HC Deb 20 October 1993 vol 230 cc358-63

Lords amendment: No. 35, in page 31, leave out lines 8 to 26 and insert—

purpose of exercising the Board's functions in relation to applications by charities for grants in respect of appropriate activities in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland respectively.

  1. (2) In sub-paragraph (1)—
  2. (3) Subject to sub-paragraph (1), any function of the Charities Board may be exercised by any committee of theirs authorised by them (whether generally or specially) for that purpose.
  3. (4) A committee of the Charities Board shall consist of a chairman and two or more other members.
  4. (5) Subject to sub-paragraph (6), all the members of a committee of the Charities Board shall be members of the Board.
  5. (6) In the case of a committee other than one established under sub-paragraph (1), any member other than the chairman may be a person who is not a member of the Charities Board but is appointed to the committee by the Secretary of State at the Board's request.

Tenure of office

  1. 2A.—(1) Subject to the following provisions of this paragraph, a person shall hold and vacate office as chairman or other member of the Charities Board or a committee of theirs in accordance with the terms of his appointment.
  2. (2) The Secretary of State shall not appoint a person to hold office as a member of the Charities Board or a committee of theirs for a term of more than five years.
  3. (3) A chairman or member of the Charities Board or a person appointed to a committee of theirs by the Secretary of State may at any time resign his office by notice in writing addressed to the Secretary of State.
  4. (4) A member of the Charities Board or a person appointed to a committee of theirs by the Secretary of State may be removed from office by the Secretary of State on the ground that—
    1. (a) he has been absent for a period longer than three consecutive months from meetings of the Board without the Board's consent or (as the case may be) from meetings of the committee without the committee's consent,
    2. (b) a bankruptcy order has been made against him or his estate has been sequestrated or he has made a composition or arrangement with, or granted a trust deed for, his creditors, or
    3. (c) he is unable or unfit to discharge the functions of his office.
  5. (5) If a chairman of the Charities Board or a committee of theirs ceases to be a member of the Board he shall also cease to be chairman.
  6. (6) A person who ceases, otherwise than by virtue of sub-paragraph (4), to be a member or chairman of the Charities Board or a committee of theirs shall be eligible for re-appointment.")

8.45 pm
Mr. Peter Lloyd

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

With this it will be convenient to consider Lords amendments Nos. 36 to 38.

Mr. Lloyd

For the distribution of the charities' share of the lottery proceeds, the Bill envisages a Charities Board of 16 members, plus a chairman appointed by my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary. He has agreed that, of those 16, he will appoint three on the nomination of each of the Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland, for Scotland and for Wales. He will also appoint three in respect of England and four in respect of the United Kingdom as a whole. Those groups of three nominees will collectively form the majority membership of the national committees that the board will be required to establish.

The size of the Charities Board can be increased by order, but anything much bigger, as well as being unduly bureaucratic, would be unwieldy as a central policy-making body. As it is, too, the committee responsible for any constituent part of the United Kingdom will be composed predominantly of those nominated by the relevant Secretary of State. They will sit on the Charities Board and they will form a majority of the board members. Thus the interests both of the United Kingdom as a whole and of its constituent nations will be protected.

However, many important voices in the charitable world have expressed the worry that a board of 16 would not, by itself, be adequate for the volume of work expected, which might be as many as 100,000 grant applications per year.

Amendments Nos. 35 to 38 address that concern. They enable the Home Secretary, at his discretion but on application by the board, to appoint as members of any board committees, other than the four national ones, people who are not members of the board itself—for example, a committee for charities operating overseas, perhaps in the Commonwealth. The decision-making powers of those appointees will be restricted to the committees on which they serve. The committees will be required to have a board member as chairman and their proceedings at any meeting will not be valid unless at least one of those present is a board member.

I hope that the House will find that a sensible and practical solution to what could have been a considerable pipeline blockage when the board is established. We have made the arrangement to deal with what I expect to be a very large amount of business coming to the board.

Mr. Pendry

We accept amendments Nos. 36 to 38, which are largely technical. I want to speak specifically to amendment No. 35.

I am sure that the charities appreciate the Minister's good will in accepting their arguments and introducing this welcome amendment. The previous requirement would have made it almost impossible for the board to set up the full range of regional or local specialised committees that it might consider necessary to enable it to carry out its work effectively across the United Kingdom. The amendment will make it easier for the board to set up a full range of committees and to maintain the necessary link with the board.

As I am probably speaking for the last time on this Bill, I want to say how much I, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Corbett) and all those who served on the Committee realise that we have been dealing with some very reasonable Ministers—the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key), who was with us during the Committee stage, and, latterly, the Under-Secretary of State.

We believe that we have made enormous progress in ensuring that a true national lottery will take place next year. We hope that it will be very successful.

Mr. Peter Lloyd

As this may be my last speech on the Bill, I want to say that I appreciate the remarks of the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. Pendry). Reasonable Oppositions help to produce reasonable Governments. I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has found our responses to his points constructive. I and my colleagues have found his approach helpful and sensible. Between both sides of the Committee and the House, we now have a better Bill than we started with. I give my thanks and my praise to the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues for that.

Sir Ivan Lawrence

I welcome these final stages of the Bill, for which I claim a modest degree of paternity—if that is possible in genealogical terms. But at this valediction I should say something about how far the Bill has departed from what I originally had in mind.

Originally, I had in mind not only a lottery that would raise the quality of life in Britain to even higher levels by providing new resources for the arts, sport, heritage, charity and the millennium fund, which we added in due course, but a lottery in which the state played a lesser part than it now appears to be playing. I am afraid that we have a nationalised state lottery of a kind that I had hoped we would not have.

I envisaged a lottery in which big business played a lesser part and in which, perhaps, a charitable foundation was responsible for the distribution of the money. Big business may be able to make an efficient business organisation work for the raising of money, but not before it has drained from the national lottery a substantial sum of money. One of the bidders for the lottery has 100 people working for it already, just to put its bid in order. One can look down the list and see that there is a real danger, which I hoped would never happen, that big business will drain off substantial sums of money that would otherwise be devoted to charities, art, sport, heritage and the millennium fund.

That may not happen. One cannot look into the future and see. But the chances are that it will and, if it does, we will rue the day that we were not more dedicated in setting up a charitable foundation, not just in the form that we have been discussing in the amendment, but to control the organisation and distribution of the lottery.

I hope that the charitable committees that will be set up will also adequately supervise the charities concerned in order to ensure that a minimum amount of money is spent on administration and a maximum on benefits, which is what this is all about. I thought that it was inevitable when I introduced my Bill that the Exchequer would want to take a large sum of money out of the national lottery, and we asked for and obtained assurances from the Government that there would be no reduction in the money that was spent on the arts, sport, heritage and good causes as a result of the lottery. But I fear that if the various taxes that will go to the Exchequer from the national lottery are aggregated, again we will find that money that should have benefited the good causes will not do so to the extent necessary.

Sir Dudley Smith (Warwick and Leamington)

If that should happen, we shall be blamed for it by the public. I hope that it does not happen.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

Order. I hope that we shall not open up the argument that we had on Second Reading.

Sir Ivan Lawrence

No. I am talking about charities, which is the subject of the amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker

Order. The amendment is about committees.

Sir Ivan Lawrence

Charitable committees, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Perhaps I can hang on by my fingertips long enough to say that if, in future, the Government seek to take more money in taxation from the national lottery, they should remember that its benefits come not just from taxation but from the allocation of resources to sport and the arts, which will, for example, distract a fair number of the juveniles who are now turning their hands to crime to good acts within society and that will reduce the cost to the Government of an enormous amount of juvenile crime.

If people are directed by the national lottery to engage more in sport and leisure, there may be a better feeling in society. There will be less absenteeism, harder work and less ill health and the Government will save enormous sums of money which would justify their raising less in taxation.

I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for your indulgence in allowing me, in the dying moments of the Bill as it passes through the House, to make those remarks about the way that I would have preferred the legislation to go.

Question put and agreed to.

Subsequent Lords amendments agreed to, one with Special Entry.