Apportionment of Money in the National Lottery Distribution Fund Order 2010

My Lords, perhaps I may declare an interest as having been the Secretary of State responsible for the introduction of the lottery. I emphasise that the interest is emotional rather than financial. Additionality was discussed widely when the Bill was going through in 1993 and 1994. In those days it had the agreeable title of the National Lottery etc. Bill. There was a concern as to whether the charities would lose out through the apportionment, which was 20 per cent to each of the five lottery funds. During the passage of the Bill, the Government made the offer that in any Parliament there could always be a day’s debate to discuss whether the apportionments were in fact correct, and whether the charities were losing out as a result of what had occurred by comparison with the charitable money they had received previously. After 1997, when the Labour Government came in, a general debate did not occur, but there was a consultation to which there were about 600 respondents. It was not wholly surprising, given that the people who replied were mainly producers who would be the beneficiaries of any change in the apportionment, that 90 per cent communicated that they would like the apportionments to be altered. The noble Lord, Lord Evans of Temple Guiting, alluded to additionality both at the beginning and the end of his speech, and perfectly understandably raised his concerns about the change in the Big Lottery Fund’s resources and that, inferentially, of its initial predecessors. I will say, having sat through the whole of the process between 1997 and 2001, that one noticed that if, for instance, the Department of Health decided that it would be agreeable for there to be a rather larger allocation from the lottery for cancer equipment, one did not hear from the lottery distributors that money was going to be coming to one’s constituency. The first thing one had was a letter from Frank Dobson saying how pleased I must be that money was coming to hospitals in my constituency. I did have to warn the Secretary of State for Health that it looked as though the doctrine of additionality was actually being offended against if he was the first person to communicate the news rather than the lottery distributors themselves. I conclude by saying that I wholly support what the Government are now doing and I congratulate the Minister on the way in which she introduced the order.