Big Lottery Fund (Prescribed Expenditure) Order 2006

rose to move, That the draft order laid before the House on 11 October be approved [35th Report from the Statutory Instruments Committee, Session 2005-06]. The noble Lord said: My Lords, the National Lottery Act 2006 received Royal Assent in July. We are aiming to make the Big Lottery Fund fully functional on 1 December. So the fund can start distributing money from that date, we need to make this order under Section 22(3A) of the National Lottery etc. Act 1993 and to issue new policy directions under Section 36E of that Act. This order will allow the Big Lottery Fund to distribute lottery money for good causes that are charitable or connected with health, education or the environment. It largely re-enacts, within the new legislative framework, the interim orders we issued to the New Opportunities Fund last year. It is also almost identical to the illustrative order we made available to the House during the passage of the2006 Act. The order will ensure that the Big Lottery Fund, once established as a new statutory body, can continue to fund exciting and worthwhile projects, making a real difference to communities the length and breadth of the country. I will set out as quickly as I can what the order does. It specifies two types of expenditure for the Big Lottery Fund: devolved expenditure and non-devolved, or UK-wide, expenditure. There are two types of devolved expenditure. First, there is expenditure on the three high level themes of community learning, promoting community safety and cohesion, and promoting well-being. The second type of devolved expenditure is expenditure on small grants: the popular and successful Awards for All scheme. Devolved expenditure will be the responsibility of the new country committees established under the 2006 Act—a subject on which I recall that the noble Lord, Lord Shutt, waxed eloquent during our deliberations—but subject to directions issued by the relevant devolved Administration. That represents a significant devolution of power to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as within England. Each part of the UK will have a dedicated committee and lead board member. I know that the House will welcome that. The order also specifies one type of non-devolved expenditure: transformational grants. Transformational grant expenditure is intended to transform communities, regions or the nation as a whole, and is being delivered by the Big Lottery Fund through its Living Landmarks programme. Its budget of £140 million will fund a number of projects of more than £10 million, with a single major grant of up to £50 million. The vote will be conducted in partnership with the People’s Millions programme and ITV. The order will therefore allow the fund to continue to back the kind of major project that the Millennium Commission supported, such as the hugely successful Eden Project in Cornwall. I remind the House why we need to be able to prescribe types of expenditure for the Big Lottery Fund. That was the subject of considerable debate during the passage of the Bill earlier this year. Our policy has always been to adopt a much less prescriptive approach with the Big Lottery Fund than we did with New Opportunities Fund. Nevertheless, we do not want to be in a position where the fund could be given 50 per cent of all the lottery good cause money to spend on anything that is charitable or connected with health, education or the environment without further recourse to Parliament. The new Big Lottery Fund good cause is both broad in scope and large in terms of the percentage of lottery money allocated to it. It is therefore completely reasonable that we should be able to set out at the very highest level the types of expenditure on which the fund should focus, but I emphasise again—we discussed this extensively during the passage of the Bill—that only broad, high-level funding themes are envisaged. We will no longer set out relatively narrow funding initiatives, as we did with the New Opportunities Fund, where we sometimes went as far as detailing not only the specific outcomes to be achieved but how they should be achieved. Under the order and the accompanying policy directions, it will be the Big Lottery Fund, not the Government, that makes all the important decisions. The fund will have sole responsibility for deciding on programmes, choosing delivery mechanisms, identifying partners and selecting projects. In other words, the Big Lottery Fund will operate on the same basis as other lottery distributors—a point of considerable concern during the passage of the Bill, which is why I take this opportunity to emphasise it. We have made the decision not to carry out a full consultation on this order and to have limited consultation on the statutory requirements. I can assure the House that that is simply because the order and policy directions largely replicate the interim orders and policy directions that we issued to the New Opportunities Fund and the Community Fund last year, on which there was extensive consultation. Furthermore, they are almost identical to the illustrative Big Lottery Fund order and directions that we made available during the passage of the 2006 Act. For these reasons, and conscious of the need to avoid consultation fatigue, we did not think that full consultation was warranted on the order. I must stress, however, that we remain committed to our policy of increasing transparency as we move forward to the Big Lottery Fund, and we expect to consult widely with lottery stakeholders on new orders and directions to be issued to the fund. I should also point out that the order is needed so that the Big Lottery Fund can continue to fund its new programmes. Following two rounds of public consultation, and with continuing stakeholder involvement, the fund hopes to have launched all its new programmes by the end of the year. Programmes will deliver the funding themes set out in the order. They will also help to achieve the four outcomes and the funding priorities set out in the policy directions. Underpinning all the programmes is the fund’s mission to improve communities and the lives of people most in need. The fund has said that it will distribute no less than a third of its funding via demand-led programmes, which encourage organisations and groups to propose their own ideas and local solutions for funding. It has also given an undertaking that between 60 and 70 per cent of its funding will go directly to voluntary and community sector organisations. The order has been debated and approved in the other place, and I commend it to this House. I beg to move. Moved, That the draft order laid before the House on 11 October be approved [35th Report from the Statutory Instruments Committee, Session 2005-06].—(Lord Davies of Oldham.)