Second Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation
Monday 22 March 1999
[Mr. Frank Cook in the Chair]
Draft New Opportunities Fund (Specification of Initiatives) Order 1999
4.30 pm
The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr. Chris Smith): I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft New Opportunities Fund (Specification of Initiatives) Order 1999.
The purpose of the order is to specify the three new initiatives that will be funded by the national lottery through the New Opportunities Fund.
In the July 1997 White Paper, the Government announced the intention to establish a new lottery distributor—the New Opportunities Fund—to support initiatives in health, education and the environment. The fund—NOF as it is generally known—was established by the National Lottery Act 1998.
NOF supports innovative, specific and time-limited initiatives on health, education and the environment. Like the other lottery distributors, NOF will support only initiatives that are additional to programmes that are funded from taxation. The initiatives that are proposed in the Order will not substitute for services for which the Government already pay.
The first three initiatives to be funded by NOF are already well known. They will support regular out-of-school activities, the training of teachers and librarians in the use of information and communications technology, and a network of healthy liviing centres.
Hon. Members will recall that we were able to create NOF without disadvantaging the existing good causes. They were originally told to plan on the basis that they would get 20 per cent. of the £9 billion that was expected to be raised over the course of the operator's licence, which ends in September 2001. That amounted to £1.8 billion each. In the event, it became clear that the national lottery was likely to raise an additional £1 billion, which would take income for the good causes to £10 billion. That additional £1 billion made possible the first three NOF programmes.
We now estimate that income to the good causes will be at least £10.6 billion over the lifetime of the current licence. That is £600 million more than our previous estimate. We announced in September that that additional money would be split between NOF, which would get an additional £400 million, and arts, sport, heritage and charities, which would get an additional £50 million each. Rather than £1.8 billion each, the arts, sport, heritage and charities can now expect £1.85 billion each over the life of the licence.
In deciding how best to allocate the additional £600 million, we kept in mind the pressures on the good causes. We also needed to balance that against the opportunity to use the additional money for pressing priorities in health, education and the environment. The split strikes the balance. It gives arts, sport, heritage and charities £50 million more than was originally expected, and allows NOF to launch significant new initiatives.
We have discussed with the distribution bodies how they would prefer matters to be handled. They decided that they would prefer a reduction as early as possible, followed by a return to their current percentage shares. That is what the apportionment of money in the National Lottery (Distribution Fund) Order 1999 does; that order came into force on 15 February. The order temporarily adjusts the shares of national lottery income to good causes to provide NOF with the extra income that it needs to launch the new initiatives.
We published our proposals for the new initiatives in the consultation document ``New Links for the Lottery'' in November. We received 328 responses. I am grateful to all those who responded, the vast majority of whom welcomed our ideas. The draft directions, which I sent to members of the Committee last Thursday, and which set the framework for the new initiatives, have been developed with the benefit of the many useful comments that were made. I shall outline the main themes arising from the consultation.
It was suggested that NOF initiatives should complement each other, existing provision and other lottery funding. People said that the application forms should be simple and user-friendly. Concern was expressed about the ability of community-led projects to guarantee long-term sustainability and to provide long-term maintenance. There was also concern that partnership funding requirements might hinder some groups. There were concerns about a possible breach of additionality. It was suggested that three years was too short a time for initiatives to develop. There were calls for the land fund to apply not just in Scotland but in other parts of the United Kingdom. There was support for NOF recognition of people with disabilities, and it was suggested that it should provide funding to trained volunteers.
We have taken account of all those suggestions, and have changed the draft policy directions where necessary. We have also listened to the many respondents who were keen that we should not try to do too much with too little. I can therefore inform the Committee that we have increased the funding available to NOF for these initiatives from £400 million to £500 million. The extra money anticipates income that will accrue to NOF after the end of the current licence period. I shall outline our proposals.
First, the cancer prevention, detection, treatment and care programme will build on local fundraising to address local needs. It will help to complement the existing aims of the national health service to provide high-quality cancer services for all. It will strengthen health promotion by developing innovative techniques for giving information about cancer prevention and detection, and for developing partnerships to promote healthy living. It will improve access and awareness in communities of the benefits of screening, and will ensure that all screening programmes have modern screening and diagnostic equipment. It will also help to reduce waiting times for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer by investing in replacement or additional high-tech equipment that it would not otherwise have been possible to provide.
This new lottery spending will of course be in addition to the settlement for health services that was agreed in the comprehensive spending review. It will be additional to Exchequer funding, rather than a substitute for it. The initiative demonstrates the Government's commitment to spreading the benefits of the lottery more widely. The lottery's long-term success depends on retaining and reinforcing public confidence in its power to address the issues that most concern ordinary people. That is surely what this and other initiatives do.
One hundred and fifty million pounds will be available to fund the initiative. It will build on the tradition of voluntary support and the £140 million a year that is already provided by charitable and voluntary groups in support of the fight against cancer.
Secondly, the green spaces and sustainable communities initiative will help urban and rural communities across the UK to understand, improve and care for their natural and living environment, and improve the overall quality of their surroundings. It will have two main strands. The first strand is creating, preserving, improving or promoting access to green spaces that are of educational, recreational or environmental value to the community, including by the acquisition of land. Secondly, the initiative will encourage small community-based projects which engage local people in improving and caring for their environment and in promoting sustainable development. For this initiative, £125 million will be available—75 per cent. of which will be directed at the green spaces strand.
A theme throughout the initiative is meeting community needs. Communities put a high priority on the quality of their environment, but that means different things to different communities. For example, in a rural community, access to open land may be an issue. For urban communities, providing safe routes to school might be a higher priority. The initiative will help to address the dearth of playing fields that resulted from the policy of selling them off. It will help communities like the Isle of Eigg in Scotland to acquire and care for land. It will help to reclaim derelict parts of our country, and help to knit communities together as part of our agenda to bring about social inclusion. It is NOF's first environmental initiative, and it shows our determination to ensure that lottery funds make a real difference to everyone, wherever in the United Kingdom they live.
Mr. James Gray (North Wiltshire): Will the Secretary of State confirm that this part of the measure has nothing whatever to do with the right of access proposals that the Minister for the Environment, the right hon. Member for Oldham, West and Royton (Mr. Meacher) announced last week? Article (2)(b) refers to
``the promotion and management of access to the countryside and to other land which is (or is to be) open to the public''.
Does that mean not so much other people's land as land that is owned by local authorities or public bodies?
Mr. Smith: No, I am talking about any land that is of use and interest to people's local communities. That may mean, at present, land that is open for access in the normal way by the permission of the landowner or by the use of rights of way. I dearly hope that when the legislation that was promised by my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment has been enacted, the initiative will be able to assist in those purposes. It cannot do so at present because that legislation has not yet passed before the House.
Thirdly, the aims of the community access to lifelong learning initiative are simple: to engage more adults in learning at community level and to increase community access to information and communications technology. It will do that by supporting the development of a nationwide network of learning centres, with ICT access to information and learning. The sum of £200 million will be available to support the development of community grids for learning and the equipping and networking of public libraries to provide learning centres for everyone, wherever they live. Funding for community grids for learning will provide central information technology websites for joining up services between education, libraries, leisure, health, transport and the environment at local level. The grids will provide community information for local people. They will be linked to the national grid for learning, the public library network and the university for industry, so that local good practice and information can be shared nationally and in a variety of learning contexts.
The public library network is a programme for equipping and networking public libraries in order to join them to the national grid for learning and the university for industry. The initiative's support for libraries will complement the equipping of schools under the national grid for learning. It will unlock the potential of public libraries, which are ideally placed to bring the learning age into every community. The initiative builds on NOF's initiative to train teachers and librarians and to digitise content to support lifelong learning. It will complement the learning centre programme that was launched by my right hon. Friends the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretary of State for Education and Employment, providing more than £400 million extra of taxpayers' money to raise standards and increase learning opportunities.
Fourthly, I turn to summer schools. Our consolation paper proposed an expansion of the NOF out-of-school-hours initiative to fund 250,000 new summer school places. The sum of £25 million will be set aside to achieve that. Summer schools include study support programmes run by individual schools and groups of schools, as well as children's universities run by local education authorities and others. Activities may be subject-related or aimed at enhancing the motivation and self-confidence of pupils, to raise their expectation and attainment. The long summer break can hinder pupil's progress, particularly of those from lower socio-economic groups whose reading ability can decline over the summer period.
Lottery funding will enable many more schools, and others, to offer exciting and effective learning opportunities to complement other summer provision. The Department for Education and Employment is to launch a summer school pilot this summer. The pilots will inform NOF's summer school initiative.
The order gives effect to policies announced last September. The national lottery has been more successful than anyone imagined. We want to ensure that the lottery provides something for everyone and that the extra money goes where people most want it, and where it is most needed. We have created NOF to ensure that lottery money benefits even more people. The health, education and environmental projects that are eligible for grants under the new plans would not go ahead without lottery money. The initiatives will be additional to Government spending, and not a substitute for it. NOF will be able to start inviting applications under the new initiatives before the end of this year.
4.46 pm
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