MP Questions the Lottery’s Future

31st January 2006

On Monday 30th January David Amess, Member of Parliament for Southend West quizzed the Culture Secretary over the changes proposed to the Lottery by the National Lottery Bill that received its third reading in the House of Commons on Thursday 19th January 2006.
This legislation seeks to formalise the role of a single distributing body, the Big Lottery Fund, that has merged and replaced the New Opportunities Fund and the Community Fund that existed previously. This is controversial because it would give Ministers control of 50% of all lottery procedes effectively allowing them wide prescriptive powers in deciding where Lottery money is speant. Not only would this erode the independece of the National Lottery but it would also divert funds away from the original four good causes, Arts, Soprts, Heritage and Charities to community learning and health projects that should be funded by the Goernment’s purse therefore completely undermining the prinicple of additionality that it supposed to be at the Lottery’s heart.

It was these issues that Mr Amess sought to address in Parliament yesterday in oral questions to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, please find the extract from Hansard below.

Lottery Funds
3. Mr. David Amess (Southend, West) (Con): What steps she will take to ensure that lottery funds are distributed to the four original good causes. [46092]

The Minister for Sport (Mr. Richard Caborn): The share of national lottery funding for all four good causes is guaranteed until 2009, and each cause will continue after 2009. But the public also want community learning and health projects, and we will not let them down by going back to the 1993 priorities.

Mr. Amess: That is splendid news. In the light of the Minister's answer, will he confirm that the National Lottery Bill will not erode the traditional independence of the way in which the lottery spends its money, that there will be no political interference, and that the Big Lottery Fund represents additional funding entirely based on the core principles on which the lottery was founded?

Mr. Caborn: Absolutely. The hon. Gentleman's first question was about independence. At the time of the Report stage and Third Reading of the National Lottery Bill, which is now in another place, we spoke to all the lottery distributors. They have agreed to show in their annual reports how they have delivered additionality. That information will be made available in both Houses of Parliament—[Interruption.] If hon. Members would like to commit the Opposition's time to a debate on that additionality, we should be more than pleased to respond to it. On the hon. Gentleman's second point, the lottery was set up under the previous Conservative Government led by John Major, and it is a first-class institution. However, it needs to be refreshed from time to time, and we have conducted a wide consultation on the issues. The MORI poll of 2000, and a subsequent YouGov poll, have shown that health, education and the environment were the areas that the general public wanted to see their lottery money spent on in future. So that is what we are doing in the new Bill; those three themes will be the main recipients of the money from the Big Lottery Fund.

As this transcript shows, the Minister for Sport, Mr Caborn admits that National Lottery Funding will be used to fund health, education and environmental projects and funding is only ‘guaranteed’ for the four original good causes established at the Lottery’s inception until 2009. David Amess is committed to ensuring that Lottery money is distributed to truly deserving causes and constitutes additional funding to that spent by the government on public projects.

Mr Amess is all too aware that Southend on Sea receives a disproportionately small amount of National Lottery funds and is therefore seeking to work with the new distributor, the Big Lottery Fund, to ensure that local causes are awarded money for the good causes that they represent. For example, on Monday 16th January 2006 there was a ‘Reaching Communities’ briefing held the Southend Association of Voluntary Services by the Big Lottery Fund to give more information on the lottery application process and advice on how to make their lottery bids more successful. This event was received very well by those that attended and David is keen to encourage more such sessions, not only for the benefit of local organisations and associations in Southend but also to ensure that the new distributor does maintain its commitment to the original good causes of the National Lottery especially as the Government is unwilling to ‘guarantee’ support for them in the future.