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Mr. Lansley: My hon. Friend listened with care to Labour Members. Did he notice that several of them admitted that they did not purchase lottery tickets? Does not that remind him that they are keen to decide how money should be spent but have not contributed to it? That is at odds with their claim to understand the priorities of the players of the lottery.
Mr. Green: It was ever the case that Labour Members were better at spending other people's money than buying their way to success.
One can admire the Secretary of State's ability as a performance artist. Keeping a straight face while trying to tell the House that this is not a convenient way for the Chancellor to indulge in some off-balance sheet spending requires true thespian abilities. He should apply for an Arts Council grant for his acting skills, but the Bill means that such grants will be more difficult to get.
The Secretary of State falls down, and his presentation lacks credibility, because the Bill fails the old fashioned duck test. If it looks like a duck, waddles and quacks, it is probably a duck. If the people were asked whether spending on schools and the health service is core public spending that should be funded by the Government, they would say yes. This spending is clearly mainstream public spending. It does not pass the duck test. The Government's tortuous attempts to claim that it meets the additionality principle patently go against common sense.
It is important to be clear where the Government are being most disingenuous, to use what I think is the parliamentary word for what I want to say. The first claim, which is particularly risible, is that their proposals put decision making further down the chain and devolve power and influence away from the centre to local communities. That is not slightly wide of the mark; the exact opposite is the truth.
According to the Bill, the New Opportunities Fund will distribute funds for initiatives
The Secretary of State also attempts to claim that the existing good causes--which have received widespread public assent in the four years since the lottery was introduced--will not suffer. That is a patent absurdity. The share which the good causes receive of the lottery funds will fall from 20 per cent. to 16 2/3 per cent.--all of them except, by some deep coincidence, the good cause
which is being run personally by the Minister without Portfolio which, by processes of enormous analysis, has been kept at 20 per cent. That is a shrewd move by the Secretary of State and his ministerial team.
The reason why the Government are being disingenuous is the simple fact that we cannot spend the same pound twice. The pound that is being spent on the new good cause created by the Government will not now be spent on sport, arts or heritage. To attempt to claim that existing good causes will not suffer simply will not wash. That is not just because of what anyone in the House says--it will not wash because real sportspeople will suffer. People will make applications for grants that would have been given before, but which may not be given in future. Village halls will not be improved, and historic buildings will not be repaired. The areas of life where people now regard lottery money as important will be affected, and people will hold the Government responsible for that.
There will be more disappointment for applicants as time goes on, partly because of the increase in the awareness of the lottery and partly because the quality of bids has naturally improved as people have become more used to making applications. Originally, the Sports Council lottery fund was granting two out of three of the applications it received. Now, that figure has dropped to one in four, partly because it gets more applications and partly because the quality of applications has improved. Already, large numbers are being disappointed. Through the Bill, the Government will ensure that a larger proportion of people are disappointed.
That is disingenuous because the Government have suggested today that this is somehow a pain-free procedure--that we can create a sixth good cause, and that nice things will happen in schools and healthy living centres without anybody being hurt. That is patently not true, and the Government are being dishonest in claiming that it is.
Mr. Lansley:
Earlier, my hon. Friend asked the Secretary of State to speculate on whether, in the view of the acting director general, GTech will be a fit and proper person to act as a service provider. If we follow through that hypothesis and if, as a result, lottery revenues were to be interrupted for a period and to fall below the £10 billion figure for good causes, the Secretary of State has given no assurance that the amount provided to each of the first five good causes would not fall below £1.8 billion.
Mr. Green:
My hon. Friend raises a good point which I hope the Minister for Sport will address when he replies. It is a genuinely ticklish problem. We do not know what the acting director general will recommend. If he recommends that GTech should be thrown out of the lottery, clearly that will pose a severe danger to the revenue-raising capacity of the lottery. If he does not recommend that, all well and good. I want an assurance from the Minister that there will be no political interference in the decision by the acting director general.
I mentioned the Sports Council fund, and the Heritage Lottery Fund has suffered as well. There have been various sneering references to the Churchill papers, but most awards given by the Heritage Lottery Fund are small. A typical example from my constituency is the
Little Chart village hall. It is situated in a conservation area and, although it is not of major heritage merit, the parish council and the Heritage Lottery Fund believed that its repair would benefit the community. It received a grant of more than £13,000, which paid for 90 per cent. of the cost of repairs. The hall now provides an important meeting place for local groups. That is exactly the type of grant which, I am sure, all of us have had in our constituencies and have welcomed.
The Secretary of State also claimed that this is a long-term programme, but this is initiative-itis. The programmes will last for two or three years and, by the end of the third year, the bids under the New Opportunities Fund programme will be building up. However, there will then be a new Secretary of State who will be told by the Treasury that he needs new initiatives, and the existing ones are likely to wither on the vine.
The long-term effect on the good causes is equally serious. Once the percentage has been cut once, it can be cut again--the Government know that. I hope that the Minister will give the commitment asked for by my right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major), that there will be no further cut in the percentage for a considerable time.
The Secretary of State's worst claim is that there is an extra £1 billion to play with, so it does not matter that money is being taken away from the existing good causes. The reason why some of my right hon. and hon. Friends feel strongly about that is the complete reluctance of any Labour Member to pay any tribute to Camelot for running an efficient lottery for the past four years. There is £1 billion extra for Ministers to dip their hands into, because we have had an extremely well-run national lottery. The Secretary of State managed to get his lips to pay tribute to the former Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major), for setting up the lottery. [Interruption.] I am happy to accept the Minister's sedentary assurance that it was a genuine tribute. However, in this debate and previous discussion of the lottery in the House, it has been observable that Ministers have expressed nothing but contempt for and disparagement of Camelot.
I should be genuinely grateful if the Minister could bring himself to admit, with a genuine smile on his face, that Camelot--by and large--has done a good job, that the national lottery was not necessarily going to be a success and that one reason for its success has been the fact that it has been run by some efficient people.
Mr. Lansley:
Does my hon. Friend agree that not only has Camelot already delivered £4.9 billion by way of revenue to good causes, compared to a forecast of slightly more than £4 billion, but it accepted the downside risk of, for example, penalties of £1 million a day if it did not deliver a successful national lottery on the day that it pledged in the contract, over a very short time scale? No doubt the Secretary of State is introducing a further risk of penalties--unlimited financial penalties, which were not in the contract that was entered into at the start of the franchise.
Mr. Green:
That is absolutely right. The lottery is still a risky business, and it was especially risky four years ago. Of course, Guy Snowden had to go, and Camelot may well have been sensible to buy out the GTech share.
That leads me to comment on another wrong claim by the Secretary of State--that the lottery was set up so badly that he needs to change it radically. That sits very ill with the fact that hon. Members on both sides of the House admit that, instead of the projected £9 billion that Camelot was going to raise throughout its licence period, the figure is now projected to be at least £10 billion, and it is a pretty open secret in the world of those who are most interested in the lottery that that could increase to £10.5 billion.
Opposition Members would like hard information about what the Government plan to do if that figure exceeds £10 billion. Will the money be siphoned off to new, exciting good causes to be invented by the Secretary of State or the Chancellor, or will it be given to the existing good causes?
There is genuine danger in this constant campaign of denigration. So far, apparently, it has had no effect on people playing the lottery; even at the height of the rows that have affected Camelot and the lottery generally, people's willingness to play the lottery does not appear to have been affected. However, a consistent campaign by Labour Members of denigration of the lottery operator is likely gradually to reduce people's willingness to play the lottery, which will reduce the amount of money for good causes. I cannot believe that any hon. Member on either side of the House would welcome that.
The idea that the lottery needs to be rebalanced to make it fair is curious. I was interested to hear Labour Members, including the hon. Members for Crawley (Laura Moffatt), for Forest of Dean (Mrs. Organ) and for Wirral, South (Mr. Chapman), say that their constituencies had done badly out of the lottery and that they were happy that there would be new arrangements, giving more power to the Secretary of State, which would make possible a fairer distribution. That is interesting, for several reasons.
If there is a change in the distribution, there will be losers. If all the constituencies whose hon. Members say have done badly are going to do better, obviously many hon. Members' constituencies will do worse. It is especially apposite that the Minister for Sport is replying to the debate because, for all we know, he could be next week's "Stop Ken" candidate for the mayor of London, and we know that the part of the country that has done best out of the lottery is London. I shall be happy to hear him say whether he believes that less lottery money will be spent in London in future, and whether that is the aim of the greater fairness that many of his hon. Friends appear to want.
"specified by the Secretary of State."
It could not get much more centralist than that, and that is precisely what the Bill is meant to achieve. The Secretary of State will decide which initiatives should be supported by the fund. I beg to differ with what the Bill says will happen. In fact, as we all know, the initiatives would be specified by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, depending on the stage of the electoral cycle. That is only one example of where the Secretary of State is being disingenuous.
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