I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Renton) for initiating this debate on a subject that the House seems particularly and rightly fond of discussing. I know that he has a great interest in the lottery, having been involved in its introduction at an early stage.

The lottery has been enormously or, as my right hon. Friend would say, howlingly successful in its own terms, with sales far greater than anyone predicted when its licence was awarded, and awards more widespread and larger than anyone could have dreamed of. Total sales are fast approaching £11 billion, and an independent study by Terri la Fleur, a leading world lottery expert, has shown that the United Kingdom lottery is the most successful and efficient in the world. The mid-week draw, which was launched on 5 February, is building on that success.

As I have already mentioned, the lottery has been a huge success measured by the amount that it has raised for good causes. To date, a total of £3.1 billion has been raised for sport, the arts, charities, heritage and the millennium, with the distributing bodies making awards to more than 19,000 projects. The availability of such money for those sectors in such a short time is nothing short of a revolution, and it has been instrumental in many of the great advances made in the Department of National Heritage's areas of responsibility in the past almost five years.

It is also worth commenting on the way in which the lottery has already become a part of everyday national life. Camelot estimates that 65 per cent. of the adult population regularly play the lottery, and that around 90 per cent. have played at some time.

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his comments about the relationship between lottery money and existing public expenditure. The Government have made it clear that the money raised by the lottery for good causes was— and is—intended to be additional to public expenditure. The Government will not reduce public spending programmes to take account of awards from the lottery.

That commitment does not mean that the Government can or will give automatic protection to programmes that are able to benefit from lottery funds: what we can afford to spend on such programmes will be decided in exactly the same way as we decide on other programmes not eligible for lottery funding. It would be absurd to give automatic protection to lottery-supported programmes when that protection is not available for other programmes.

No deal with the Treasury of the type interestingly proposed by my right hon. Friend is likely to be appropriate, even if it were possible to commit future Governments in advance. Whatever the affordable level of any given public expenditure programme, lottery funds are available to add to it—including projects similar to those which might once have fallen within that programme.

That approach is a sensible means of ensuring that with the public funds available—of which the lottery is a part—the real objectives for supporting the heritage, the arts, sport and charities are met. It follows that areas such as the national health service and education, which are clearly major continuing responsibilities of the Government, should be funded from public expenditure voted each year by Parliament, and should not rely on the public's propensity or otherwise to buy lottery tickets.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex is also worried that Ministers might try to ensure that lottery funding goes to projects that they favour. It was precisely to prevent such interference that the Government appointed the 11 lottery distributing bodies to take all specific funding decisions independently of the Government. My Department has also issued guidance to other Ministers and Departments explaining the part that they may or may not play in supporting lottery applications. I can assure my right hon. Friend that both we and the distributing bodies maintain a close watch to ensure that those rules are not broken.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex is also concerned about the introduction of the mid-week draw. Under the terms of the National Lottery etc. Act 1993, the licensing of the draw was a matter for the Director General of the National Lottery, not the Government. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State emphasised, however, that the director general must ensure that the decision is compatible with the provisions set out in section 4 of the National Lottery etc. Act, which require the director general to exercise his functions in the manner that he considers most likely to ensure that the national lottery is run with all due propriety, that the interests of participants in the lottery are protected and, subject to those overriding considerations, that the revenue to the good causes is maximised.

The director general judged that the introduction of a mid-week draw was consistent with those duties, and allowed the licence to be changed accordingly. However, I take the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid—Sussex about the two newsagents: it is a very difficult point to deal with and one that the Government should be aware of. The director general, especially, might consider it again with some rigour.

I cannot emphasise enough that the protection of players is the uppermost requirement in the mind of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. My Department and the director general will monitor carefully the effect of the mid-week lottery to ensure that the interests of participants are not being undermined and that the players continue to receive the level of protection which Parliament intended when the Act was passed.

Perhaps the most important aspect of the new mid-week game, and one which has not been considered sufficiently—not by my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex, but by others less well informed outside the House—is the effect that it will have on the amount raised for good causes. Hon Members may be aware that sales of lottery tickets have been decreasing slightly in recent months. Experience in other countries suggests that the introduction of a mid-week draw is likely to halt that decline and increase the turnover of the draw game by about 20 to 30 per cent.—from about £70 million to between £85 million and £90 million per week—and is therefore likely to push the lottery's turnover back to its peak level of about £5.5 billion per year.

Sales to date have borne out that prediction with an overall increase in sales for the on-line game of 30 per cent, representing an increase of 30 per cent. in the amount raised for good causes. It should be remembered, however, that Camelot held super-draws with an increased jackpot for the first four of the five mid-week draws to date, and that the mid-week draws' true impact on overall sales will not be clear for some weeks.

I note the concerns of my right hon. Friend about the introduction of a keno game and his interesting anecdote about it stripping his pockets of his money. The Government and the director general have already made their views clear about keno. Although it would be for the director general to consider any application to run keno-style games, no such application has been made. I should make it clear that we view keno as at the harder end of the gambling spectrum and therefore not appropriate as part of the national lottery.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex also expressed concerns about betting shops taking bets on lotteries. I am sure that he is aware that the National Lottery etc. Act specifically prohibited bookmakers from taking bets on the national lottery, and despite some pressure from the industry the Government have not changed their view. Bookmakers are, however, taking bets on the Irish national lottery and their own new 49s game. Although we are keen to ensure that the national lottery is not associated with what we view as a harder form of gambling, regulation of the bookmaking industry is a matter for my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary, who I understand is content with the developments. I shall, however, draw his attention to the concerns of my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid—Sussex.