Lottery cash feeds tourism hot-spots

Lottery cash is to be used to revamp museums and galleries, and film industry investors are to get tax breaks, in a Government move to capitalise on a tourism and leisure boom, it emerged today.

A Bill will be introduced in the autumn to change the rules to allow lottery money to be spent on new technology for museums. Until now lottery money has only been available to preserve, rather than add to, or alter, collections.

The Middleton report on the film industry will also be published, recommending tax-breaks for film-makers, to encourage more British invest- ment. The announcements are expected next week with details of plans to provide subsidised theatre and arts performance tickets to schools in an effort to expose more children to the arts.

Figures show that so far this year, tourism is outstripping even last year's record performance. In 1995, Britain attracted 23.7 million overseas visitors, up 13 per cent, and the industry earned pounds 11.9bn, up 20 per cent.

In the first four months of this year there were 6.8 million visitors, a 7 per cent rise on the same period the year before. Tourism spending is also said to have risen by 2 per cent.

Secretary of State for National Heritage, Virginia Bottomley, is at present on a coast-to-coast tour of the US selling Britain as "the world's cradle of culture" and a place to visit with an unrivalled range of attractions.

Mrs Bottomley wants to see the industry improve both the quality and quantity of what is on offer, and modernise facilities so that British tourism can attract yet more trade, especially from the US.

Helping that campaign is the pounds 135m bonus paid out today to the National Lottery Good Causes organisation. The bonus came from the shortfall ofCamelot's target of paying back about 50 per cent of profits in prizes to lottery players.

The lottery operating company wanted to carry forward the cash into next year's prizes, but Peter Davis, director-general of the National Lottery, decided the Good Causes should benefit from the cash now.