LEGISLATION that could give ministers greater control over the distribution of lottery funding will return to Parliament next week in what promises to be a decisive showdown between the Government and the charity sector.

Opposition peers, supported by charities, are trying to block clauses in the National Lotteries Bill that they fear will give the Government greater powers to decide on areas of lottery spending and allow it to divert more lottery cash to services previously financed by the taxpayer.

Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are confident that they will be able to inflict a defeat on the Government when the Bill is debated in the House of Lords next Monday.

The National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO), which represents more than 4,500 charities, says that the vote will be crucial in deciding the future of the lottery.

The Bill will enshrine in law the creation of a new lottery fund, the Big Lottery Fund, to be responsible for distributing half of lottery proceeds.

The fund was created, in part, to deflect adverse publicity about lottery grants to unpopular obscure minority causes. It is this concern that has led 70 charities to sign up to a new online lottery called monday, as reported in The Times yesterday.

But critics say that the Bill has gone too far by giving government too much control over the way money is handed out.

Pete Moorey, of NCVO, said that the Bill, in its present form, constituted an unprecedented and unacceptable level of control over lottery funding by Tessa Jowell, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. “We are pleased that the Big Lottery Fund has committed to give 60 to 70 per cent of funds to the voluntary and community sector. But we are still concerned that the lottery will be used as a source of money for government initiatives,” he said.

In a series of amendments to the Bill tabled yesterday, opposition peers are seeking to reduce the Government’s ability to “prescribe”, or direct, lottery funding. They also want to ensure that lottery cash is not used to fund Labour’s pet projects by ensuring the distributing bodies are made more accountable for the way that they hand out money.

A founding principle of the National Lottery, when it was established by the Conservative Government of John Major in 1994, was that lottery funding would be additional to taxpayer funding and would not replace it. But over the years this principle of “additionality” has been steadily eroded, with lottery money being used as a substitute for government spending on a range of projects, such as fruit in schools, hospital scanners and teacher training.

Viscount Astor, the Conservative spokesman for Culture, Media and Sports in the Lords, said: “The Government says the example of lottery money being used to buy hospital scanners represents additional spending because the equipment is going to areas that do not have money for it. But if you look at where they have gone, some have gone to Surrey, while areas that are a lot poorer did not get them.”

The Government has insisted that lottery-distributing bodies will be made more accountable on the principle of additionality, but Viscount Astor said that this was not sufficient.

“By putting a requirement to report on additionality on the face of the Bill, we will ensure it will happen,” he said.

A spokesman for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, also said that the Government would “direct” the fund to general areas, but there would be no day-to-day interference.

GIVE ME THE MONEY

Out of every pound raised charities get 5.6p and 22.4p goes to “good causes”

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