§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Wells.]
§ 10 pm
§ Mr. Richard Spring (Bury St. Edmunds)Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity of introducing the Adjournment debate this evening. I also thank my hon. Friend the Minister who will reply to it.
No one could have forecast the enormous popular appeal of the national lottery. It has truly caught the imagination of the British public. Unhappily for me, so far the extent of my personal winnings amounts to only £10—but who knows what the future will bring?
Various individuals and organisations have voiced concerns about the lottery. However, in the space of less than 18 months, good causes in my constituency have received sums approaching £2 million. Six months ago, I secured an Adjournment debate looking at the impact of the lottery on the horse-racing industry, and at prize money in particular. Simply put, some who would have had a flutter on the races are buying lottery tickets instead.
I have the honour to represent in this House the town of Newmarket—the world's horse-racing capital. That specific difficulty was taken on board, and general betting duty was cut in the last Budget. I express my profound gratitude, and that of my constituents, to my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and to my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General. The concerns of the horse-racing industry in general have been well understood and addressed by the Treasury in the past three years.
In 1605, King James I began the link between the royal family and horse racing in Newmarket. That was carried on by Charles I, who, while in Newmarket in 1642, received a parliamentary delegation demanding that he relinquish control of the country's armed forces. Charles II commissioned the construction of a palace in the town in 1668. He was the first to establish racing stables in the town—the first real training establishment in the world. One of Newmarket's two racecourses, the Rowley Mile, is named after the king's stallion, Old Rowley.
In the 19th century, the Palace House mansion was acquired by the Rothschild family. Macaroni, the winner of the Derby in 1863, was trained at the Palace House stables. In the second world war, the Rothschilds accommodated Jewish refugee families in the house, thereby adding to its extraordinary history.
In 1992, Forest Heath district council, with great foresight, acquired the by then much deteriorated buildings and made them wind and weather-tight. Shortly before Christmas, the heritage lottery fund announced grant aid totalling £500,000. The mansion will now be restored and made accessible to the public. It will comprise a tourism centre, display galleries and community facilities. Newmarket has a unique history as a town, yet somehow it has thus far hidden its light under a bushel. The restored mansion house will act as a focus for both tourism and renewed historical interest. The lottery has made all that possible.
In the autumn, I visited a 600-acre site on the fens near Lakenheath in my constituency as a guest of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. The area comprises 603 arable land and poplars beside the Little Ouse river. Work had already commenced on a project to recreate the former fenland habitat of reed-beds with meres which existed before the fens were drained. This has come about because of grant aid from the lottery totalling £675,000. Only 20 male bitterns exist on our island at present, and the fen reserve will support up to five breeding pairs. In future, we can expect to see marsh harriers, reed warblers, water-rail and bearded tits, as well as wild fowl and waders, attracted by the wetlands. The RSPB has a considerable following in East Anglia. In Suffolk, there are 16,897 members, the highest number for any rural county in England.
The project will be of considerable environmental importance in a sparsely populated and unspoilt part of Suffolk. It will also benefit the economy of the nearby town of Lakenheath, which will enjoy a sizeable influx of tourists to what will be a unique fenland reserve. We shall be turning the clock back 300 years to when the fens were drained to expand agricultural activity. Such has been the interest in and support for the scheme that the public have subscribed £620,000 to reach the total sum required for the project. However, the lottery has made it a reality.
Just over a year ago, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister visited Suffolk and met the people involved in the Bury St. Edmunds volunteer centre of which I have the honour to be a patron. The centre was founded in 1985 as a local focal point for many voluntary and statutory care organisations in the area. Projects include gardening and odd job schemes undertaken for the elderly and disabled.
In 1989, the volunteer centre acquired a minibus, which, by last year, had done 90,000 miles and was due to be replaced. The minibus, driven by volunteers, is available to any organisation. Thanks to the national lottery award of £20,000, a new community minibus should be delivered soon. The volunteer centre will then have four minibuses. The area covered will be extended from 100 square miles to 200 square miles around Bury St. Edmunds. The lottery has, in effect, thrown a useful lifeline to the volunteer centre whose work I applaud unreservedly.
In 1962, West Suffolk MIND was registered as a charity. Since then, it has developed three day centres, a housing project, a befriending scheme and a relative support scheme, and it offers advice and information to carers and individuals all over west Suffolk who are experiencing mental health problems. All hon. Members will be aware of the increase in mental health ailments in this country and across the industrialised world.
West Suffolk MIND predominantly supports those who, while living in the community, have long-term mental health problems. Given the demand for its services, it approached the National Lottery Charities Board to try to secure a day centre and adequate office accommodation. As the House can imagine, the allocation of £261,000 was warmly received. The organisation hopes to be fully operational in the new building by early 1997. Such a scheme would not otherwise have been realisable.
St. Louis Family Service is an inter-denominational organisation set up 10 years ago to initiate and co-ordinate pastoral work throughout west Suffolk. Its moving force has been, in particular, Sister Helena Moss. Its furniture 604 and recycling project has grown rapidly since 1990 and currently assists up to 1,000 families and single people each year. Donations of furniture, household goods and clothing are invited from the general public and are then passed on to families in need. Some people in difficulties will need beds or a cooker.
The project is currently leasing an industrial unit for use as a furniture store. Clients are referred by statutory authorities or voluntary organisations. They are not expected to pay for goods but to make a donation towards the cost of storage, collection and delivery. Warehousing, however, has been a physical, locational and financial problem. With a national lottery grant of £295,000, a new furniture store will be a reality and will offer services such as checking and refurbishing electrical equipment and laundry facilities.
The Bury St. Edmunds Women's Aid centre had sought money to enable it to demolish sheds, and to build a proper playroom and adequate storage space for emergency supplies of clothes and toiletries. The sum awarded of £32,000 will enable it to undertake that with the construction of a new extension incorporating those and other important needs. That organisation seeks to respond to emergencies for women threatened with violence or those who have had to leave home, and the money has been gratefully received.
Workwise is another Bury St. Edmunds organisation that seeks to help, with work-based rehabilitation, those adults recovering from mental illness. While many of those helped ultimately make a full recovery, some require special help to build confidence and experience on the way to full or part-time work. Some 60 people a week attend for differing lengths of time. The result is a wide variety of products and services ranging from woodwork items, magazines and newsletters for local groups, furniture, posters and business cards. The £32,000 grant received from the lottery last October will enable Workwise to upgrade its capital equipment to a level comparable to that of a small commercial business. That will enhance the employment prospects of its clients. Workwise has a record of success and this award recognises its achievements.
The lottery recognises good causes in a variety of ways. In Newmarket, the long-established NOMADS—the Newmarket Operatic, Musical and Dramatic Society—exists to further the interests of music and drama in the area and to support the youth section. The youth section meets each week and seven full productions are staged each year. as well as play-reading and workshops. The 123-seat theatre is regularly hired out to other groups of musicians and dancers. In 1990, a seven-year plan was drawn up to refurbish and re-equip the building, and to provide disabled facilities. The £60,000 lottery grant will breathe new life into the theatre and the important artistic services it provides to the people of Newmarket.
The Ormiston Charitable Trust is targeted at helping low-income families all over East Anglia, with five family centres, children's playgroups and individual care for children. In Newmarket, there is a permanent base offering services for toddler groups, play schemes and a lone-parent group and many others. Let us imagine what pleasure the 29 children from Newmarket had at the enormous Mildenhall air fete, put on by the US Air Force in my constituency. The trust is now the beneficiary of £105,000 from the lottery.
605 The West Suffolk Deaf Children's Society was founded 25 years ago. It is a group specifically for parents of deaf children and interested professionals, and offers advice and opportunities for people to meet in a social setting for mutual support and recreation. Its main activities involve the provision of information and equipment for deaf children and their families. The £15,000 awarded is to establish a resource library enabling a range of items to be made available. Research machine computers are being installed in the hearing impaired units at three Bury St. Edmunds schools. The balance of the grant will be used to acquire items such as vibrating alarm clocks, flashing doorbells and specially designed modems.
What I have sought to do this evening is put the flesh on the bones of those good causes which have received lottery money, to try to illustrate the truly excellent work that is being done in my constituency, and what a real boon those sums are proving to be.
In the 15th and 16th centuries, Suffolk—its economy based on the wool and cloth trades—became the richest county in England. The legacy of that is a multitude of glorious churches, even in small villages. At the heart of west Suffolk was the magnificent abbey in Bury St. Edmunds, the shrine of King Edmund, king of East Anglia. It was here that the barons met to plan the Magna Carta. It was a major pilgrimage destination in the middle ages.
It was, however, only in 1914 that the diocese of St. Edmundsbury and Ipswich was established. The church of St. James, originally the pilgrims' church for the abbey, became the new cathedral. In the 1950s, the process of enlargement and enhancement began, and the persona of the architect, Stephen Dykes Bower, became indelibly associated with the project.
Suffolk, however, the county of so many inspiring parish churches, is without a completed cathedral. The cloister is cut short, the truncated tower extrudes unattractive metal rods, and visitors may be forgiven for not readily identifying the church as a cathedral at all. A tower and spire remain to be built, along with the north transept, the extension of the cloister, one chapel and the addition of wrought iron screens.
Stephen Dykes Bower died in 1994 and left his estate in trust to finance completion of St. Edmundsbury cathedral. But his will is highly conditional. In practice, this is a one-off opportunity that would otherwise be lost to contribute £2.2 million to the projected total cost of £8.5 million. An application for £4.2 million has been submitted to the Millennium Commission. The shortfall of some £2 million will be raised independently, if the bid is successful.
Of course I would not expect my hon. Friend to comment specifically on this application, but I may tell him that it is being made with the overwhelming support of the people of Suffolk. It would be marvellous to commemorate the new millennium with a completed cathedral that will be used and cherished by generations to come—to rank beside the great cathedrals of East Anglia. The project has my fullest possible backing.
As the effect of the national lottery is reflected on, so the flow and direction of the distribution of moneys will evolve. I particularly welcome the announcement in January by the Secretary of State that there will be a special focus on young people and on the continued revitalisation of the capital infrastructure of our arts, sports and heritage. I welcome the possibility of helping 606 promising young sportsmen directly. Equally, I applaud the possibility of successful applications from buildings preservation trusts, and the additional prospect of long-term financial stability for arts organisations.
The positive impact of the national lottery has in my view been insufficiently appreciated. This evening I have sought to express the profound pleasure it has given to so many of my constituents through its financing of good causes and worthy projects. Its success will give rise to further substantial funding in the years to come. Of course the Secretary of State and the Minister will rightly want to monitor carefully the lottery's impact and how the money is distributed. The national lottery, however, is clearly here to stay. It has thus far in a number of ways been of immense benefit to my constituency, and I am confident that it will continue to be so in the years to come.
§ The Minister of State, Department of National Heritage (Mr. lain Sproat)I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Spring) for raising this important topic. As he has demonstrated so well, the national lottery has been a tremendous success and is having a positive impact on the lives of people throughout the United Kingdom. Naturally enough, my hon. Friend is most interested in the county of Suffolk, where his constituency responsibilities lie, but before turning to Suffolk I should like to put the lottery in a national context.
Parliament's decision to put the promotion of the lottery in the hands of the private sector has been vindicated by ticket sales, which have exceeded the most optimistic forecast. About 30 million people play every week; 415 jackpot prizes have been won, including 178 prizes of £1 million or more. More importantly, perhaps, more than £1.7 billion has already been generated for good causes.
We have been able to build on the experiences of many other lotteries to create one of the best run and best regulated lotteries in the world. The British public expect nothing less than absolute integrity in the way in which the lottery is run. In addition to his duty to maximise the return given to good causes, the Director General of Oflot has a duty to protect the interests of all participants and to see that the lottery is run with all due propriety. He has fulfilled that responsibility.
Camelot has justified his decision to award it the licence to run the lottery. Camelot managed to get the lottery up and running within six months of winning the licence. Its sales figures have surpassed all expectations. Because its bid included the highest return for good causes and the lowest retention of operating costs and profits—something that a number of people outside the House who choose to criticise the decision should remember—the good causes have benefited to the fullest extent from these extra sales.
We would be concerned by any report that fund raising by charities had been affected by the lottery, but the evidence is mixed. Fund raising is always subject to innovative techniques, and I am pleased that a number of charities are piggy-backing on the success of the lottery with their own scratchcards. The Royal British Legion has a Poppy day scratchcard. UK Charity Lotteries has seen a fivefold increase in its turnover. Littlewoods recently 607 introduced a scratchcard to raise money for Scope, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Age Concern and the Cancer Research Campaign.
The Government have a long-standing commitment to keep charitable incomes under review. The Home Office is conducting a review of charitable income, which will cover the two years before the introduction of the lottery, the launch period and two years hence. The review is being carried out in conjunction with the voluntary sector. It will focus on the realities of charities' accounts rather than what people think that they have given to charity. When the first hard evidence is available, we shall take a long hard look at it.
Monitoring is also under way on the horse race betting levy to see whether the betting industry has suffered declining income since the lottery was introduced. Proposals for changes to the regulations governing casinos and bingo are under consultation; restrictions governing the sale of snacks and drinks in licensed bookmakers have been relaxed, and the further deregulation of the pools industry is under consideration.
It has to be said that many see the national lottery as a convenient scapegoat for any business seeing a decline in profitability. I am not convinced that theatres and cinemas have seen Saturday night business fall because their usual customers are staying in to watch the lottery draw, or that habitual savers have plundered their nest-eggs to buy lottery tickets. It is inordinately difficult to tell where money that is being spent on the lottery is coming from, and it may be a number of years before we can have any clear idea of its impact in both macro and micro-economic terms.
I move from whence the money comes to where it is going. Proceeds from the national lottery are split equally among five areas: the arts, sport, heritage, caring charities and projects that celebrate 2000, and the beginning of the new millennium. Initially, lottery proceeds for the arts, sport and heritage were restricted to capital projects to enhance the nation's stock of cultural and sporting facilities. These capital projects will go a long way to meeting a need for artistic and sporting provision throughout the United Kingdom, and lottery money is being spent throughout the United Kingdom. Attention has tended to focus on the large-scale flagship projects in London that have been awarded money. Such projects benefit the whole country by enhancing our status as a centre for tourism and cultural excellence.
Flagship projects, however, are not sited only in London. The recent awards by the Millennium Commission, the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Arts Council to the Lowry centre in Salford demonstrate that as clearly as the six landmark projects already announced by the Millennium Commission. The Earth centre in Doncaster, the renaissance of Portsmouth harbour, the development of Cardiff Arms park, and the Hampden park development are all exciting flagship projects that will provide job and wealth-creation opportunities outside London.
More generally, 92 per cent. of awards so far have been made to organisations based outside London. Although some parts of the country may feel that lottery money has not been forthcoming in their region, it is important to remember that the distributors can make awards only on 608 the basis of the merits of the applications received. To get the message across that lottery funds are there for the taking, my right hon. Friend distributed 2 million leaflets that outlined the distribution process to voluntary groups, the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux and every school in the country. We are keeping an eye on the geographical spread of lottery awards, but we are confident that any early imbalances will even themselves out as more and more groups across the United Kingdom become aware of the availability of lottery help.
Partnership is central to the lottery. It allows lottery money to be spread more widely, but, more important, it provides evidence of support for the project at a local level. As far as the distributors are concerned, partnership can come from any number of local or central Government sources, from Europe and from the private and voluntary sectors. Contributions in kind—such as land donated—or voluntary support can also be counted as partnership in a project. Distributors are considering how they can be more flexible, and how the private sector can help in finding imaginative solutions.
In that context, the Sports Council has launched an initiative aimed at encouraging applications from areas of sporting and economic deprivation. That will soon be extended to rural areas, and means that the Sports Council will seek as little as 10 per cent. of project costs in partnership. Applicants from outside the designated areas are normally required to provide some 35 per cent. of partnership.
Let me now deal with the lottery's effects in west Suffolk. I know that my hon. Friend works extremely hard to ensure that his constituents' interests are always at the forefront of the House's attention, and his work in regard to the lottery is no exception. So far, Suffolk has received 45 awards worth some £3.6 million from lottery proceeds. The largest is the grant of £500,000 from the National Heritage Memorial Fund to develop the Palace House mansion in Newmarket, which my hon. Friend mentioned. At the other end of the scale is the £4,804 granted by the Sports Council to Stoke by Clare parish council towards the cost of resurfacing two grass tennis courts to make them available to the local community throughout the year.
My hon. Friend mentioned the marvellous project to fulfil the original promise of the cathedral. He also mentioned an unusual will. I hope that the distributing bodies will see fit to allow the legacy to be used in the way intended by the man who left it, and to ensure that the cathedral becomes as my hon. Friend wishes it to be. It is up to the distributing bodies, but my hon. Friend has done everything possible to make the project successful, and I wish him luck.
The two projects that I mentioned earlier—the redevelopment of the Palace House mansion and the resurfacing of Stoke by Clare parish council's grass tennis courts—encapsulate the principal aim of the national lottery: to encourage a greater sense of community, and to widen access to our cultural and sporting heritage. As the lottery develops, we want it to invest in people as well as buildings. That is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will shortly issue new directions to the lottery distributors which will allow revenue funding for schemes that encourage the development of artistic or sporting abilities and talents, particularly among young people. I am glad that my hon. Friend welcomed that development. Revenue grants under the new directions 609 will support the continuing capital programme, which is widening access and encouraging participation in our cultural and sporting heritage.
I envisage the new directions being used to support elite athletes, to fund talent identification schemes and for coaching and leadership initiatives in sport. In the arts, lottery money could be used to support touring arts companies, and to fund artists in residence in local communities; it could be used by schools, and for access schemes enabling organised groups to attend events at subsidised costs. Those are just some examples; how the new directions will work in practice is something for the distributors to work out over the next few months.
The undoubted success of the lottery allows no room for complacency. We are keeping all its aspects under review, and constantly looking for ways in which to hone 610 and improve it. The new changes are one such step, which will enhance social cohesion and extend the lottery's benefits beyond buildings and equipment. Individuals will receive a helping hand in the form of direct financial support for their achievement of artistic and sporting ambitions.
Young people are the country's future. It is crucial for the lottery to be able to create opportunities for the young and talented, and to invest in their future just as it is already investing in the future of our physical assets.
I am glad to have had the opportunity to say what I have said, and wish my hon. Friend all the best in regard to future applications in Suffolk.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Ten o'clock.