicle to extract every last ounce of cheap politics from the jibe about Camelot fat cat salaries. The Government did not mean for the commitment to be implemented. It was just their little joke.
The Secretary of State had to be put right by those worldly folk at Downing street, in a letter that appeared in The Sunday Telegraph last July. It was quite a polite letter, so it probably was not written by Alastair Campbell. It made it clear that the Downing street priority--I agree with them--was to maintain the proceeds for the good causes, and any nonsense about eradicating profit was to be very much second place to that. I think that the phrase was that the new system must retain "proper incentives" for the operator to be efficient and to raise much money for good causes. When pressed, it was quite clear that what they meant were financial incentives. So we have an interesting situation: profit is definitely out, but financial incentives are in.
The outcome of that interesting dance was a fudge so exquisite in its contradictions that it deserves to stand as a monument to new Labour's approach to government. The White Paper, when it eventually emerged, restated the manifesto pledge. It was perfectly clear, but in inverted
commas, as though it was not really to be taken too seriously--as though it were a slightly decomposing relic from the past.
The text was far different. In place of "not for profit"--the phrase that Labour had used previously--there was now a commitment to
So what is the answer? They have discovered something remarkable, that there is a way to remove unnecessary profit margins: invite potential operators to put in competing bids, and select the one that offers the best proposal for the good causes, with least profit to itself. It is called a tender process. It is a process which the Act already provides.
We now wait--without much hope--for the Secretary of State to say that he is sorry; that, on reflection, the current system is fine, and he was wrong to say that the Government had changed it. What happened to the humility that was to be the hallmark of new Labour in government? Or was that just for the birds, too?
Mr. Lansley:
My right hon. Friend has referred to the existing system. The Public Accounts Committee examined the way in which the director general applied that system, and, in its report of July 1996, made clearthe director general's view that applicants' intentions regarding the use of profit--and, indeed, whether a profit was made, and whether it was handed to charity--were not relevant considerations under the Act.
Mr. Maude:
It appears that there is now no agreement. I do not know why Labour had to make such a fuss about the profit element before the election, given that it has now utterly resiled from its former position. What we want is a system and an operator that will maximise the proceeds for good causes: that is what the lottery is for, for heaven's sake, and that is what the Act provides for. It is not a particularly revolutionary process. It is in the Act already, and the Secretary of State should now apologise for having run that canard so vigorously for so long.
The Secretary of State spoke at length about additionality. I appreciate that additionality is not a subject of discussion in pubs and clubs up and down the land, but people know what is straightforward and what is not, and the introduction of the lottery was always going to be controversial. As well as concern about the endorsement of gambling, there was bound to be anxiety about how the proceeds would be used. It was possible, however, to win widespread support for the lottery, and essential to that support were its two founding principles.
No one was more enthusiastic about those principles than the Labour party in opposition. Labour Members supported the lottery; indeed, they pressed us further, tabling amendments to entrench the system and make it more difficult for Ministers to abuse lottery money.
The principles were clear. First, lottery proceeds should not be used to fund projects that were mainstream Government responsibilities: that is the additionality
principle. Secondly, the recipient projects should be chosen not by Ministers, but by distributing bodies operating independently of Ministers. That is the arm's-length principle. It is richly ironic that those twin principles, so passionately espoused by Labour in opposition, should now be so cynically betrayed by Labour in government.
No one contends that we could never contemplate the addition of further good causes to those already established; that would be absurd. But Labour warned us when in opposition that it was the ambition of every Finance Minister throughout the world to deploy lottery proceeds on mainstream Government policies.
What is so obnoxious about the Bill is the combination of theft and deceit. If the Government have got themselves into a tangle through policy commitments that they cannot fund in the usual way, let them be brave enough, and honest enough, to say so. Let them admit that they over-promised, and that they need to make up the shortfall from elsewhere.
Mr. Chris Smith:
The right hon. Gentleman's remarks are rather ungracious. First, the only items that we propose to fund through the Bill are those that we committed ourselves to funding with lottery money at the time of the election. Secondly, we entirely agree with what the Conservative party spokesman in the House of Lords, Lady Trumpington, said in November 1996, when she spoke approvingly of
"seek a not-for-profit operator".
In July 1996, Labour had said that the lottery
"should be run efficiently but not for profit."
There was no "seeking". It was a clear, hard-edged commitment. It was not at all equivocal. It was an uncharacteristically clear commitment, and, poor sap, the Secretary of State, thought so, because he doggedly went ahead and prepared the Bill on the basis that it was to enact such a provision. The real powers in the Government had not told him that they did not mean it. It was just for the birds. It was only a manifesto pledge. It was just a vehicle for--
"removing unnecessary profit margins".
We have waited with bated breath for the Secretary of State to disclose how he plans to accomplish this astonishing goal. We have waited and waited. There is nothing in the Bill, so we assumed that there would be Government amendments, but there have been none so far. Now he tells us that there is to be nothing. The Bill will remain silent on it.
"the use of lottery funds to secure projects or programmes beyond the scope of foreseeable affordability but similar to those hitherto financed by public expenditure."--[Official Report, House of Lords, November 1996; Vol. 575, c. 567.]
Does that not drive a coach and horses through the right hon. Gentleman's argument?
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