Waterson Review

Debate between Baroness Neville-Rolfe and Lord Addington

Wednesday 23rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government when their response to the Waterson review of secondary ticketing will be published.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)]

Professor Michael Waterson’s independent report on consumer protection measures applying to online secondary ticketing makes a number of recommendations which deserve to be fully considered by all those concerned with ticketing, live entertainment and law enforcement. The new Government are taking time to look very closely at the recommendations and will publish a response in due course.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

I thank the Minister for that response. What would be her response to somebody who discovers that they have purchased the wrong ticket, when the Government have yet to implement the Act in question?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

The Act has of course come into force and there have been prosecutions on ticketing, although they are often made through fraud law rather than consumer law. The advice I would give to consumers is to get in touch with the excellent Citizens Advice service. If they have evidence of fraud they should contact Action Fraud, and there is also the possibility of trading standards taking action. One of Professor Waterson’s recommendations is that more work should be done on that.

Sport: Integrity

Debate between Baroness Neville-Rolfe and Lord Addington

Tuesday 10th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what consideration they have given to placing a duty on all publicly funded and professional sporting bodies to co-operate actively in identifying and punishing anyone damaging the integrity of sport.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)]

We expect all sports bodies to adhere to the highest standards of governance and to fully co-operate in taking appropriate action against those who damage the integrity of sport. As a result, the Government are introducing a new governance code for sport in the UK later this year. The code will be mandatory for all sports governing bodies in receipt of public funding, and non-compliance with the code will mean that those bodies will lose that funding.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Addington (LD)]

I thank the Minister for that reply. However, what is her opinion of what happens when some of those bodies reach the end of their authority and have to report on to somebody else to achieve any action against somebody who has broken the spirit of the code—for instance, a doping scandal that ends when it runs out of that authority? Are we to undertake a law review so that action is taken across the board and does not end at artificial boundaries, often there for purely historical reasons?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

The noble Lord is quite right about the need for things to be joined up. That is why we have set up a group, curiously called the GIGS group—the government integrity group for sport—drawing from across Whitehall and from the key agencies, such as the Gambling Commission and UK Anti-Doping. We will be putting the governance code out to consultation so that the sort of issues that he has identified are properly thought through and dealt with.

Rugby World Cup 2015

Debate between Baroness Neville-Rolfe and Lord Addington

Wednesday 11th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, we are well aware of the strong role that tourism plays in our country and our economy. This is a factor that will be taken into account. Employment is also much higher than the rate in the non-tourist sector. It is a huge employer, which is incredibly important.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that these big sporting events are an excellent hook that gets people in and allows other things to be developed, and should be seen in that light? Will she also give an undertaking that her department will make every effort to ensure that these are all drug-free in future, and not lose sight of the fact that we might be throwing the baby out with the bath water if we do not get involved in backing international efforts to make sure that all big sporting events are clean in future?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, as the noble Lord well knows, we have the Gold Event Series, launched in November 2012. We invest £50 million of lottery money in bidding for future events, and have had some success. Clearly, the news that we have had this week is a deplorable state of affairs; the WADA report has shocked us all. It is completely right that we should build on the record of the Olympics in having strong anti-doping policies.

Enterprise Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Neville-Rolfe and Lord Addington

Monday 2nd November 2015 Grand Committee

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, this amendment would require that, when setting public sector apprenticeship targets, the Secretary of State must also impose targets on public bodies in relation to the number of young people who were in care and those with special educational needs or disabilities. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, for bringing the issue alive, for bringing up the findings of the Social Mobility Committee and for talking about Birmingham as an exemplar of good practice—because we must capture and celebrate good practice in all these areas. I was encouraged to hear of the improving completion rate that she mentioned.

The Government do not feel that it is appropriate to specify a proportion of the public sector target for young people leaving care or with physical or learning disabilities. We are trying to keep our targets simple. Apprenticeships are real jobs with training. As with all other jobs, employers have to make the final decision about who they hire for any apprenticeship that they have advertised. I know this having run apprenticeships myself when I was in business. Apprenticeships are employer led, so we are not able to ring-fence apprenticeships for particular groups as to do so would mean requiring employers to hire particular people for their vacancies. I am not sure that that would work.

However, although we would not want to interfere in employers’ decisions about who to recruit, we believe that more can be done to ensure that people from a diverse range of backgrounds are in the best possible place to apply for and secure an apprenticeship. The Government are committed to ensuring that care leavers are aware of the support and opportunities that are available to them. The Government provide full funding for apprenticeship training under the existing frameworks for entitled 19 to 23 year-old care leavers, and a number of local authorities already offer apprenticeships to care leavers, as has been said.

I have quite a long list of what we are doing to help care leavers, but in the interests of time I will set all that out in a letter, alongside information on what is being done in various different ways so that care leavers can access programmes such as traineeships to get the support they need to get ready for an apprenticeship. The noble Baroness also mentioned a review. In turn, I will mention Peter Little OBE, who undertook a detailed review for the Government of the inclusiveness of apprenticeships for people with learning difficulties or disabilities. Perhaps it would be helpful to set out the information I have in a rather extensive note. I have tried to explain why accepting this amendment would be a problem, but I will set all that out.

It is good to see the noble Lord, Lord Addington, here because of all that he has done on support and accessibility. Apprenticeships are accessible. In 2013-14, almost 40,000 people with disabilities or learning difficulties started an apprenticeship. We can do more. We can continue, as he said, to look at English and maths requirements within apprenticeships to ensure that they do not create a barrier, and the use of reasonable adjustments for disabled learners has been promoted through the skills funding rules. The SFA—the Skills Funding Agency—has published an evaluation of a series of diversity and apprenticeship pilots which looked at innovative ways to increase accessibility for underrepresented groups.

We judge that the measures we are undertaking can give confidence that the Government are ensuring in the right way that apprenticeships are accessible for people of all backgrounds, including care leavers and people with special educational needs and disabilities. I hope that noble Lords have found my explanation helpful and will look forward to my letter, and that on this basis the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment.

[Lord Addington]

When the Minister does provide that letter, might it include some guidance about compliance with the Equality Act? People tend to say, “Oh no, that is different, that is not for us”. It needs to be stated quite clearly that the colleges and employers that are going through this process know that they are part of the legal framework and are not in some way exceptional. It is my experience that people are hiding behind the fact that we are different.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

I will certainly undertake to look at that point and discuss it further with the noble Lord, if I need further clarification, so that I can give him a proper answer.

Rugby World Cup 2015

Debate between Baroness Neville-Rolfe and Lord Addington

Thursday 10th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, the Rugby Football Union is well on its way to meeting that target by 2017. It has 960 new links between clubs, schools and colleges in its targeted work. In addition, it has 104 women and girls’ club sections with a new school/college link. The RFU is taking the game into state schools, reaching 130,000 state school pupils in the past school year. I do not know whether noble Lords have seen today’s Financial Times, which describes the Rugby World Cup as:

“A tonic for rugby’s grassroots”,

and highlights the extra £15 million likely to become available for grass-roots rugby.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, will the Minister give some thought to those at the other end of the grass-roots spectrum—that is, the veterans? Is she aware that a veterans’ tournament for parliamentarians who are involved in the Rugby World Cup is taking place next week, starting in Rugby? If any care to come down to watch, we are also playing at the Richmond athletics ground on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

The parliamentary rugby match is an excellent example of grass-roots rugby, demonstrating over the past 20 years that rugby can be enjoyed by people of all ages. I understand that the noble Lord has regularly distinguished himself in those matches, and I wish him and the team well—and every success for England as well.