I am grateful to the Minister for that information.
There are weaknesses in the regulation, such as the one identified by the hon. Member for Bury North, but I think it entirely reasonable for us to have a process allowing voluntary organisations to bid for funds so that people can learn about the European Union. The National Council for Voluntary Organisations has provided extremely positive feedback on the grants. It refers to
“Support for participation and democratic engagement. People’s wellbeing…employment, social cohesion and sustainable development. Impact of EU policies in societies”.
What could be more neutral than that? The NCVO also refers to
“Exchange of expertise…Building capacity of voluntary and community organisations.”
Conservative Members claim to support the big society, but now they seem to want to vote down money that would promote it. Finally, the NCVO refers to
“Establishing links between local authorities and community organisations in different countries”.
Although there are weaknesses in the regulation, I think that the positives outweigh the problems raised by Conservative Members.
I should like the Minister to answer these questions. What will the application system be? How will he ensure that the money goes to groups throughout the country, and is not concentrated on small and highly politicised groups? I should also like to know whether he has discovered the answer to the question I asked him earlier about the archiving: why are we locking up the European documents for 30 years—which is what we do with documents in London—and who will have access to them in the meantime?