National Lottery

I would like to make a little more progress; I will give way later. We fought hard for the concession that the Secretary of State has made—the commitment not to take any more money from good causes. That is a victory for our fight and it is a victory for the hundreds of thousands of people who work for charities and voluntary organisations, arts and heritage groups and sports clubs up and down the country, because their big concern was that, given the Government's appalling record of financial incompetence on the Olympics budget, they would be stung not only today, but many times in the future. The Secretary of State talked about bipartisanship, but if he intended to make that pledge today, why did he not tell me that when we met at 9 o'clock last night? He asked to meet me then to discuss today's debate. If we are to maintain cross-party support—assuming that he did not make that decision after our meeting last night—he might at least have had the courtesy to tell me then. I suggest that that would be a better way to create a spirit of cross-party support than playing party political games.