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Standing Committee A
The Committee consisted of the following Members:
Chairmen: †
Frank Cook,
Mr. Roger Gale
†Afriyie, Adam (Windsor) (Con)
†Bailey, Mr. Adrian (West Bromwich, West)
(Lab/Co-op)
†Caborn, Mr. Richard (The Minister for Sport and Tourism) (Lab)
†Devine, Mr. Jim (Livingston) (Lab)
†Engel, Mrs. Natascha (North-East Derbyshire) (Lab)
†Foster, Mr. Don (Bath) (LD)
†Gwynne, Andrew (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
†Harris, Mr. Tom (Glasgow, South) (Lab)
†Mann, John (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
†Reed, Mr. Jamie (Copeland) (Lab)
†Selous, Andrew (South-West Bedfordshire) (Con)
†Swinson, Jo (East Dunbartonshire) (LD)
†Swire, Mr. Hugo (East Devon) (Con)
†Thornberry, Emily (Islington, South and Finsbury) (Lab)
†Turner, Mr. Andrew (Isle of Wight) (Con)
†Walker, Mr. Charles (Broxbourne) (Con)
†Ward, Claire (Watford) (Lab)
Alan Sandall, Emily Commander, Committee Clerks
† attended the Committee
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Thursday 27 October 2005
(Morning)
[Frank Cook in the Chair]
9.30 am
Clause 14
Functions
Mr. Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con): I beg to move amendment No. 46, in clause 14, page 8, line 13, leave out
‘comply with any direction given to it’
‘have regard to any guidance made’.
The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments:
No. 47, in clause 14, page 8, line 16, leave out ‘A direction’ and insert ‘guidance’.
No. 48, in clause 14, page 8, line 17, leave out ‘specify’ and insert ‘suggest’.
No. 49, in clause 14, page 8, line 19, leave out ‘specify’ and insert ‘suggest’.
No. 50, in clause 14, page 8, line 24, leave out ‘A direction’ and insert ‘guidance’.
No. 52, in clause 14, page 8, line 39, leave out ‘A direction’ and insert ‘guidance’.
No. 73, in clause 18, page 11, line 13, leave out subsections (2) and (3).
Mr. Swire: I was going to ask if I could raise a point of order, but because I am opening the proceedings this morning, I shall resist doing so. As 48 hours have passed since our last deliberations, I invite the Minister to enlighten the Committee as to where, in any columns of Hansard, I have in any way impugned the reputation of the Secretary of State, his officials or anyone at the Big Lottery Fund. Having made those accusations in earlier deliberations, I am sure that he will be gracious enough to enlighten the Committee by pointing that out. He has a moment to find that evidence while I talk to the amendment.
The amendment relates to new section 36E and we would welcome the Minister’s response. Speaking for myself and, I think, for my hon. Friends and the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster), we have made some serious points about the earlier clauses of the Bill, and we hoped to see some movement from the Government. However, those points have been dismissed, which raises the question whether the Minister is in listening mode or is just determined to ram the Bill through, late though it is, without acknowledging the fact that the Opposition parties have legitimate concerns, as do the many voluntary
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groups and bodies who fear what the Bill could mean—not what it necessarily will mean—for their funding, and in some cases, their existence.
The amendments are an example of our developing theme all the way through our deliberations. The Government are trying to ensure that 50 per cent. of control over lottery funds is vested in the Secretary of State, albeit through the Big Lottery Fund board. The Secretary of State has ultimate control, and we are concerned that that represents too much power in the hands of one person. It has been argued that this is not particularly different from the National Lottery Act 1993 and the subsequent amendment to it, but we have proved that that is not the case. Whereas plenty of advice was previously offered by the Secretary of State, I do not think that the word “comply” cropped up.
Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con): Can my hon. Friend think of any term that implies control by the Secretary of State stronger than the statement
“comply with any direction given to it”?
That seems absolutely categoric; the Secretary of State is completely in control.
Mr. Swire: My hon. Friend is right. It says in black and white print:
“In exercising any of its functions the Big Lottery Fund shall comply with any direction given to it by the Secretary of State (subject to subsection (4)).”
The intention of the Government or those drafting the Bill cannot be clearer.
Mr. Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con): Subsection (4), to which the wide-ranging power appears to be subordinate, only prevents the Secretary of State from giving certain directions relating to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Although he has shed some of his all-embracing power in relation to those countries—merely to hand it over to another body—he has absolute control of the Big Lottery Fund in England. That is the position.
Mr. Swire: As usual, in his customary way, my hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. Mr. Cook will not allow me to stray too much into the meaning of subsection (4), because we will come to that later. All I will say is that my hon. Friend is right about the fact that the Secretary of State effectively appoints the Big Lottery Fund board. The board then selects sub-boards to cover the regions. If we were to draw up a chart, we would see that, in effect, all the powers ultimately flow to and from the Secretary of State. That is perfectly clear—unless the Minister wishes to intervene to tell me that I have misread the Bill and misunderstood what the Government are trying to achieve.
Amendment No. 46 would improve the wording of the Bill by leaving out
“comply with any direction given to it”
and inserting
“have regard to any guidance made”.
We are also deleting “direction” and inserting “guidance”, deleting “specify” and inserting “suggest” in subsequent provisions. The amendments remove the ability of the Secretary of State to force the Big
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Lottery Fund to comply with any directions that she makes. As it stands, the Bill forces the Big Lottery Fund to “comply with any direction” the Secretary of State gives it. Under the powers in the clause, the Secretary of State can tell the Big Lottery Fund exactly who to make grants to and exactly how much money to give.
Section 26(1) of the National Lottery etc. Act 1993, which falls under the heading “Control by the Secretary of State” on page 8—I repeat my thanks to the Minister and his officials for providing the document, which makes it easy to find this information—states:
“A body shall comply with any directions given to it by the Secretary of State as to the matters to be taken into account”
when making grants. That set up the broad framework within which grants were to be made. The new powers bind the Big Lottery Fund hand and foot to the prerogative of the Secretary of State.
Given the reaction to our suggestions that the hold of the Secretary of State should be weakened, I do not expect much movement from the Minister. I shall be grateful if we get any.
Mr. Don Foster (Bath) (LD): Surely the hon. Gentleman should be slightly more optimistic. He will recall that on Monday the Minister, at the Dispatch Box during Department for Culture, Media and Sport questions, told the House that the Bill did not include any additional powers. Given that these are clearly additional powers, the Minister will want to honour the commitment that he made to the House and accept the hon. Gentleman’s amendments. [Interruption.]
Mr. Swire: I think that the Minister is saying “absolutely”, which suggests that the hon. Member for Bath has scored a bull’s eye and we need not detain the Committee any longer because the Minister intends to stand by a commitment that he made on the Floor of the House and accede to all these requests. I do not know whether “absolutely” is an undertaking, a commitment, a promise or an aspiration, but I suggest to the Minister and the hon. Member for Bath that if the Minister is now minded to stand by commitments that he made to the House on the Floor of the House, perhaps we will have some good news on other matters, such as the issue of the 60 or 70 per cent. reserved for charities in the Big Lottery Fund. His comments made on the Floor of the House are in Hansard for all to see.
I suddenly see the sun breaking through an otherwise cloudy day and, thanks to the hon. Member for Bath, I am re-energised and full of optimism that we will finally see a Minister agreeing that what he or she said in the last few weeks on the Floor of the House is a commitment, rather some vague, wishy-washy aspiration.
The Chairman: Before we continue, I feel disposed to allow hon. Members to divest themselves of their upper and outer garments only.
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Mr. Turner: As my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Mr. Swire) has pointed out, the sun is now breaking through the clouds not only meteorologically but metaphorically.
Mr. Caborn: Nice shirt.
Mr. Turner: I am grateful that the sun shines so brightly, as the Minister has mentioned, on my shirt and on my tie.
I fear that my hon. Friend has been led down paths that he should forbear to tread by the hon. Member for Bath, because my hon. Friend has, in the light of the comments made by the hon. Gentleman, expressed confidence in a commitment given on the Floor of the House by the Minister.
The hon. Member for Bath will I am sure correct me because I do not have Hansard for last Monday in front of me, but I am told that we heard the Minister say that the Bill did not give Ministers any more powers. Of course it does. The only way in which the Bill can reflect the commitment given by the Minister is for the Minister to accept this group of amendments. An aspiration, promise, guarantee or whatever cannot be made reality unless this group of amendments is carried by the Committee or at a subsequent stage in the Bill’s progress.
Mr. Tom Harris (Glasgow, South) (Lab): Once again, in a state of confusion, I am sure that I have picked up wrongly the point being made by the hon. Member for East Devon. Perhaps the hon. Member for Isle of Wight can clarify it. The 1993 Act says:
“A body shall comply with any directions given to it by the Secretary of State”.
It continues:
“The Trustees of the National Heritage Memorial Fund shall comply with any directions given to them by the Secretary of State”.
Given the almost identical wording in the Bill before us, what new powers does the hon. Gentleman see the Secretary of State taking upon herself?
Mr. Turner: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for reminding me of that requirement. It lies on page 8 of the copy of the Bill that the Minister has kindly circulated. Section 26(1) of the 1993 Act says:
“A body shall comply with any directions given to it by the Secretary of State as to the matters to be taken into account in determining the persons to whom, the purposes for which and the conditions subject to which the body distributes any money under section 25(1)”.
I emphasise two points. First, new section 36E ranges more widely than “distributes any money”. Secondly, in relation to “matters to be taken into account”, under the current legislation the Secretary of State may lay down criteria alongside which the distributing bodies may determine how lottery players’ money is distributed, but he may not specify bodies to which money may or may not be distributed. That is the power, among many others given by new section 36E in the principal Act, which the Government propose under clause 14 of the legislation before us.
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9.45 amLet us go through the clause in a little more detail, because this is not only the school meals clause; it is the school meals clause, the dome clause and the “We’ll grab some money for computers in schools” clause, which the Treasury is not prepared to pay for out of direct taxation. This is the clause above all that ensures that Ministers and particularly the Secretary of State—not necessarily this Secretary of State—may impound lottery players’ money and hand it to anyone he chooses to designate. We may be misled not only by the promise that the Minister gave in the House but by subsection (3) of new section 36E. That subsection goes into various details, which we will discuss further when we come to another group of amendments. If we are not careful, we may read the first line of subsection (3) not as
“A direction under this section may, in particular”
allow certain things to be done, but as
“A direction under this section may”
only allow certain things to be done.
Subsection (3) does not limit the Secretary of State’s powers under new section 36E. It only indicates where the Secretary of State has already thought he might exercise them. He must not only justify the powers explicitly laid down in subsection (3)—perhaps he will do that when we consider a subsequent string of amendments—but justify every single power that he may exercise under any circumstances whatever in pursuit of new section 36E.
Adam Afriyie: Taken together with clause 19, in which the meaning of “charitable expenditure” is expanded to “benevolent or philanthropic purpose” and which says that organisations no longer have to be designated, the Secretary of State’s power specifically to direct expenditure opens up the gamut of Government expenditure instead of keeping it tied down to charitable organisations or similar.
Mr. Turner: Indeed. My hon. Friend has hit the button precisely.
Let me indulge in a small flight of fancy. If the Government collapsed tomorrow under the weight of the argument in Cabinet about the Bill on smoking and a general election were held, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), the Leader of the Opposition, might win—despite having resigned, he is still the Leader of the Opposition—and my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon might become Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. That may be a flight of fancy, but it is not an unworthy aspiration. My hon. Friend might define the Conservative party as a benevolent and philanthropic institution. Many of us agree that it is. It is certainly philanthropic, has benevolent objectives and wants to do good for the people of this country, particularly the poor, the downtrodden, those left behind in our inner cities—
Mr. Caborn: Oh yeah?
Mr. Turner: I am glad that the Minister agrees with me.
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Mr. Caborn: That was not the case in Sheffield, Central.
Mr. Turner: We could do a great deal of good for the people of Sheffield, Central if we were in Government—
Mr. Caborn: They have a good MP.
Mr. Turner: With or without its present Member of Parliament. We are a philanthropic party and a benevolent party and if the law did not accept that, the Secretary of State could, by order, direct that we were so. If the Big Lottery Fund, with its trustees appointed by the current Secretary of State, were unwilling to make a grant to the Conservative party to cover the costs of our election expenses—fighting elections is expensive and many of the big businesses to which the Government are so closely allied, such as the breweries, give money only to the Government—the Secretary of State could direct it to do so and it would be obliged to do so.
Mr. Harris: I am thoroughly enjoying the hon. Gentleman’s flight of fancy. If his hon. Friend the hon. Member for East Devon became Secretary of State in the new Conservative Government that he predicts will be in power before the end of the week, surely any controversial decisions—I shall not discuss whether the Conservative party should be a charitable organisation—that he took would be subject to the support of Parliament, and to a vote by the British people in any subsequent election. That is what democratic accountability is all about.
Mr. Turner: Of course, the hon. Gentleman is correct, but by then the damage would be done. I do not know how much money the Big Lottery Fund would have to distribute, but by then money would have been given to the Conservative party on the direction of the Secretary of State.
Mr. Harris: That is not the point.
Mr. Turner: I realise that that is not the hon. Gentleman’s point. He is saying that the party concerned would be kicked out at the next election.
Mr. Swire: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. The sun is really shining now. In fact, I have under my nose the faint whiff of the leatherette in the back of the Mondeo, into which I can imagine getting any minute now to go to an important meeting.
My hon. Friend omitted to say that if the Secretary of State, whether me or anyone else, were to give a directive to the Big Lottery Fund to give money to his party—as we have seen in The Times today, all political parties need money, including the Liberal Democrats, who certainly need it—but the board members for whatever reason did not comply with that directive, the Secretary of State could remove them for being unwilling and pack the board full of placemen who would comply.
Mr. Turner: My hon. Friend could do that, but why bother? We would have 12 good men and true collecting £5,000 a year—I concede that that is not a
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huge sum to pay people who give time to public bodies—so why bother to change them if the Secretary of State has power over them? He would change them only if he did not have time to issue directions. I accept that not all Secretaries of State have sufficient time to issue all the directions they wish to issue if they have to go through the civil service machine.
Let us abandon my flight of fancy about one extreme that a Secretary of State could go to under the new section and deal with subsection (2)(a), which states that the Secretary of State may
“specify persons to whom the Fund may or may not make grants”.
The Secretary of State could specify any number of organisations for no better reason than that he does not like the colour of some trustee’s eyes.
The Secretary of State may
any range of purposes whatever—
“for which the Fund may or may not make grants or loans”.
I am not sure whether that is subject to previous clauses, but I take it that they will be read together. The Secretary of State can say that no money whatever will be given to support asylum seekers, the breeding of guinea pigs or sailing clubs, or football clubs because they are too competitive or too uncompetitive. He could decide on the basis of reasons that any member of this Committee or Member of the House other than the Secretary of State would believe are completely unreasonable, but if he believed them reasonable and the courts under judicial review believed them reasonable, he may do it.
A direction may
“relate to the process used to determine what payments to make”.
In other words, the Secretary of State can lay down the means by which the availability of grants will be advertised, the newspapers they may be advertised in, the shape and size of the pages of the form with which one applies for a grant and the language or languages in which those forms must be printed.
Mr. Harris: Perhaps I did not make myself entirely clear in my earlier intervention. The point of our system is that it has all sorts of checks and balances. Every Secretary of State who is a member of the Cabinet has powers that he or she chooses not to exercise because certain decisions would not be acceptable to their ministerial colleagues, the Cabinet, Parliament or the public. Nevertheless, they have those powers. They do not exercise them because we live in a democratic and accountable system. To prove a point, the hon. Gentleman is using extreme examples that could never happen, even in the unlikely circumstance of there being a Conservative Government.
Mr. Turner: The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point that those powers could never be exercised, but we are giving away such a power. He will recall that my late noble and learned friend Lord Hailsham of St. Marylebone described this country as an elected dictatorship.
Mr. Harris: He was wrong.
Mr. Caborn: Under the Conservatives, not us.
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Mr. Turner: The hon. Gentleman says that he was wrong and the Minister says that that was under us, rather than under his party. It does not matter under which party the country is an elected dictatorship. What matters is that it may be such a dictatorship unless this House limits the power of the dictators. I do not mean that inappropriately, but if it is an elected dictatorship, those who are elected—Ministers and the Government—are dictators.
Mr. Caborn: A contradiction in terms.
Mr. Turner: Nothing could be further from the truth. This is not meant to reflect on the Minister, but the Government of Germany between 1933 and 1945 was elected in 1933 and subsequently became a dictatorship.
The Chairman: Order. I am enjoying the exchanges that are taking place and some might find them mentally nourishing, although I doubt it. Can we focus our attention on the amendments?
Mr. Turner: Indeed. I shall try to limit my historical allusions and return to the amendment. [Interruption.] My hysterical allusions, which are, none the less, historical.
I am asking the Minister to justify the powers that are given under the section, not the extreme flights of fancy that I have indulged in. Why should he require the power to determine the process used to determine what payments are made? Why should he require the power to determine, for example, the terms and conditions of employment of staff of the Big Lottery Fund? Why should he require the power to determine where the Big Lottery Fund should situate its premises?
If the Minister listed the powers that he does not intend to exercise, or which he has not thought of exercising, and tells me that I am wrong, that is fine. We shall amend the Bill to take account of his promises. However, he has made a promise that the Bill does not extend the Minister’s power. The Bill does extend the Minister’s power; let us meet his promise by amending the Bill accordingly.
The Chairman: I call Charles Walker.
Mr. Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con): I was just stretching, Mr. Cook.
The Chairman: The hon. Gentleman stood up.
10 am
Mr. Caborn: As you say, Mr. Cook, it has been a scintillating debate so far. Whether it has moved forward the good governance of the nation, I do not know, but time will judge. First of all, I say to the hon. Member for East Devon that I have not read Hansard but I shall do so before this afternoon. If not, I shall get back to the hon. Gentleman on the point he made.
The allegation that we do not take the arguments seriously is wrong. After the previous sitting, I gathered my officials together and we went through the arguments about 60 per cent. and 70 per cent., whether there could be any movement on them, and what the
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arguments were. We came to the conclusion that the case was not made to a degree that the provision should be included in the Bill. My officials are present, but obviously cannot speak, but I can assure the Committee that the discussion took place to ensure that we got the provisions right. Hon. Members might not like the answers, but I take away the Committee’s arguments and examine them against the rationale behind the provisions in the Bill. I have come to the same conclusion as before, and we shall not include those arguments in the Bill.
Mr. Swire: I look forward to the Minister quoting this afternoon from Hansard about where I impugned on the reputations that we discussed this morning. In our earlier deliberations, I think that he agreed to write to me and to the hon. Member for Bath about various points; in my case, concerning the Isle of Man and other points. I have not yet received any correspondence from the Minister, so perhaps I could have that by this afternoon as well.
May I pick up the Minister on his second point? He says that after our deliberations he went through everything with his officials to see why 60 per cent. to 70 per cent. was not included in the Bill. They had a discussion, and his officials presumably convinced him that they should not include it in the Bill. Given the fact that he gave a clear commitment about that provision on the Floor of the House, and given that he is clearly uneasy about it, is this not a case in which the Minister should behave like a Minister and tell his officials what he wants?
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