After Thoughts by Jane Taylor
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By Jane Taylor 

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A drama and a crisis
What began as a silly season story has become a significiant test of the authority of the lottery distribution system as the Community Fund concludes inquiries into its disputed award to the National Coalition of Anti Deportation Campaigns. Let’s be clear what happened: a national newspaper specialising in bully-boy journalism persuaded a government minister with authoritarian instincts and sharp populist antennae to shoot his mouth off in the expectation of a cheap midsummer political hit. The fallout has been spectacular, but the political tension over etiquette between government departments and the ‘autonomy’ of lottery boards has been overwhelmed by the rising tide of media aggression directed against the lottery for funding unpopular causes – culminating in a chorus of demands that the public boycott the weekly draw.

We haven’t seen hysteria on this scale against lottery funding since 1996, when John Major got upset about gay groups. But the difference is that the public, then, was still in love with the game, the Dome was not yet a national farce, Camelot hadn’t had time to grow into a fat cat and asylum-seekers were not fixed in the public imagination as a breed of pond-life barely distinguishable from paedophiles. So when the Community Fund announces its decision about whether to withdraw its grant from the National Coalition of Anti Deportation Campaigns later this month, be quite clear what is at stake. However many lawyers have been consulted, however many eminent QCs’ opinions bought, the decision the Community Fund must make will be a deeply political one. It must weigh its heavy responsibility to nurture marginal and unpopular but vitally important elements of our civil society against the urgent need for the National Lottery to be loved by the people once more. I’ll stick my neck out on this one, as someone who believes the lottery funding system sorely needs an injection of populism. There is only one right decision for the CF in this affair (assuming, which I am, that there is no genuine proof of illegality to be had). It must back its original decision to award money to NCADC, for the sake of its own authority and minority causes throughout the land. Politicians and ministers can channel the outpouring of media anger and criticism perfectly properly into the lottery funding review process, where we are allalready supposed to be addressing the need for greater public engagement with funding decisions. But this month, the Community Fund, for the second time this year, will need to stand firm against this latest ministerial shin-kicking. To do otherwise will be to declare open-season on the voluntary sector, and can only deepen the lottery’s crisis.

Let’s see the grants
In the middle of the row about asylum-seekers, media interest inevitably broadened out to the subject of overseas grants. I was asked about this, and to check my facts, I went to search the DCMS awards database, where I discovered that it is impossible for the public to search for international awards. They are there, it’s just that unless you know already what they are, you cannot find them. This is a simple but important oversight. There is no good reason for the information not to be readily accessible, and it adds to the already compelling argument for a complete overhaul of the website. I don’t recall this coming up as an issue in the Funding Review pink paper (you cannot call a document of such a vivid fuschia flush a ‘green paper’) but I’d like to chuck it in for attention, please.