On the 21st December Henry Smith, MP for Crawley and Maria Caulfield, MP for Lewes along with 49 other Parliamentarians signed a letter which was sent to three members of the Cabinet, calling for them to “to establish a new national lottery”. The purpose of the scheme is to help the Government to pay for a new ‘Royal Yacht’ the plans of which are shown in the above image. Although the yacht is claimed to be something to be used by the Royal Family, the real purpose outlined in the letter is actually for this new vessel to act as a mobile Embassy or Diplomatic Mission. Because of this the new vessel would need to be owned and run by the Government and manned by sailors from the Royal Navy. All of this is explained in the letter signed a few days ago. There seem to be a number of issues which need to be resolved before the ink on the letter is fully dry:

The first of these is that all Royal Navy ships are nominally under the control of the Royal Family. That is why they are called HMS …… Thus with two massive aircraft carriers, currently being tested but without much purpose would it make more sense to utilise existing vessels when the opportunity arises rather than purchase a ship that can be used occasionally by the Royal Family and for the odd overseas trade discussions but will spend the rest of the time rusting away at our expense?

The second is that if the Royal Yacht is to be run by the Navy and owned by the Government, in order to fly the white ensign, does it really make sense for us to be seen to paid for by a lottery. Such a call will have been heard by the foreign governments who will begin to question how serious such a Diplomatic Mission would be if the Government relied on a lottery to pay for it and if it was inspired by a bunch of backbench Tory and DUP MPs rather than seen as a strategic solution by the Government.

Couple this previous point with the letter which as well as calling for a new Royal Yacht criticises the Labour Government for decommissioning the previous Royal Yacht, even though it was 40 years old and then try to turn the final item into a ship of value to the whole nation and one begins to wonder if this letter was something sensible to sign apart from the chance of gaining a bit of popular support for the signatories.

The final point for me is in the way in which our Government deals with lottery funds. Today is the 1,964th day since the Government promised to return £425m to the Big Lottery. Check out the story here. This was money borrowed by the previous Labour Government to help fund the Olympics. They promised under pressure from the then Tory opposition to return the funds. The Tory Government has so far failed to do anything to replace this funding which if subject to interest would be worth over £600m. The funds were all intended for good causes such as foodbanks, homeless and debt relief charities along with rape crisis centres and women’s refuges. Now of course the Government would not dare steal money from the Royal Yacht fund, but to try to raise new funds for something of such high profile when the Government has done so little to repay its own debts seems to be a very poor way of behaving.

Perhaps Henry and Maria along with Peter Bottomley (West Worthing) who appears to be in the photo above but did not sign the letter could use their influence to get the Government to repay the Big Lottery refund before embarking on this adventure.