Speech By The Secretary of State to The Lottery Monitor Conference
I'm delighted to have the opportunity to address you today. The National Lottery, about which we all care so passionately, is a conundrum.
It's only 9 years old. In its first week it had 98% brand recognition.
It is the cause of £14 billion being spent on things that matter to people and make people's lives better.
It has changed the face of the country for the good, and for good.
It makes people's dreams come true.
Yet, if you believe some of the media, it's also scandalously badly run, unfair, and a waste of money.
Both of these propositions can't be true. So what is the real story?
Well, the real story is this:
Since last year's Lottery Monitor Conference, we have had to deal with controversy over some Lottery grants, we all remember the damaging row over a grant to NCADC.
We've seen the beginning of the proposed merger of NOF and the Community Fund, and I'd like to place on the record my gratitude for the way in which it has been led by Diana Brittan, Jill Pitkeathley, Richard Buxton, Stephen Dunmore and their staff.
We've seen concern over falling ticket sales and a new ad campaign drawing criticism.
We've seen the review I am here to talk about, picking up steam.
In short, controversy. Often front page coverage.
But against that we've also seen more millionaires being created.
More grants being distributed. – The Commonwealth Games funded in a large part by the Lottery were a brilliant success, the Laban dance centre which I opened in Deptford, world class facilities for contemporary dance, and the marvellous education projects like the LSO St Lukes, and the Darwin Centre in the Natural History Museum have been launched.
All in all, another year in which the lottery has made Britain a better place. In fact, it is hard to imagine what Britain would be like without the Lottery.
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Cornwall without the Eden Project.
Newcastle/Gateshead without Baltic Mill and no Angel of the North.
Manchester without the Commonwealth Games.
And for thousands of voluntary and community groups, - their ambitions for their communities unrealised.
But we don't get better just by celebrating what we have achieved. We need to move on.
One year ago, seven years from when the Lottery started was a good time to take stock, to analyse what was working well and what was not.
The review I announced in July last year was set up to do just that.
I wanted to take action to make the Lottery more responsive to people's needs and their priorities, to give a fresh start and sense of direction in some areas, to shed bureaucracy and to make sure that we have for the Lottery, well ahead of time, the licensing arrangements would serve us well in the next decade.
Because a public which can't see how the lottery has benefited them, which doesn't understand how or why grant decisions are made , is a public that will buy fewer tickets.
Fewer sold tickets – less money for good causes.
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That simple, vicious cycle is the absolute nub of the problem we face. And it also makes very clear what the solution must be.
And that's to only reconnect. That in a nutshell is the conclusion of the Review.
We have to look at how lottery distribution is seen by the public – fairly or not - and then turn ourselves inside out if we need to be able to gain back their trust.
I will come in a minute to the specific conclusions of the review. But first I want to make it clear that there were some things I didn't want to change about the Lottery as it is now.
In fact, there is a lot about it I don't want to change.
There are two great Lottery principles that should never change.
The first is the Lottery should have the flexibility to lead, not to follow trends: it should act as the venture capital for communities up and down the Country.
Giving people and communities who cannot access the more orthodox financial routes a chance. Reflecting their ambitions in doing so.
We are a pluralistic society and the Lottery should reflect that.
That will mean taking risks. Sometimes succeeding and other times it may mean failing.
But if it stops taking risks, it stops being the Lottery that we have come to cherish.
The second principle is, remember who we work for.
People's confidence in the lottery will only be sustained if they know that their money is spent in a way that they understand, with real consultation with them.
Those are the principles we want to enshrine forever.
I also want to make sure that any changes that are introduced don't diminish the role and focus on the regions of England and on Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which has been so successfully pioneered by the Community Fund in particular but also by the four Arts Councils just to take those example.
So what needs to change? Broadly, we need to make sure that it is as simple as possible for people, communities and organisations to get access to grants and advice.
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We need to widen public support for the Lottery.
We can't expect the public to play the Lottery, often spending their most marginal income when they do, and then to approve of Lottery grants if they don't understand what the Lottery is, and what the Lottery is trying to do.
So we must explain to the public what the priorities for spending are. Ask them whether they agree. What they might do differently.
Asking the people what they want can be, for politicians and bureaucrats, a painful business. But we mustn't be afraid of it. We must not shy away from asking searching questions.
Because it's their money, not ours.
Lastly, in support of that confidence building, we need to make sure that unnecessary costs are stripped out.
In that it goes without saying that every penny spent on administration is a penny taken away from a good cause.
Now I want to run through the key points of each paper we are publishing today.
The merging of the Community Fund and NOF will continue:
- It will lead to half of all Lottery monies being distributed by one body.
- It will create an organisation capable of handling non-Lottery funds.
- It will present applicants with a single body that they can approach for advice and for grant-making.
- It will become one of the great forces in the land for community renewal.
- It will be able to take the lead in projects which cut across boundaries
But I promise you it will retain its capacity to work independently of Government, be politician proof.
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Its capacity to champion the vulnerable and the unpopular will no doubt at times infuriate Government Ministers. But we must live with that.
We did consider bringing all the distributors into a single body, but the sector funders like the Arts Council, Sport England, the Film Council and the HLF benefit from their single focus and so are being left to get on with their specialised jobs.
I believe this balance between one large, generalised funder and the smaller, specialised funders is right.
Overall, there will be seven new forms of grant coming into existence. Awards for All, which has been such a success, will be expanded with a new upper limit of £10,000.
There will be many more micro-grants of £500 or so available to small community groups, and we'll start by piloting that new approach.
The new Olympic Lottery Fund will for the first time produce an hypothecated funding stream for one purpose – in this case an Olympic Games which would create the kind of legacy for a city and for the country that we have seen in Barcelona, in Sydney and in Seoul if the Games are staged in the UK. That all depends on winning our bid to get the Games staged in 2012.
And a Young People's Fund will be fully established within a year as part of the new distributor.
It will develop its priorities following consultation with representative groups of children and young people.
We will direct it to ensure that those priorities include attention to health and exercise for young people as well as the benefits of play for disadvantaged children.
And as with all the distributors we will press them to do everything they reasonably can to get the public's money into public hands, not sitting around in balances. And the White Paper sets out a number of measures we want to take.
But the most important part, for me, of this paper are the proposals it has to give the Lottery back to the people and thus to widen the people's support.
There will be new common branding for all Lottery beneficiaries.
The Lottery logo, based on the crossed fingers, will for the first time mark exactly how much has changed in this country thanks to the Lottery.
With over £14 billion raised for good causes, it is time to show people where it's gone.
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(And in this context, I'd like to thank Michael and his colleagues at Camelot for their enthusiasm in taking this on. I welcome his ideas on how to connect the Game and the Good Causes.)
For the Distributors there will be more citizens' panels and juries in regions to advise on where money should go.
This is equally and especially important for the community and charitable funding stream. Who better to decide on how money should be spent in a community than the very people who live there and know what local priorities should be?
And a new focus of this work to sell the Lottery back to the people is a new National Lottery Day.
This will be an annual event where not only will major prizes be available to players, but also Lottery funded projects throughout the UK will, wherever possible, fling open their doors for free.
And I hope that those who have benefited from the lottery and a number have already made this offer – athletes and artists – will use that day to offer the precious gift of their time, in order to inspire the next generation.
That they help to coach and inspire others who might one day need the lottery to help them excel.
This day, starting next year, will become an annual UK Festival. Where a whole nation can see where the 28p thin every Lottery pound is invested. And see on a National scale what the Lottery has done for us.
The issue of distribution and promotion is just one side of the coin.
We have also been considering how best to protect the goose that lays these golden eggs – the game itself.
Under the present statutory requirements for licensing the Lottery, there must be real concern that we will not get effective competition in future. The PAC and others have remarked on this.
And with provision for only one company to run the Lottery, there must equally be a concern that we will deny companies who could make a contribution the opportunity to get involved.
The Lottery needs to change with the times, and we should always encourage innovation and fresh thinking.
So we are also proposing a radical new approach to licensing the National Lottery.
We will inject significantly greater competition into the licensing process by moving away from a requirement for a single major licence competition every seven years.
We will give the regulator the ability to offer for competition a range of licences to run different parts of the Lottery.
Different companies running different competitions – that's an exciting prospect for the public.
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These changes will also allow for licences of different lengths. It will be up to the regulator to decide the scope of the competitions and to determine the length of the licences.
These changes and the Olympic Game and the NOF/CF merger will require legislation and we will bring forward proposals as soon as Parliamentary time allows.
I want to make it absolutely clear that this is no reflection on Camelot's performance, or on Michael's (Grade) leadership of it, or on any of the distributors.
But we have to make sure the NLC has all the tools it needs to keep the goose in good health, for the sakes of all the good causes. And in turn for the sake of people up and down the country who benefit.
All in all, and just in time for its 10th birthday, this is the biggest overhaul of the Lottery since its inception.
I doubt whether everybody will like everything about the review.
I don't doubt some people will think there needn't have been a review at all.
But I do believe, I passionately believe, that permanent revolution is essential to the Lottery's survival. Rather better than its survival, for its continued health and vitality.
Society is changing at such a pace, there are so many other outlets for people's marginal income, because of that we can't ever stop the fight to explain how the Lottery works to the public, to ask them what they want the money to be spent on, and to make sure it's spent wisely. In short, it's time to give the Lottery back to the people.
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