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9.19 pm
Mr. Richard Spring (West Suffolk): When the national lottery was introduced, it had the support of both sides of the House. That point was ably made today by that great champion of sport, the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. Pendry). I also congratulate all those hon. Members who have contributed to the debate today.
In 1993, both sides welcomed the creation of a distinct source of funding for the arts, sport, heritage, charities and projects to mark the millennium. It was as though a fairy godmother had come to the aid of the Cinderellas of public spending. By total contrast, this Bill fundamentally and intentionally flouts the basis on which the lottery was originally established.
The Government's case will be summed up by the Minister for Sport. In his own words, he is evolving from a
As my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Mr. Hawkins) pointed out, within three minutes of the commencement of the Second Reading debate on the National Lottery etc. Bill in January 1993, one Back Bencher hit the nail on the head in an intervention when he sought crystal clear assurances about the key and critical issue of replacing central Government spending. What extraordinary prescience. That Back Bencher was the Minister who is to reply this evening. We have heard much lately about thinking the unthinkable. Tonight, the hon. Gentleman should, by any standards, be squirming in his shoes when he must defend the indefensible.
The National Lottery etc. Act 1993 was passed with real integrity of purpose. I salute my right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major) in that regard. It was carried through effectively by my right hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke) and maintained in the same spirit by my right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Surrey (Mrs. Bottomley). What a contrast with the Labour party tonight. In a speech before the election, the then Prime Minister said:
Mr. Bernie Grant (Tottenham):
I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman's case. He claims that arts bodies are annoyed with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, which is a serious charge. I know the Secretary of State, and I know arts bodies; I know that my right hon. Friend is very popular. Will the hon. Gentleman name three organisations that are at odds with my right hon. Friend?
Mr. Spring:
The hon. Gentleman has only to pick up the newspapers to see that, every day, articles are written by those in the arts community who are disgusted at the way in which the Government are failing to carry out the nods and winks commitments that they made before the election. If he has not observed that, I fear that he is reading the wrong newspapers.
We vigorously oppose the Bill, which has no purpose other than to make a shabby and unprincipled raid on the lottery. As many respondents to the White Paper observed, the Government are breaching the additionality principle--they should at least have the courage to own up to it.
The English Sports Council summed up the problem in a letter that it wrote to me yesterday. It said:
We utterly reject the Secretary of State's assertion that he is adhering to the principle of additionality as set out by the Prime Minister in the White Paper. I do not for a moment think that the public--or the people, as the Secretary of State is so fond of referring to them--will be fooled. They know that health, education and the environment are core Government responsibilities. They will not be convinced by his shifty explanations of additionality. They will see that the Government are brazenly using the lottery for their public spending programmes.
Mr. Chris Smith:
The hon. Gentleman says that health, education and the environment are core Government responsibilities. Of course they are, but are not the arts and sport also core Government responsibilities?
Mr. Spring:
For the edification of the Secretary of State, I shall read what the Prime Minister said in the White Paper:
"Education, education, education" has, in practice, meant fewer people in higher education, bigger class sizes and cuts in school budgets. "Fourteen days to save the national health service" has, in practice, meant anything from the removal of ambulance cover to soaring waiting lists throughout the country. Perhaps the hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Thomas) should discuss those issues with his constituents.
The public will quickly discover that the money is being diverted from elsewhere. When the lottery money for capital projects in sport and the arts, for schemes to improve access to our heritage and for financing the work of small charities begins to dry up, they will know what the Government have done.
Will the Secretary of State tonight guarantee the percentages for the good causes beyond 2001? If not, he will be sending out the most negative message. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude) said, the confidence of the distribution bodies hangs on that.
The irony of Labour's proposals and of all their rhetoric about "the people" is that the Bill will do nothing to empower individuals or groups of people to make a difference to their lives. The Bill is all about empowering Government. Nasty, authoritarian Governments have always centralised power in the name of the people. There was certainly nothing democratic about the so-called "people's democracies" of eastern Europe. Instead of enhancing the role of the public, the Bill seeks to centralise the power of the Secretary of State like some aging people's commissar.
Part of the lottery's triumph has been its success in strengthening the local loyalties that are essential to civic society. It has reinforced local institutions and made possible the creation of new ones. I am not talking about the grand projects that have benefited from the lottery. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Mr. Prior) said, we are talking about small projects: village halls that have received money for new roofs; community groups that have received money for new minibuses; sports clubs that have received money for new equipment; and brass bands that have received money for new musical instruments. None of that has been to fulfil an election pledge or take forward a political agenda; it has been the public's money, without political strings attached. How shameful and narrowly partisan that the Government should put that at risk.
Even worse, the Government's contempt for parliamentary authority is such that they have not even waited for the Bill to become law, so eager were they to get their hands on lottery money for their own purposes. They started to set money aside for the New Opportunities Fund last October, even though they had no power to do so under the National Lottery etc. Act 1993. In that
regard, would the Secretary of State care to publish the voluntary agreements that he made with distribution bodies with respect to the "shadow" accounts?
What the Government have done is unlawful. The Bill includes provisions to amend the 1993 Act retrospectively to legitimise what the Government have done, but make no mistake: in their rush to get their hands on lottery money, the Government have clearly acted outside the law. Conservative Members have noted the Secretary of State's irritation on that point and his attempts to brush off criticism that what he is doing is illegal and that the retrospective provisions in the Bill are oppressive. I challenge the Secretary of State to come up with a comparable precedent for that retrospective action. He failed to do so today.
The Government have made great play of the idea that their proposals are endorsed by the people. I wish to make two points on that. First, the plan to deprive the original good causes of some of their percentage share of the lottery pot is not a manifesto commitment. Labour's manifesto commitment was to create the Government's health, education and environment fund to replace the Millennium Commission only when that body had been wound up. So much for the credibility of the manifesto.
"bar-room sage to a world statesman".
Perhaps tonight the final piece of his personal jigsaw puzzle will fall into place. Will the hon. Gentleman be accepted by the most ludicrous group in the country, Labour's precious luvvies? We await his words with bated breath. We know that he will have finally arrived when his name is mentioned with approval over gleaming plates of foie gras in large and expensive houses in north London. What an opportunity for the Minister tonight.
"what the"
arts
"sector has a right to expect from government is clarity, commitment and consistency".
However personally agreeable the Secretary of State may be, he, his Ministers and his Back Benchers know full well of the genuine anger that is directed towards him
in the arts community. The reason is twofold. First, all the nods and winks before the election about financial support have proved hollow. Secondly, among those who work to preserve and promote our heritage and those in the caring charities and in sport, there is dismay at the way in which the Secretary of State, through the Bill, is letting down the very people whom his Department was set up to help. The national lottery was put under the control of the then Department of National Heritage and not the Treasury, so that the Department could fund the areas for which it had actual responsibility. Not all the money was to come from the lottery, but it was never the intention that the lottery should be used to subsidise the budgets of other Departments. As we have heard today, however, that is exactly what is proposed in this shoddy Bill.
"The ESC is aware that on examination existing international Lotteries have tended to start by bringing unique new resources to areas such as sport, then this funding has been eroded in favour of areas more closely related to core policy areas.
The ESC may have to wait a very long time.
The ESC seeks assurances from the Government to restate the commitment to the long term funding of sport through its share of Lottery income."
"We don't believe that it would be right to use Lottery money to pay for things which are the Government's responsibilities."
As my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Green) said, of course the public want improvements in health, education and the environment. Increasingly, however, they know that they were deceived before the general election.
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