First Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation
Thursday 9 January 2003
Mr. Malcolm Moss (North-East
Cambridgeshire): The Minister says that NESTA must report its
financial dealings in a clearer way in future. However, NESTA says that it
is following the guidelines given to it by the Department for Culture,
Media and Sport. Is it not, therefore, the Minister's and his Department's
responsibility if the accounts are not as clear as they should be?
Mr. Caborn:
Not necessarily. As the Government's response states, my Department is
trying to work with NESTA to take up some of the points that were made by
the Science and Technology Committee. If there are problems with the
instructions that are given by the Department for Culture, Media and
Sport, we will examine that. As the Minister, I want to ensure that the
accounts are accurate and transparent, so that they will give full
knowledge to the House and to members of the public. Public money is being
used, and we must ensure that it is used for the purpose for which it was
given. If there are difficulties in that area, we will address them.
We have given an assurance that we will
work with NESTA to address those key issues over the next few months. We
have already taken steps to improve the way in which NESTA's programme
expenditure is presented in the annual accounts.
I will now discuss the reasons for the
proposed increase in NESTA's endowment. When NESTA was established,
provision was made in the relevant National Lottery Act for the endowment
to be increased by order of the Secretary of State. That provision
recognised that the initial endowment alone might not be sufficient, in
the long term, for NESTA to achieve all of its ambitions and challenging
objectives.
In March 2001, my Department published a
Green Paper, ''Culture and Creativity: The Next Ten Years'', which
included some new ideas that we thought NESTA would be best placed to
develop. Those ideas included new schemes to provide business support to
art and design graduates and the establishment of what has subsequently
become known as the NESTA Futurelab.
Mr. Moss: Thank you, Miss Widdecombe. May I say what a pleasure it
is to serve under your chairmanship once again.
I am new to the whole area of Government
lottery policy. We are asked to agree to substantial new moneys for an
organisation that only two months ago was the subject of a rather damning
Select Committee report. That report produced a list of criticisms that
the Minister brushed aside this afternoon in his drive to hand out more
cash to what must be one of the Government's pet projects.
The Minister alluded to the fact that
NESTA had been pressing the Government for additional funds. As far as
financing is concerned, it is no secret that NESTA was looking for moneys
to make up the shortfall between the predicted £10 million to £12
million from the endowment and the £8 million that it is receiving, and
to expand into new areas of service and grant. I have a long list of
questions on that financing. If the Minister cannot answer them this
afternoon, perhaps he could write to me in the usual way.
Coming to the matter as a new boy in the
shadow DCMS team, I wondered why the Government had initially gone down
the route of bestowing an endowment on NESTA. Would it not have been
easier to agree an income distribution from the lottery fund each year?
There could have been a guaranteed amount spread over five years, under
contract, and subject to review at the appropriate time. What costs does
NESTA incur simply to administer, invest and monitor its investments?
Surely there may be unnecessary administration costs in carrying out such
financial transactions, which could have been avoided had the means of
financing been different from the outset. Where is that endowment
invested?
The Minister alluded to the problem with
interest rates. Perhaps he could disclose to the Committee where that
endowment money is invested. Does NESTA have full autonomy in investment
decisions? If it does, it could incur criticism if investments did
badly—for example, if it decided to invest in shares rather than
Government gilts. Who is responsible for the shortfall in income over the
last couple of years, which has led to an income of £8 million as opposed
to the predicted £10 million to £12 million? Did the DCMS, or the
Minister, or even NESTA, foresee any difficulties if income was lower than
expected or it fluctuated significantly? If those difficulties were
foreseen, what contingencies were identified and put in place at
inception?
The grants given by NESTA appear to be
one-off grants of one sort or another. At the end of the period in which
original pump-priming finance has ended, to whom do individuals who have
developed successful ideas turn to progress their scientifically important
ideas? To whom do they go for extra funding to make their ideas reality?
The Minister said that NESTA had asked for additional money. When did it
approach the Government in the first instance for those finances, and when
did the Government make the decision to capitulate to the demands of NESTA?
It asked for £100 million extra, according to the Minister, and it is
getting £95 million. Give or take a few million, it has got what it asked
for.
The Minister talked about clarity in the
accounts. The Select Committee was critical of that. I return to the
question that I put to the Minister during his initial remarks. The
Science and Technology Committee report severely criticised NESTA for the
way in which it presented its accounts. Recommendation 1 says:
''Annual Reports should not read like
the production notes in a theatre programme. Creativity should not be at
the expense of clarity. We recommend that NESTA in future provide Annual
Reports which contain clear and full information on expenditure,
including awards made; the targets; and expenditure plans''.
The Committee Clerk kindly gave us a copy
of NESTA's outline response. It is not in the public domain, but I
understand that we can use it. In it, NESTA says:
''Like many Non-Departmental Public
Bodies we are governed by the Directions given to us by the Secretary of
State for Culture, Media and Sport with the approval of the Treasury and
in accordance with Section 23 of the National Lottery Act 1998''.
It goes on to defend its position
strongly in its outline response. Therefore, who is responsible if NESTA's
accounts do not make any sense to a Select Committee, one of whose prime
recommendations is that the body needs to get its act in order? It is no
good for it to say that it is just following ministerial guidelines while
the Minister says that it is NESTA's fault. The Committee has every right
to know who is responsible for the inadequate presentation of accounts.
Mr. Caborn:
I would not normally intervene, but the point is important and needs to be
cleared up. We are talking about style and substance. I want to make it
clear that the summary of accounts in each report has been approved by the
Comptroller and Auditor General. The full annual accounts have been
similarly approved and are published. We are talking not about the
substance, but about the style, and the annual report, as the Select
Committee said, should not read like
I accept that fully. I have a copy of the
accounts with me, and I agree with the Select Committee. When I got them,
even before I saw the Select Committee's observation, I thought that they
were not of a style that is necessary for an organisation such as NESTA.
However, that is not to doubt accuracy of the accounts. It is only the
style that was subject to criticism, criticism with which I agree, and
that is why we are now working with NESTA to ensure that a different and
more appropriate style is used next time. However, the accounts are
accurate and have gone through the normal processes.
The Chairman:
Order. I am sure that the Committee is grateful to the Minister for that
explanation, but even Ministers' interventions should be brief.
Mr. Moss:
We are grateful to the Minister for the clarification, if I can call it
that, of his initial criticism of the accounts. We are led to believe that
the figures are okay and it is just that we cannot find them, and that the
presentation is inadequate, but the substance and accounting practices are
spot on. Indeed, as NESTA points out in its response, the National Audit
Office cleared the accounts and the Comptroller and Auditor General signed
them. However, given that criticism, would it not have been sensible for
NESTA or the Government to have foreseen potential problems and ensured
that the accounts were published, either as an addendum or at the back of
the book? That would have meant that people who were examining the
accounts in a normal way could see their way through it. The Government
accept that the accounts are inadequate and will need improvement, so I
will move on.
Mr. Caborn:
I will be brief, Miss Widdecombe but, for the record, I should point out
that the accounts are laid out in the annual report that I am presenting
to the Committee in the normal format of accounts.
Mr. Moss:
I am talking not about the accounts that a company would set out, but
about the criticism of the Select Committee, which wants to see where the
money has gone. The fact that that is not included is the essence of the
criticism.
The Minister clarified the source of the
new money as the New Opportunities Fund. It is well known that the
Government have come under substantial criticism during the past three to
six months about the NOF, and a campaign by several newspapers has
highlighted several areas of expenditure that do not normally carry public
support. There might be a link between areas of expenditure and people's
lack of enthusiasm for buying lottery tickets. It might be that the
Government have reached on to the shelf and taken the first bid that they
could find in order to get rid of some of the money that is accumulating
in the distribution fund. That smacks of an over-hasty, knee-jerk reaction
to a pressure that was building up with regard to unspent lottery money.
Dr. Andrew Murrison (Westbury):
Does my hon. Friend agree that one use for the funds would be to cancel
out the reduction in lottery funding—from £32 million to £17
million—for village halls, which is causing great distress to many rural
constituents?
Mr. Moss:
My hon. Friend makes an important point. However, only days ago, a
Minister from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
said that there had been no reduction in expenditure on village halls. The
reality is different; many villages are immensely disappointed that their
bids have not been successful.
The Minister spoke of conditions
attaching to the drawing-down of the new £95 million in funds. He alluded
to some of them, but did not give the Committee any details. It would be
helpful if he could place details of those conditions in the Library. He
went on to say that the Government wish to see NESTA making a more even
geographical distribution of the moneys, and a better balance between the
sectors for which NESTA is responsible. NESTA rejected that criticism by
the Select Committee. It did not want its activities to be proscribed or
to have to meet targets. We know that the Government are fixated on
targets. Can the Minister tell us why he thinks that he will get the kind
of response that he wants from NESTA, if he is going to tie conditions to
extra money that NESTA does not like?
The objectives of NESTA are clear. They
are:
''helping talented individuals or
groups in the fields of science, technology and the arts to realise
their potential . . . helping to turn inventions or ideas in these
fields into products and services which can be effectively exploited;
and . . . contributing to public knowledge and appreciation of science,
technology and the arts.''
In each of those objectives, the key
words are science, technology and the arts. However, none of those words
appears in paragraph 2 of the order, which is about the increase in the
endowment. The money is said to be available
''for expenditure on or in connection
with health, education or the environment''.
Why are those three areas mentioned in
the legislation, while there is no reiteration of the key areas of
science, technology and the arts? It seems that the Government are again
siphoning off lottery money to use in areas of public expenditure that
should be taken care of from the public purse. What projects are covered?
I can see a connection between science and health and, of course,
education. I cannot see how it ties up with the environment. Why only
those three—why not every Department? If it is a free-for-all, everybody
should be listed. Can the Minister explain why there seems to be a
deviation from the key objectives of NESTA by introducing those elements
into the legislation?
I return to the sixth report of the
Science and Technology Committee, ''National Endowment for Science,
Technology and the Arts: A Follow-up'', which was published last October.
NESTA has given answers to some of its recommendations, and I am grateful
to the Committee Clerk for having provided them today. The report's
conclusions were damning, although the Minister brushed them aside this
afternoon. Perhaps it would be helpful if I quote from them:
''we remain to be convinced that NESTA
is making the most of its less than expected income. We are not
impressed by NESTA's lackadaisical attitude to figures. We have some
concerns about the lack of open competition''—
Committee suspended for a Division in the
House.
The Chairman: It may be convenient for the Committee to know that I
shall put the question at 4.15 pm, if it has not been put before then, to
take the Division into account.
Mr. Moss:
I was halfway through some quotes from the conclusion of the Select
Committee:
''We have some concerns about the lack
of open competition in the system for nominating Fellows. We call for
NESTA to put more substance than spin into its reports to the public.''
Finally, and perhaps most damningly, it
said:
''NESTA needs to demonstrate greater
control over its income as a whole before it can claim to merit a
substantial increase in its endowment''.
That was written only two months ago.
Given that critical and rather damning report, the Minister has failed to
explain why the Government think it necessary to hand out more cash to an
organisation whose house, in the Select Committee's view, is not in order.
The statutory instrument gives NESTA more
money when, overall, lottery funds are diminishing. That means that NESTA
will enjoy an increasing share of a diminishing cake at the expense of
other groups and organisations, which will receive less, relatively. There
is a problem with the lottery, as we well know. The latest figures confirm
that ticket sales are still on a downward trend. That is further evidence
of the crisis facing the national lottery. That crisis will result in less
money being made available to the good causes that the lottery was set up
to support. The Opposition have always said that the Government must act,
and act quickly, to restore confidence in the lottery, otherwise the
downward spiral will continue. In the words of my hon. Friend the Member
for Taunton (Mr. Flook), the Government should stop
''raiding . . . the cookie jar to
support programmes that should be funded by the taxpayer''—[Official
Report, 16 December 2002; Vol. 396, c. 523.]
and should issue new guidelines to ensure
that lottery grants are given to good causes that enjoy widespread
support.
I do not believe that the Minister has
made a case for the extra money. We understand the need to make up a
shortfall, but if the matter had been thought through at the beginning,
that could now be done in a different way. The additional moneys might go
to projects and schemes that do not receive the support of the general
public, who contribute to the lottery fund, as we know.
Bob Russell: When the lottery was
set up, it was not intended that money it raised would be used for the
purposes for which it is being asked today. That said, it would be
somewhat churlish to vote against additional moneys for the good cause
that we have being hearing about. Or is it a good cause? Clearly, there
are doubts. The Select Committee and the hon. Member for North-East
Cambridgeshire (Mr. Moss) have suggested that all is not well with NESTA
and the national lottery. Certainly, I could find better uses for the
money. It could go to amateur sporting organisations or community groups.
Village halls have been mentioned, and I would widen that to include
community halls. Many halls in our urban neighbourhoods need funding.
However, we are considering the NESTA
project. In his introduction, the Minister said that NESTA is to give
support to the nation's talent. Given the total sum that has been
earmarked and the interest that it generates, which will be spent
annually, it would take the best part of 100 years to match the money that
was squandered in one year on the millennium dome. Such is the
Government's commitment to support for the nation's talent that they are
giving just 1 per cent. per annum of what was blown on the dome.
Does the Minister feel that the amount of
money that has been allocated has been put to good effect, bearing in mind
the fact that more than £34 million has been spent on 270 people and
projects? That does not strike me as a particularly wide use of money. It
has gone to a tiny number of individuals and projects. We want excellence
in society, but we must ensure that the pyramid has a broad base. We need
to inject more money across the whole of NESTA's remit. Without a broad
pyramid, we cannot achieve excellence, be it in sport, arts or technology.
In view of the narrow field that NESTA seems to cover, I question how
serious the Government are when they say that the money is to be used to
support the nation's talent. I suggest that support for 270 people and
projects is hardly indicative of support for the nation's talent.
The New Opportunities Fund was
established to fund activities and projects that should properly be funded
from national taxation. It was never intended that health, education and
allied activities would be funded by gambling—which is what the lottery
is. We are talking about using gambling money to fund these projects. It
would be churlish not to support any measure that provides additional
support for the worthy causes mentioned in the order, but I urge the
Minister and his team to think seriously about whether the use of lottery
money for this purpose is within the spirit of the national lottery. He
knows full well that the sporting world in particular is having a smaller
slice of the lottery cake. The problem is not just that ticket sales are
at their lowest ever, but the way that the cake is being sliced. Sport is
one of the losers.
I conclude by referring to recommendation
14 in the Select Committee's report, which was briefly mentioned by the
hon. Member for North-East Cambridgeshire. He quoted the first sentence,
which reads:
The rest of that recommendation deserves
to be put on the record too. It reads:
''First it must better demonstrate its
cost-effectiveness and be clear about how it would use its extra funds.
It is a bit rich for an organisation getting £8 million a year to
distribute in grants and bursaries, to go asking for more, when it is
unable to maintain a clear grasp of how much it is spending and on
what.''
Will the Minister advise all those other
organisations that are desperate for lottery money how they can get the
key to the NESTA door? Clearly those organisations that are involved with
NESTA have an opportunity. They have a door that opens up into Government
where they can secure additional funds, but all those other worthy
organisations seemingly do not have that chance. I hope that the Minister
will explain how we can all get a key to the NESTA door.
Dr. Murrison:
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell). I
may be able to help him. The defining characteristic of NESTA is that it
is desperately trendy. Many of the other organisations that he described
are great, and they serve our constituents on a daily basis, but they are
not trendy. Carol Vorderman is on the board on NESTA, so how could it be
anything but trendy?
NESTA has huge overheads not only because
of the incredible reports that it produces year after year, but because it
has serviced itself with some extremely nice premises that have been hewn
out of Billingsgate market. I have never visited them, but I am reliably
informed that they are very smart. That hangs poorly with the fact that
NESTA is meant to be distributing public largesse.
NESTA has sponsored some extremely
worthwhile projects, and I pay tribute to the good work that it has done,
but how could it have failed to do good work with all the cash that it has
received? I share the view of Richard Morrison, a journalist for The
Times, who wrote about NESTA in June 2001. He took my line at that time:
he was a little bit dubious about the outfit, but he thought that it
should be given more time because, although we appreciated that it would
make mistakes, we felt that it might come up with that little sparkling
gem that would change the world. We expected to see failures from NESTA—it
was almost set up to sponsor projects that would fail. However, we also
expected to see at least one or two sparkling gems in the sea of failure.
To date, we have not seen any.
A while ago, I wrote to Jeremy Newton,
the chief executive of NESTA, to ask about a particularly bright idea. In
common, I suspect, with most hon. Members, I object to chewing gum on
pavements, and there was an idea to combat that with a special zapping
laser gun that would remove it by performing a kind of ''Star Wars''
treatment on the streets of London. I was intrigued by that project. Tens
of thousands of pounds were devoted to it, but it has sunk without
trace—it has failed. However, that is all right, as we expect such
failures from NESTA, because of the sort of organisation that it is.
Another project was to give money to some
hair biologists in Bradford, who were going to turn grey hair into its
natural colour. Many hon. Members who are present might find that useful.
Mr. Moss:
It is too late.
Dr. Murrison: It is too late for
some hon. Members, but some of us have a full head of fairly normal hair,
so we do not need scientific intervention. However, I am not selfish; I
appreciate that many people would benefit from that. We do not know how
successful that project has been. I do not know about that project's
battle against grey roots, but I am looking for some green shoots to show
that NESTA can deliver the goods, and we have not seen any.
We have been told that NESTA has received
its first royalty cheque. The Select Committee on Science and Technology
was informed of that, and I pressed NESTA about it. All I was told was
that its value was less than £1,000, which I took to mean that the
royalty cheques were to be graded in a certain way—under £1,000, over
£1,000, and so forth. I was not told precisely how much that cheque was
worth, or whether it was anything more than a token, but my suspicion is
that it was shy of £1,000 by quite a lot.
Miss Widdecombe, you are probably
developing the view that I am not a great fan of NESTA. That is true to an
extent, but I am prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt, and to give
it a little longer to see what it produces. However, at this stage of the
game, I cannot support a measure that will increase the money that NESTA
receives. To do that would be wrong.
Judging by the Minister's comments, he
regards lottery money as public funds, and so do I. I think about what the
man in front of me in the newspaper shop on a Saturday morning who is
queuing for his lottery ticket wants his money to be spent on. Would he
want it to be spent on Covent garden, or to support a left-leaning poet to
have what is called dream time for three years and produce poetry? There
is even a nice picture of that poet in the back of the recent NESTA
report: Tom Paulin has produced something called ''The Invasion
Handbook'', which is intriguing and I shall get it from my library. I have
read reviews of it, and I do not think that it will appeal to me, but I
shall nevertheless read it. My point is that I suspect that the vast
majority of my constituents have never heard of Tom Paulin, let alone his
book.
However, they have heard of village halls
and community centres, and they use them. Across the country those places
are deteriorating because of regulation heaped on regulation that
restricts how they can spend their moneyhealth and safety, fire
precautions and so forth. They are all in dire straits. Their lottery
funding has been cut from £32 million to £17 million. Surely it is right
to spend lottery money on the people who buy lottery tickets.
Unfortunately, that is no longer the case, as funding relevant to our
constituents on a daily basis has been cut substantially.
I shall quote from Richard Morrison's
article of 18 months ago, which was disobliging but telling. He said:
''For the moment, then, I have banned
cynicism about Nesta from this column, if not from the world at large.
But the organisation must start to deliver success stories soon. As the
dismal recent history of the British film industry proves, it is all too
easy to 'invest' a sackful of lottery millions and good intentions in
'promising talents', sit back and wait for glory—and end up with a
hundred duds, each one sinking with a more embarrassing gurgle than the
one before.''
It is slightly tongue-in-cheek, and Lord
Puttnam went on to describe Richard Morrison as ''an entertainer'', which
was a bit below the belt, but that was all right because Morrison had
described Lord Puttnam as ''the Pooh Bah of Labour cultural life''. The
point was that much of the money appears to be heaped on the Islington
dinner party set and not enough on causes to inspire the people who buy a
lottery ticket on a Saturday morning.
I shall leave it there. It is wholly
wrong—and our constituents would not accept it—to heap more money on
an organisation that, by its own admission, is not coming up with much at
present. I would take it as a personal affront if, after a damning report
from the Select Committee on Science and Technology, this Committee voted
in favour of more moneys for such an organisation. If that happened, I
would return to my Committee and ask what was the point of all the hard
work that we put in to examine NESTA and produce the report. The Science
and Technology Committee is full of educationists, scientists and others
whom one would expect to be sympathetic to NESTA and its objectives. We
said that we would suspend judgment and give NESTA more time to come up
with some gems. Let us see the gems: then the extra money can be
justified, but not before.
Mr. Moss:
Will the Minister clarify what sums NESTA asked for 18 months ago? He
mentioned £300 million in his opening remarks. Did that comprise the £200
million that NESTA already had plus another £100 million, or was the £300
million on top of the £200 million?
Mr. Caborn:
The £300 million was on top of the £200 million. NESTA asked for the
money 18 months ago, and we rejected its request at the time. We then got
into a dialogue. In the main, our work on the issue has been sound, and
the investment is right, but, as I said in my opening remarks, NESTA must
be able to walk before it can run. There must be more consolidation and a
small amount of growth in the areas that I described.
Mr. Moss:
So we have an organisation that was the subject of a damning Select
Committee report only a few months ago and which asked for its funding to
be doubled 12 months before that. What justification did it offer for that
massive increase?
Mr. Caborn:
Many organisations come to us. Indeed, Wembley plc asked for £300 million
before the election.
Mr. Moss:
It was not double.
Mr. Caborn:
It was more than double. We had given it £120 million, and it asked for
£300 million on top of that. Picketts Lock was another project that we
decided not to fund, much to the Opposition's disgust. We turned down
several of the demands that were laid before the DCMS for lottery funding.
Let me return to the specific point,
NESTA asked for £300 million, and we did not believe that the request was
justified at the time. We gave our reasons in our response to the Select
Committee. The money that is now being released is subject to clear terms
of reference, and we expect NESTA to deliver on them. As hon. Members will
see from our response to the Select Committee report, we will ensure that
that discipline is brought to bear.
Mr. Caborn: I hear what my hon. Friend says. Indeed, we may
reconsider that. I refer the Committee to what I said earlier; we have
consulted extensively about the distribution of lottery money, as well as
on the new licensing arrangements, and I hope that the views of hon.
Members and their constituents will be heard. The consultation closed on
30 October, and we will respond in the not too distant future.
The words
''health, education or the
environment''
are linked to science technology and the
arts; and NESTA is bound to link those three disciplines to health
education and the environment.
Mr. Moss:
That does not explain why the Government have decided to put those three
disciplines in the order. We all know that health and education have a
scientific input, but why have the Government chosen only those three
areas? It smacks of the Government attempting to use lottery resources for
what would otherwise be mainline public expenditure.
Mr. Caborn:
We do not have to explain all the details in the order itself. I am here
to explain them. If the hon. Gentleman were to reflect on what I said when
opening the debate, he would see how the innovation and development in the
areas laid down in NESTA's terms of reference are linked to health,
education and the environment. We have discussed those three areas with
NESTA because we believe that they could be the most productive; and that
is why they are mentioned in the order. I hope that that makes sense.
As for the cynical way in which it is
alleged that we have used NOF's funds to reduce the overall reserves of
the lottery for distribution, which stand at about £3.5 billion, it is
totally wrong. However, I agree that the reserves must come down, and we
have been meeting with the distributors for the past 12 to 18 months to
try to find ways to achieve that. We have also been working with the
Treasury to ensure that it is helpful in bringing the reserves down. As
long as the £3.5 billion is committed, the asset can be used more
effectively in good causes—it needs just a little imagination—and we
are working with the distributors to try to ensure that that happens.
Mr. Moss:
A question has just occurred to me. Where is the £3.5 billion of lottery
money invested? Is it invested in Government gilts? If so, do the
Government give the interest on the investment to the lottery fund?
Mr. Caborn: Yes, they do. The
money is invested, and the profits—the dividends received or surpluses
made—are invested in good causes. I cannot say exactly where the money
is invested, but the £200 million endowment about which the hon.
Gentleman asked is invested on behalf of NESTA by the national debt
commissioners in a range of Government stocks and bonds, as defined in the
financial direction. NESTA dictates which of the investments are used but
does not have direct access to the endowment capital for investment
purposes. The income derived from the endowment is invested and managed by
NESTA and used to fund its programmes, but the national debt commissioners
manage the portfolio.
With regard to the comments of the hon.
Member for Colchester, I suppose that we could all selectively quote from
reports. However, the report's conclusion actually congratulates NESTA.
The Select Committee was not entirely critical but thought that, in
principle, NESTA funds were invested in the right way and the Government's
objectives in setting up NESTA were being achieved. The concerns of the
Select Committee, which have been concerns of the Government as well, will
be dealt with under the review that is taking place.
I believe that the way that we have set
up the investment in the endowment is in the spirit of the national
lottery. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman, like many others and me, has
received representations from organisations and his constituents that the
investment of lottery money was not as creative as it could be. We have
tried to resolve some of the problems with revenue rather than capital and
have brought down to manageable proportions the amounts given—I believe
that grants of £5,000 and £10,000 have increased considerably. We have
regionalised much of the distribution to ensure that it is meeting the
requirements of localities at regional and sub-regional level, and we
shall keep under constant review the way that we distribute the funds to
ensure that changing circumstances are factored into distribution.
The Government have made their case for
investing in what we believe is an innovative way of helping our
entrepreneurs and scientists by bringing the convergence of disciplines
together. That was not picked up by the conventional market place, in
which great opportunities have been missed, as is clear from the work that
we have done. We hope that such opportunities will not be missed in the
future and believe that we are taking a major step to ensure that.
That is not to say that everything is
right. As we said in our response to the Select Committee, we shall keep
the matter under constant review. However, I believe that we are justified
in bringing the statutory instrument to the House, and I hope that the
Committee supports it.
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