Standing Committee D
Thursday 22 January 2004
(Afternoon)
[Mr. Eric Illsley in the Chair]
2.30 pm
Mr. Nick Hawkins (Surrey Heath) (Con): On a point of order, Mr. Illsley. I raise this not in a spirit of confrontation, but as a way of helping not only members of the Committee, but members of future Committees.
With the permission of my hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice), I have been borrowing his copy of the regulatory impact assessment. I had hoped to get my own copy after we rose before lunch, thinking as one normally does, as either a Front Bencher or a Back Bencher, that I would be able to get one from the Vote Office in the Members' Lobby. When I spoke to the Clerk there, he said that the Vote Office had never had a copy of the regulatory impact assessment. I understand from my hon. Friend that he did not get his copy from the Vote Office either. I asked the Vote Office in the Members' Lobby to see whether it could get hold of one for me over lunchtime, but it was unable to do so.
I have raised with other members of the Chairmen's Panel who chair other Committees—including the hon. Member for Bootle (Mr. Benton), my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) and the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mr. Griffiths)—the fact that Government papers are sometimes not in order. However, I have to be fair to the Minister and say that I have not really raised the matter in relation to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. That has normally been a problem with Home Office documents.
I stress that Members of Parliament should be able to rely on finding all the papers relating to a Bill. The regulatory impact assessment should be in the Vote Office, as well as the Bill and the explanatory notes, which have been available. The Clerks in the Vote Office told me that they have the regulatory impact assessments for most Bills, so this is an aberration. However, they also said that they rely entirely on Departments. Clearly, the Government have been able to put copies in the Library, but it is important that we have copies in the Vote Office.
I hope that you, Mr. Illsley, and other members of the Chairmen's Panel encourage Departments to ensure that, for all Bills, the Bill itself, the explanatory notes and the regulatory impact assessment are available together in the Vote Office in the Members' Lobby.
The Chairman: I take on board what the hon. Gentleman says. I am assured by the Government that the regulatory impact assessment was published, that copies were left in the Library and that it was published on the Department's website. I am not
Column Number: 92
sure why it has not been made available in the Vote Office, but I will investigate and try to give him better information when we next meet.Clause 21
Licensing of Olympic Lotteries
Mr. Hawkins: I beg to move amendment No. 57, in
We come to part 3, which deals with the proposed Olympic lottery. Before turning to the specifics of the amendment, I want to make it clear at the outset that the Conservatives fully support the bid for the 2012 Olympics to come to London. As members of the Committee and you will know, Mr. Illsley, I am a particularly passionate supporter of the London bid, because I am a lifelong sports fan. I am delighted to have the honour of being the shadow sports spokesman in the Commons when such crucial matters are being debated.
My noble Friend Lord Moynihan, the distinguished Olympian and former Conservative Minister for Sport when he sat in the Commons, and I genuinely want to improve the Bill if we can. Working not only with my hon. Friends who sit as members of the Committee, but with my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Miss Kirkbride), my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) and the others members of the shadow team, I want to raise three major issues relating to improving the Bill, which were foreshadowed on Second Reading, and a number of more minor but nevertheless important issues.
I was delighted to be at the successful launch of the London 2012 bid document at the Royal Opera House last Friday. All who were there, from all parties, would, I am sure, want to wish the London 2012 bid team every success. A number of us are wearing our London 2012 bid badges, which we were given last Friday.
The detail of the amendment covers one of the big issues and I make no apology for spending a bit of time setting out the background to it, because this is all connected with when the Olympic lottery game should start. To some extent, the issue is also linked to amendment No. 23, which is in the next group, although that relates to the next clause. If we have a significant debate now, the debates on the next group, and some others, may be a little shorter. I will also seek a very short stand part debate to cover an issue unrelated to the amendment. I make that clear even though I anticipate a fairly extensive discussion on the specifics of the timing of the lottery.
On Second Reading, we made it clear that to ensure the success of the new Olympic lottery game in the UK it ought to start at a time of maximum public interest in sporting and, in particular, Olympic matters. There are excellent reasons why the new lottery should commence at the time of the Olympics and Paralympics in Athens this summer.
We are aware that one likely objection that the Minister might have, as advised by his officials, is that
Column Number: 93
to start the new lottery game before London is, as we all hope, declared the bid winner in 2005 might be to contravene International Olympic Committee rules. We are not at all convinced that enough thought or effort has gone into trying to ensure that the game could be launched to coincide with the Athens Olympics and Paralympics. It may not be that the idea of starting the game early has been tried and found wanting. Rather, it may be that it was found to be difficult and therefore not tried.
I make no secret of my fervent desire to get as much money from all sources—private and public—into all kinds of sport in this country. That was one point that I made strongly in my winding-up speech on Second Reading. The need to obtain more money for sport was one of my motivations for becoming a Member of the House—it had not received enough political attention or support over the previous 30 or more years.
The feeling that we must do more for sport is shared by Members on both sides of the House, not least the hon. Member for Loughborough (Mr. Reed), with whom I have been glad to work cross-party on the all-party sports group of which I have been the Conservative vice-chairman for many years. He is also the Lords and Commons rugby team's answer to Jonny Wilkinson at fly half.
I say to the Minister and to the Government, in what I hope will be regarded as a constructive spirit, that we might be able to revise our view if he will during consideration of the Bill in the House, but not necessarily today, provide the Opposition with his chapter and verse considerations, as well as those of his officials, and copies of all internal DCMS discussion papers to show that launching the Olympic lottery game to coincide with the Athens Olympics and Paralympics has been fully explored. We will wait and see what he says today, however.
Before I move on to the next part of the issue, it is important to consider what has happened to lottery sales in recent years, and especially the effect of declining sales and the reduction in money provided for sport. Many people who have held senior roles in sport—not least the former chairman of Sport England, Trevor Brooking, who is now, I am happy to say, in a very senior position in English football—have felt that sport's legitimate expectations in the early years of the lottery have been disappointed. To some extent, we regard the disappointment, as do others, as resulting from the Government's changes in lottery policy.
To understand why the UK Olympic lottery game must have the best possible start, one must consider how the money that previously went to sport as one of the original good causes when John Major's Conservative Government established the lottery has diminished. We suggest that the most likely way to avoid breaking IOC rules, while recognising that it is important to keep strictly within them, is to launch a new lottery game in which all the money—I will come to the tax take later—goes to help elite sportsmen and
Column Number: 94
women who are probably future Olympic and Paralympic athletes.
If the Olympic lottery were to start in 2004 to coincide with the Athens Olympics and Paralympics, it could be relaunched in 2005, which might further boost ticket sales. In so far as I have followed the history of lotteries in other countries and looked at the various papers that Camelot has produced, lottery operators say that every so often they have to launch a new game, relaunch or rebrand old ones, or bring out fresh advertising to boost ticket sales. Therefore, a launch this summer and a relaunch when, as we hope, the UK wins the Olympic bid in 2005 would help.
It so happened that I was in Sydney, Australia, on the day many years ago when it was announced that Sydney had won its Olympic bid. On that day and for some days and weeks afterwards, there was the same enthusiasm that we all saw when the games themselves took place and, later, when Australia hosted the rugby World cup—of course, Australia was a very successful host, but we won it.
I do not wish to rehash all the arguments that other shadow Ministers and I have made on various occasions about how the Government have detracted from the lottery's appeal to many ordinary voters and players. As recently as Monday this week in a debate in this very Room on a statutory instrument relating to the New Opportunities Fund, I had the chance to put some of our arguments on the lottery to the Minister's colleague, the Minister for the Arts. We feel strongly that sport has lost out because of the Government's breach of what has come to be known as the principle of no substitution or additionality, which many Labour Back Benchers were keen to stress in Opposition.
That principle says that lottery funds should not be substituted for normal taxpayer funding in respect of expenditures such as health and education. In the delegated legislation Committee on Monday, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Kilfoyle) said that he had not supported the lottery at the time and had not changed his view. He added that he had been one of the Labour Back Benchers who considered the original lottery legislation who said that no Government, whether Labour or Conservative, should ever use lottery money for things such as health and education, which ought to be paid for through taxpayer funding. The one point on which he and I agreed was that that had subsequently happened.
The Government's regulatory impact assessment and the Library's excellent briefing cover, to some extent, the reasons for the decline in lottery ticket sales. The briefing states on page 36:
''Some have linked the fall in sales to some controversial lottery decisions in recent years. For example, in 1998 and 2002, the Community Fund made grants to the National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns, an organisation which provides help and advice to people appealing against deportation. This received hostile media coverage and was criticised in a report by the National Audit Office in April 2003.''
One reason that I have a particular recollection of that NAO report and the subsequent media coverage is that, as one of the shadow Ministers, I was interviewed by the media fairly extensively at the
Column Number: 95
time. There was criticism from Opposition Front Benchers and, strikingly, from no less a person than the Home Secretary himself, who said that lottery money should not go to such people.
I was also involved in media coverage of another controversial lottery grant to an organisation that was campaigning to prevent any child, however badly they behaved, from ever being excluded from school. On that occasion, I was supported by Ministers in the Department for Education and Skills, who said that that was a wrong use of lottery money. Not only Opposition shadow Ministers, but Ministers themselves, have made such points.
2.45 pm
|
