From Free Life, Issue 21, November 1994
ISSN: 0260 5112

In a sense, I am the "father of the National Lottery". It was I who first suggested it to Mrs Thatcher in 1987 - and who, when she said no, took the idea to the Adam Smith Institute. From here, it found its way into the 1992 Conservative Manifesto. The rest is history.

Now, why do we need a National Lottery? Well, in my opinion, Britain can only be considered culturally mature when Rupert Murdoch finds it profitable to put the arts on page three of his newspapers. Quite plainly, he does no such thing. His newspapers are read by people who scarcely be called philistine. Their relaxations are little more than a matter of drink and sex - and disgracing themselves abroad.

But these people deserve better. It is not natural depravity if they have no taste for the better things of life - for the great cultural achievements of the past and present. It is simply that they have never been properly exposed to them.

I am disturbed that no one in government is seeking to remedy this deficiency. Ministers and officials seem happy to spend £8 billion each year on fighting crime - and with no real prospect of winning their fight. They seem equally happy to throw a £37 billion "health" budget into a black hole that can never be filled up. At the same time, they will sniff at any measures that might, at a fraction of all this cost, go far to securing the declared ends of good health and low crime.

I will not call the officials with whom I deal stupid. But they are often amateurs, with no instinctive feel for things they administer. They certainly lack the wider outlook that it has been my good fortune to acquire. I know how it was to be a poor child in Australia during the great depression; and I know the luxury of the finest apartments in New York and of a Parmesan villa with the finest private art collection in Italy. Between these extremes, I have known people from all walks of life in almost every European country. I have had what I regard as fundamental experiences that are all but unknown in places like Scarborough and Liverpool. Officials in Whitehall tend to ignore the value of these things for themselves and for the population at large.

They also have no love of innovation. For them, all novelty is a threat - to their status or salaries or both. To stifle these threats, they will stop at very little. Therefore the sloth and indifference to the matching of means to ends that are ingrained in all the Whitehall departments - not least in the new Department of National Heritage. And if I point this out - if the Department makes a statement that I know to be false - I receive the standard response of bureaucracy: "We don't make mistakes! We are invincible! Go away, little man!"

Yet the arts are the education of the emotions, and sport and recreation are the education of the physical and social body. The grim utilitarianism of our rulers is as profoundly cramping to the human spirit as can be imagined. What business lets its accountants take all the major decisions? If economy is the only guideline, then every building in the country will be box-like, maximising the space to be obtained from the block of land on which it is built. Yet, in all this show of public economy, there is no economising. I have mentioned the sums spent on crime and health. And this at a moment when it is known that young criminals do not tend to return to a criminal pattern, if they are participating in vigorous sport at least three times a week: and when it is known that only one in five adults receives sufficient exercise each week to remain healthy.

The great work of Manfred Clynes showed how the emotions function in the body, what frees them, how their subtleties are developed, how certain aspects of the emotions are identical in all human beings - almost the same as colours. These emotions are quite simply foreign to many in Britain who have created life patterns which shield them from ever experiencing deep emotions. The result is that there is insufficient understanding of why youngsters need to drink or take drugs in order to explore feelings which they will otherwise never touch, because they have never been taught how to find their own emotions without chemical means.

So the whole idea of providing every school not only with a piano, but with a mini-arts centre, where every youngster has a chance to practice acting out emotions from somebody else's lifestyle or to participate in performances, even as spectators, in which the infinite capacity of our nervous and emotional system is put to work, - this idea can mean little or nothing to our rulers, because it relates to nothing in their own experience.

It was to break this endless cycle or lack of experience blocking others gaining wider experiences that I proposed the National Lottery. At least a huge injection of cash to change the status quo at national level.

But what has happened? The apparent incompetence of the Department has allowed a number of decisions be made which reduce the impact of the lottery in every direction. Not one of the proposals put forward in our book The best Lottery in the world? with chapters by Chris Tame, Sean Gabb, Malcolm Hutty, Juan Gamecho and a preface by Barry Bracewell-Milnes has been accepted by the Department of National Heritage. Money has simply been squandered. There is even a case for closing the department.

The lottery invitation to apply was given out without the stipulation that the start-up costs should be repaid within the first year. No lottery in the world needs profit on equity capital to be an outstanding success. Why then should Britain allow a structure wherein five companies plan to make a 163 per cent return on investment annually, bringing to a few companies at least £100 million a year, rising to £200 million profits in the peak years, when all that money should be going to the prizes and good causes?

The difference between the quoted costs of one service - £100 million to service the 35,000 computer terminals over seven years, and the costs quoted by three other companies - only £35 million, is £65 million being wasted through lack of financial rigour. The sum is sufficient to subsidise nine orchestras for the entire seven year period of the lottery contract, or to purchase 6,500 acres of recreational land.

The next unhappy decision was to establish divisions of the funds which are not in the national interest, but a cosy "equal division" arrangement which allows charities, who represent mainly minority interests throughout the land, to muscle in on something which was designed for the majority. The recipients of funds from voluntary charities show very clearly how the vigorous lobbying for the protection of the sick, the aged, animals, injustices overseas, and various religions have for decades brought in over £45 billion per year whereas Youth, Arts, Recreation and Education together have yielded only £44 million.

The possible remedy to put matters right are best summed up under six points:

1. Total charitable foundation, entirely separate from Treasury.

2. The tax is the money to the good causes - possibly 41 per cent.

3. The proportions should be harmonised with current charitable giving.

4. Treasury should match all lottery funds with running costs and greatly increase its investment in human beings.

5. Lottery money should be distributed by voluntary forces, guided by professionals, with the efficiency of the Save the Children Fund - i.e. 2 per cent costs on turnover.

6. Teams already working on fund distribution should put their ideas into the NLCB.

The appointment of Stephen Dorrell as National Heritage Secretary could have provided the ideal moment for a quick revision of the arrangements. No primary legislation was required. Mr Dorrell's own Treasury experience should have shown him how to present the case for earmarking all tax on the Lottery for the good causes. Even now, that case might still be made.

I refuse to believe that the Treasury cannot see the scandal of letting huge profits be guaranteed to a State franchise where they are not required as an incentive. Few fail to understand the arguments which justify the matching funding. There will only be growth if the lottery funds remain quite separate from the State. Hence the need for a charitable foundation, set quite apart. That Treasury should then provide the matching funding, which gives the money to run the facilities which the lottery constructs, has been outlined already in our first book. We are now launching on a large and detailed economic study which explores in much greater depth, the increased revenue coming to treasury if investment in sport, the arts and environment/ tourism is allowed to grow at the same speed as the lottery.

Ideally the next budget will bring the pools into parallel treatment, so that the good causes benefit at the same speed, and the pools are not unfairly held back by a different scale of tax or conditions once the lottery is up to full speed. Their foundation for sport and the arts should be linked with the Lottery foundation, and then the rest of the mechanisms made parallel. I am sure that, were we to do all this, our investment in sport per capita would come to less than half that in Norway. We still have a long way to go, but investing in people is the remedy for incompetence.