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After Thoughts by Jane Taylor
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Reasons to be cheerful I
It’s official: we are living in interesting Lottery times. Tessa
Jowell, the Culture Secretary, has declared a ‘permanent revolution’ in Lottery funding, a strikingly odd turn of phrase borrowed, if my rusty agitprop folk memory serves me right, from the nasty, brutish and short Russian communist Leon Trotsky. At this point I ought to be able to make some clever columnist’s parallel between Trotsky’s anti-Stalinist diatribe denouncing the theory of ‘socialism in one country’ and Tessa’s landmark Southwark Cathedral speech in which she used the phrase, but I’ve wasted several hours considering the possibilities and there aren’t any. So forget the daft polemic: the Culture Secretary’s Southwark speech is full of welcome statements and intriguing possibilities. The main themes had already been flagged up in her Commons speech on 1 March, but now we are beginning to get a clearer picture of the scope and specifics of the forthcoming review of Lottery funding.
Tessa Jowell and the Quest standards team have between them done a pretty convincing job of sketching the outline of an alternative direction and purpose for Lottery funders as providers of social venture capital. I don’t want to over-egg this one, because without doubt the Lottery has already been responsible for sponsoring many high-risk and hugely successful projects. But the Quest report and the Culture Secretary’s remarks drive the agenda on.
There are two interesting dynamics in play here. One is the use of Lottery cash as an alternative to exchequer money to finance large-scale innovation in the public services. This is making explicit the work that NOF has been busily doing since it was set up, acting as a fast-track laboratory for new, cross-departmental public-service projects. Nothing wrong in this, it strikes me, but there is an apparent political danger, which is that hardly anyone seems to understand that this is what NOF is about. So we have endless re-runs by politicians of the old argument about
additionality, and lots of NOF-bashing, and it all really misses the point about what is interesting, radical and worthwhile about the organisation’s work.
The second dynamic is the changing nature of the voluntary sector, and in particular the rise of social entrepreneurship as a key force in revitalising local communities. The Lottery has a very important part to play in forging a transition from the old world of charitable institutions and good deeds to the new patchwork of voluntary activity that crosses institutional and sectoral boundaries, recruiting techniques and aid from commercial, public and non-profit sectors alike. The big debate here will be all about sustainability and appropriate support structures – and it will run for a long time yet.
Reasons to be cheerful II
The DCMS has accepted the need to protect the Lottery from the worst ravages of more liberal gambling culture. That’s great news, but it puts Camelot firmly in the spotlight. If it fails to turn around the sales decline over the coming year, there simply no one else left to blame.
Reasons to be cheerful III
OK, I can’t resist it. I am going to blow my own trumpet. Tessa Jowell has called for a National Lottery Day – exactly as I wrote she should do back in December. Needless to say, I am right behind this brilliant idea. But please, Secretary of State, could we have a little more detail as to who is going to take on this awesome task, and when?