Sporting Events Bill [HL]

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, at Second Reading, I raised the example of the butcher in Weymouth who, during the 2012 Paralympics and Olympics, was threatened with a £20,000 fine because he displayed in his shop window five strings of sausages in the shape of the five Olympic rings. He eventually got around this by changing the circles into squares, but it was a rather ludicrous example of the extremes to which some of the arrangements can go.

We are in a bit of difficulty, because before us we have a framework Bill which refers to lots of regulations to come, but we do not know what they will be. Yet at the same time, we all want to ensure that particularly SMEs can share in the benefit of hosting the sorts of events covered by the Bill. We therefore need to ensure that the regulations on association are flexible enough to protect the sponsors, who have paid a lot of money, but not be overly zealous in how we treat our small businesses, particularly those where the event is taking place.

Although my noble friend’s amendment relates to licensed premises, it could equally apply to all others. I want to test with the Minister a couple of questions. I am genuinely delighted that the impact assessment and Explanatory Memorandum, on pages 19 and 20, already give many exceptions that the Government are planning to introduce and which presumably will be picked up in the regulations. However, there are one or two areas where they do not go as far as many of the major sporting bodies have already gone. In 2012, many of our athletes were upset at not being allowed in any way, shape or form to thank the various people who had sponsored them over many years—an example could be one of my noble friend’s licensed premises supporting a particular athlete. They were not allowed to do so because of the tight restrictions: there was no way there could be any link between that unofficial sponsor and the individual athlete.

Equally, there were very strong regulations concerning what words could and could not be used. There was a whole list: you could not use “champion”; you could not even mention “London”, let alone “2012”. I am delighted that the IOC has, through changes to rule 40, made significant relaxations that now allow, for example, under certain circumstances, an athlete to thank their unofficial sponsor and the unofficial sponsor to refer to the athlete they have supported. There are various conditions around that.

However, there have also been changes to the language. The butcher I referred to earlier would now be allowed, under the IOC rules, to say “champion banger” or “gold medal sausage”. So, significant changes have taken place. Will the Minister ensure that relaxations and flexibilities such as those already introduced by the IOC for the Olympic and Paralympic Games will be covered by the regulations that will follow for each of the events covered by the Bill?

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the observations made by the noble Lords, Lord Addington and Lord Foster. This follows the line of the issues I raised on Monday concerning the impact assessment and the various impacts on small businesses. This amendment is clearly a probing amendment, but it is intended to establish protections for small businesses that may by chance get picked up in one way or another. We must ensure that we do not damage those businesses. As many of us said on Monday, mission creep ends up negatively impacting small businesses, often by chance.

I welcome the broad principle of this amendment, and I hope that further discussions will ensure that those protections, whether they be for individuals or businesses, are pursued.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and other noble Lords for their gold medal contributions today—if I am allowed to say that, at this stage at least. As the noble Lord, Lord Foster, and my noble friend Lord Hayward set out, there are quite often unintended consequences, the sausage being a perfect example of what we would all agree is a disproportionate response. I think all we are talking about here are common-sense provisions in all of this, which I know are very difficult to draft into any sort of amendment, but which at the same time I think we would all agree would be sensible. With that, I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

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[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I listened carefully to the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Addington, in relation to his amendments. My concern is about creep. I referred earlier to ensuring that we do not have creep that affects small businesses. Here I am concerned about setting up an organisation that has to be maintained when there is nothing relevant to do. The noble Lord used the phrase “always there”. I do not think that is the intention he is aiming for, but if you put it in the Bill you are saying to government, “You have to have a group of people who are working on this all the time”. It is surely far better for government to have the capacity to respond at the right time as quickly as possible, rather than having an “always there” structure.

Associated with that, on the accommodation to which the noble Lord refers, it is my understanding— I am looking at those who were involved in 2012 and in other major sporting events—that when it comes to the Olympics, UEFA and FIFA, the accommodation strategy is decided by those bodies. They will enter into negotiations with worldwide hotel chains and say, “What are you going to do if we come to Manchester, London or wherever it may happen to be?” This is not a responsibility of government. In fact, most of those international organisations would regard it as an intrusion if they were being told, “We’ve already got a strategy and this is how we operate”, because it may well conflict with what is intended by the major sporting organisations.

I cited international gay rugby tournaments when I spoke on Monday, and next year there is the gay EuroGames in Cardiff. With these smaller competitions, you go to those major cities and seek assistance on accommodation. Cardiff is expecting 5,000 or 6,000 competitors and a fair number of spectators next year. Any major authority will maintain a process by which it can deal with those sorts of approaches, but on a much smaller basis. I do not want to see this legislation set up a government structure that is required on an ongoing basis or a belief that the Government should intrude on matters such as accommodation when the major sporting organisations do it themselves because that is how they want to operate.

[Lord Mawson (CB)]

The noble Lord is correct on that point. It was the IOC that had the view on what should happen with the accommodation on the Olympic park. For example, it did not put kitchens in, for very good reasons—the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, will know more about this than I do. They wanted people eating not in that accommodation but in a special place, because if you are an Olympic athlete, eat the wrong foods and then have tests, there are implications. As a legacy company, we had the job afterwards of putting in the kitchens and a whole range of stuff to make all that work in its legacy format.

What you do want is close working relationships between that international body and those on the ground who are responsible for creating that legacy. The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, may well agree that we learned on the go as we went on this journey together. It would be good if that kind of conversation about these close working relationships was happening between government and the international bodies on day one, so that we do not have to spend £323 million on a roof that does not quite work in legacy. Those connections really matter.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for that helpful and affirmative intervention in relation to the points I am trying to make.

In broad terms, I do not want to see a structure that is required by government. One needs the capacity to respond quickly, in the right way, at the right time. That is how cities operate when they are trying to attract smaller international competitions of one form or another.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

That would be a perfectly acceptable response: that there is a capacity, that they will make sure they have the capacity to look at this and that there will be a strategy going forward. This is about clarification and finding out what happens here. As I read it, the Bill works perfectly well for a championship—it does not read so well for something for which you have to do a lot of construction work. I am trying to find out the Government’s thinking.

To back up the original point from the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, here we must pay attention to the cyber and online world, as it is becoming an increasing part of it. His first amendment is a good tool—use it, because you will be expected to in future. The snappy video is being replaced by the plan. We are trying to get out of this important group of amendments what the Government are going to do, the limitations of the Bill—we have found some today—and what will be set down to the bidding structure that currently exists. Where the two overlap, we should find out what does not have to be done and what does.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for that clarification, which is important for understanding the directions in which this Bill should go, and what we believe it should achieve.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I thank my noble friend Lord Holmes, and all other noble Lords, for what I hope people will see as a good debate and a helpful contribution. We hope to make sure the UK is best placed for the best planned events, so I hope this will be taken in the spirit of helpfulness. As ever, my noble friend Lord Holmes brought us to the cutting edge of technology in the need for digital twins, and my noble friend Lord Moynihan set out the perfect example of Queensland for what is happening on that. He was absolutely right to remind us of the dangers from cyber attacks. With my other brief in my science and technology role, I am all too aware of that; it was brought out very clearly by the noble Lord, Lord Foster, with his traffic light gizmo example. I would quite like to have one of those for my way home.

What the noble Lord, Lord Addington, was getting to on the infrastructure and accommodation points was in some ways similar to the point we tried to make in our amendments on Monday to enable an Olympic development-type agency. As he said, it is not a championship-type event; it is a much bigger scale. These are all coming at the Bill from different angles to make sure that if this is to be enabling legislation, it is broad enough that when bodies of that scale are needed, this framework legislation is able to do it. I very much take my noble friend Lord Hayward’s point that we need to make sure we do not build overbearing full-time bureaucracies here.

The amendments in my name, and that of my noble friend Lord Parkinson, are trying to make sure that the UK is the best place possible to host these events. That is why we are asking the Secretary of State to make a report within six months on some of the impacts on and barriers to that. Noble Lords are only too aware that the recent changes to employer NI increases the cost of a worker by about £900 per year, and the minimum wage changes add another £1,000 per year to the cost of each worker. These are exactly the type of people needed to man these events and make them happen. Unfortunately, these recent changes and tax increases will have a disproportionate impact.

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[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I do not have favourites, but the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, wins that today. I used the words of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, so my apologies to him as well. The Government do not believe that these amendments are necessary, although I recognise that the concerns the noble Lord raises are to ensure that arrangements and infrastructure are adequate to serve major events, including, as he said, accommodation for athletes, whether that is purpose-built or repurposed. The example from London 2012 given by the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, was helpful to illustrate this.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

I thank the Minister for her kind comments. I ask her to encourage some of her colleagues on the ministerial Benches to acknowledge that, on occasions, there are good ideas from the Opposition Benches as well.

Sporting Events Bill [HL]

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 22nd June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I wanted to allow some time to raise and discuss the important issue of gambling advertising—I was hoping for more discussion of it. I note that I support Amendments 37, 41 and 44. The noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, has already made the case on gambling very strongly, and it was something I raised at Second Reading, so I will speak chiefly to my Amendments 42, 45, 49 and 52, which are about fossil fuel advertising. They seek to ensure that sporting events covered by the Bill are free from advertising and sponsorship by fossil fuel companies. We could hardly have picked a better day to be debating these amendments, given the heatwave that the UK is currently facing. One significant impact of that heatwave will be on many sporting events. Many people’s intention to do all sorts of physical activity will be, for very good reason, curtailed in the coming week.

In the Bill, we are talking about highly valued, important events, and they should not be used as platforms to boost the reputation of damaging industries whose products are driving the events that we are currently experiencing. Sponsorship is not philanthropy. Companies invest in sport because they know their association with trusted institutions improves their public image and strengthens their social licence. With this Bill, we have the opportunity to ensure that the biggest events in this country that we host do not become a vehicle for greenwashing. We note that young people are a significant part of the audience of many of these events, and that they are the people who will have to bear the consequences for the longest time.

As I raised at Second Reading—and it became very much a basis for these amendments—this is not something we are dreaming up. Britain would not be able to claim to be world-leading should the Minister say, “Yes, I entirely agree with you” and adopt all my amendments. France became the first European country to ban advertising for fossil fuel products in 2022. The Hague has introduced a legally binding ban on fossil fuel advertising in public spaces. As I said at Second Reading, a number of councils have already shown leadership. Today, we are seeing leadership arriving in Westminster from the rest of the country; this is a place where we could find some more leadership on that. The UN Secretary-General has called for restrictions on fossil fuel advertising similar to those applied to tobacco.

I move to my next set of amendments, which are related but different. Amendments 43, 46, 50 and 53 are about the advertising of less healthy food. There is a huge and similar kind of contradiction of promoting sport as a route to health and well-being while simultaneously allowing sponsorship from products that undermine those outcomes. These and other amendments seek to ensure that sporting events covered by the Bill are free from advertising and sponsorship for less healthy food and drinks. We are talking here about the major ultra-processed food and fast food brands, which are, sadly, major suppliers of the British diet; we are all paying the price for that.

The gap is that Ofcom does not regulate sports sponsorship deals; we have regulations about junk food advertising, but not about sponsorship. Therefore, Ofcom cannot do anything about watching a sporting event and being bombarded with advertising for McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Budweiser and so-called sports drinks like Powerade. Those brands appear everywhere. We do not see adverts for tap water, though it would be quite nice if we did—let us put that down as a thought. This creates a health halo effect: products are conceived and often advertised as compatible with a healthy, active lifestyle when their nutritional profile is anything but.

Public health bodies and parliamentary research have consistently identified marketing as a key driver of childhood obesity. The Government already have policies on direct advertising to act in this area, and historically we saw the bans of cigarette advertising that had to be continually strengthened. We need to see the same thing for ultra-processed and other unhealthy foods. We have an accepted principle that the marketing of less healthy food to children is a legitimate public policy concern. These amendments address an inconsistency in public policy. Sport should be used to inspire healthy lives, not as a platform to promote the consumption of foods we know will shorten people’s lives and make them less healthy.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, in relation to these proposed amendments, I have sympathy with a number of points, particularly as they relate to gaming. The noble Lord, Lord Foster, made very clear the logic behind what he is asking for in these amendments.

Unfortunately, on the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, while I am extremely sympathetic to the issue of climate change, and I will not buy all sorts of things in plastic or plastic bottles and the like, I worry because we are talking about adding things to an ever-extending list; every time we get to a major sporting event, we will look at whether we should add on other things that operate in other countries.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, just spoke about an established principle, and I think that is a far better route by which we should operate in terms of these international sporting events. In other words, our established principles of advertising as they operate in this country should be the principles by which the major sporting events should operate. We cannot spend our time trying to run ahead of policies we have, whether in relation to age-related matters or food and drink-related products.

I have spoken critically on a number of occasions in this Chamber about Coca-Cola and its sponsorship of major sporting events. However, it is a very difficult road we will go down if we start adding on one thing after another—

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

To make it clear, when I was talking about an established principle, I was talking about the fact that we have restricted advertising of these products—particularly to children. Therefore, it is a question of how far that restriction goes; it is not about doing something new.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her clarification; I was not absolutely clear on whether she was talking about the established principles or extending the limits in some form or another.

I want to make an observation on a comment the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, made on the last group of amendments. I think I heard him refer to sporting events as ones of “chance” on two occasions. There are a fair number of medallists in this Chamber today who may think, “Well, it wasn’t chance that got me a gold, silver or bronze medal”. Equally, when I refereed rugby, it was very rarely viewed as chance that one team or the other won—though there was the odd chance that the referee might have made an error at the time.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, that I did not mean chance as in random, because I accept that in sport the harder you work, the luckier you get.

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[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 19 and 22 to 25 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Evans of Bowes Park, to which I have attached my name, and I thank the Minister for sparing time to discuss these. I said when we met that there are a number of sports organisations that are feeling a bit unloved at the moment. These are events that have a global reach and help cement our standing on the world stage.

The noble Baroness, Lady Evans, mentioned the London Marathon. I think I competed in 17 of them—it is quite hard to remember when you get to that many. I know I did one more than my husband. I also commentate on the wheelchair race for the BBC. The marathon is not just the race itself. Anyone who walks up the Embankment at 6.30 pm on the Sunday will see people valiantly keeping going, to try to make it to the finish line. On Westminster Bridge the next morning, you also see the hundreds of people who have competed standing there with their medals, wanting to take a photo in front of Big Ben.

Beyond that, the impact is quite significant. It puts London on the map as a city, and it brings a huge amount of tourism. People stay in London for days afterwards, thanks to the many good deals that the marathon has negotiated with various restaurants and different companies around the city. We need to think about this in a slightly different way. That is positive chemistry and association that you cannot buy. It is because people feel amazingly good about putting themselves through 26.2 miles around the city.

I will speak briefly to Amendment 25, because it is really important. Mostly, athletes will mention something they saw at another event that inspired them to do sport. That is probably because they are asked about it a lot. But we cannot underestimate this—it is not just about people seeing these moments in time and doing sport. They will do lots of other things, and 2012 was a brilliant example of that, such as people who have gone into the creative industries because of what they saw.

The Minister talked about wanting to change the health of our nation, which is incredibly important. To quote a bunch of statistics, Women in Sport has said that 80% of women in the UK are not fit enough to be healthy. That has a massive impact on jobs, pensions, life—everything. It means hitting frailty at an earlier age. ukactive has said that we have a generation of children who are more likely to die before their parents because of inactivity. This is really worrying, and we have to do something quite radical.

It is not necessarily the Bill’s responsibility to do that; we need some joined-up government. We need to look at physical literacy in primary schools and progression steps. We also need to look at the cost of the pathway for athletes who aspire to compete at the highest level. SportsAid data, which is probably a little bit out of date now, shows the average cost of the pathway for a teenage athlete is £10,000 a year. I imagine that is significantly higher now. There are a lot of families who cannot afford that, but what we can do is broaden the base of participation.

I am particularly interested in Amendment 25 and what we can do to encourage more disabled people to be active. Activity Alliance has said that disabled people not only find it hard to be physically active but that they are actually quite worried about how it is perceived if they are physically active, so we need to look at this in a different way. I was not a product of special education—thank goodness, because it meant I actually received an education, when a lot of children who went through special ed did not. As much as the world has moved on in many ways, that was actually really good for enabling disabled children to be physically active. Mainstreaming, which is much better for education, has actually made some of those things much harder. I receive emails at least monthly, often weekly, about how disabled children in schools are not able to take part in PE.

That is not a problem for this Bill—it is an issue for the Department for Education. But unless we are more explicit about what we are trying to do and how we are trying to change some of these stubborn inequalities, we are never going to move it on. In Wales we are incredibly lucky that we have the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act, which gives us a very useful framing for what we are trying to do to encourage young people to be active. The Sport England campaign, This Girl Can, was ground-breaking. For the first time, it showed real women doing sport—as opposed to Olympians or Paralympians, who look slightly different. But we cannot expect just an advertising campaign to radically change what we do, so any way we can think differently about developing a fit and healthy nation that truly stays engaged in physical activity is really worth exploring in more detail.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I echo the comments of my colleagues across the Chamber in relation to this set of amendments, although I tend to disagree—or will clarify—in relation to one of the amendments. This is an enabling Bill. Surely, therefore, it should provide the opportunity, as the noble Lord, Lord Addington, has said, for major sporting events which wish to make use of the Bill—whether it is the RFU, the LTA or whoever—to be able to come forward and say to a Government, “We wish to use this Bill for the following reasons”. Surely that is the objective of this legislation.

The point has been made a number of times already that sporting frameworks change, and we cannot guarantee that the Olympic Games, European Championships, et cetera, will be the same in 15 or 20 years’ time, or whenever it may happen to be. Structures of international competition change. If ever there was an example of one—and I am surprised that the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, did not refer to it—it is the announcement in the last few days that the London Marathon is going to move from one day to two, with the objective of having 100,000 participants.

It is about the level of attraction from around the world. Most people look at the London Marathon and say, “Oh, it’s just the London Marathon”. It is not; it is part of an international body of marathons, a set group of them. If there are 100,000 participants next year, we are going to have many hundreds of thousands of visitors. There are transport and all sorts of other implications. Surely, if this legislation is anything, it should be available to that sort of sporting evolution, because it is so positive both for this nation and for fitness in general.

I wish to make a brief observation in relation to the amendments, where they cite certain categories of people. I just ask, for reasons most people in this Chamber would recognise and which I identified at Second Reading, that where there is specific identification of women, girls, the disabled and ethnic minorities, we either use the classifications of the Equality Act or just stop at

“removing barriers to physical activity”.

I speak, as I identified on previous occasions, as the founder chairman of the world’s first gay rugby club, a structure that now has 100 clubs around the world and an international structure where we compete on a regular basis. Certainly, I know only too well the difficulties and the challenges associated with bidding and with organising international competitions, with people coming from other parts of the world.

We had the European championships in Birmingham less than a year after the Commonwealth Games. The competition, the Union Cup, was the largest sporting competition in the Midlands after the Commonwealth Games over the following 12 months. There are international competitions all the way down—they restructure and they reorganise. But I ask that we remove barriers to physical activity for underrepresented groups and stop at that point, rather than trying to cite specific examples, because we risk excluding some groups or others, and I know that is not the intention of those who have proposed these amendments.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Hayward. Were I to imagine myself—as I never would—on the Bishops’ Bench, in approaching this set of amendments I would be very much reminded of the parable of the prodigal son.

The Bill rightly sets out a whole raft of provisions for mega sporting events that come to the United Kingdom on occasion. Events already listed by my noble friend Lady Evans, such as Wimbledon, the British Grand Prix, and so on, do their thing year in, year out, staging world-class events which are far greater than sporting celebrations and competitions, with economic, social and cultural benefit which goes far beyond, for example, Wimbledon, SW19.

In asserting the principles in the Bill that have to be in place when it comes to international bids, it seems odd that at least some of these provisions would not be available to those extraordinarily impactful sporting events that are the very fabric not only of our sporting nation but of our culture. I ask the Minister to consider, if not implementing these amendments, the essence behind them and to how it could be threaded into the Bill. Further to my noble friend Lord Hayward’s comments on frameworks, why would the Government not want that to be available to the sporting events that wish to avail themselves of some parts of it? Ambush marketing is ambush marketing, whether it is targeted at the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games or the Wimbledon Championships every year.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Evans and I have a lot in common—we both support Norwich City Football Club, and we show our allegiance to it—but I disagree with her in her amendments. I did not contribute to the last debate, but it is safe to say that it confirmed what I think we all know: that, while this may be an enabling Bill, if we actually capture one of these global events, we will need to have specific legislation anyway. If that is the case, we will not be doing any more than virtue signalling in the Bill. The conclusion that all the noble Lords have made is that the Bill is incomplete and half-full. I will not say that it is half-baked, but there is plenty more work to be done on it.

However, if the Bill is incomplete, I do not think that it is the right thing at all to extend it in scope to other events, because the mission creep brings politics into sport. Of course, it is very difficult to keep it there, but it brings politics into sport by law. It will prevent somebody who is interested in public discourse from having an opinion and gives them leverage over the event. It will sanitise so much of the activity that goes on around the game. It will make unlawful things that are part and parcel of what we do—certain trade, advertisements and things such as that; it stops innovation—for Wimbledon, the rugby union, the rugby league, the Grand Prix, the Open, the Test match, Premier League and, if we listen to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, cultural events such as the Proms and Taylor Swift. Where does this end?

I am concerned that, however well-intentioned it is, it could backfire. My noble friend Lady Evans talked about a gap to be filled. I see it a different way; I see this creating a chasm between the fans and the men in blazers, who want this for their own narrow purposes. We have grown the well-trusted and well-organised events of global repute that we host without the benefits of the Bill. While it is an enabling Bill and has very important new rules for traffic wardens, I am not sure that having more traffic wardens is enough in and of itself.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for giving way, but just for clarification, the noble Lord, Lord Addington, my noble friend Lady Evans, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and I made absolutely clear that it is not a case of the Bill encompassing these competitions; it is the sporting authorities asking that they might make use of some of the facilities of the Bill.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise with great pleasure to follow the Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, who is very much the leader of your Lordships’ House in this space. I am here having signed Amendments 15 and 26 to show cross-party support, so I will be brief.

As the noble Baroness set out, we have seen a gradual erosion of people’s access. We often discuss access to the right to participate in sport, but there is also the access to being part of the whole sporting experience and to view major events live. Free-to-air broadcast is what keeps major sporting events genuinely public, rather than turning them into elite viewing that is available only to those who can afford subscription television or other sources. If access depends on payment, watching sport becomes unevenly distributed, with lower-income households at a clear disadvantage. In practice, that particularly excludes, or risks excluding, many children and young people from the shared experience of watching major sporting events with their peers and their communities. Free-to-air coverage ensures that money is not a barrier to participation in what is a common cultural space, where sport is experienced collectively rather than privately. That broad access is something that gives sport extra public value, and that is why it is important to protect it as something that belongs to everyone, not just those who can pay.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I disagree with the proposed amendments for a number of different reasons; first, because the terminology “free to air” is a complete misdescription. You have to pay £180 for your TV licence. It therefore is not free—that is, for the 88% of the population who choose to pay for their TV licence. The number of people who choose not to pay for a TV licence has been rising for many years. I say 88% because the latest figures published say that 12.5% of all viewers do not pay for a television licence.

Secondly, there is the question of competition. The essence of sport is competition. It is a very odd state of affairs whereby one says that broadcasters can compete but, by the way, we will restrict the competition in certain fields. We were debating in the previous set of amendments the question of assisting people who face disadvantages in society. Again, it is a very odd state of affairs whereby one broadcaster might be willing to pay much larger sums to broadcast a particular event, and in that process guarantee substantial funds to the underrepresented groups, but they are not allowed to because the event concerned is a crown jewel. So not only do you lose out because the broadcasting may be inferior; the funding might be inferior as well.

Thirdly, my concern is that the crown jewels were a product of a different technological era. Sport is now broadcast on a whole range of different platforms, and none of us in this Chamber knows what the platforms are going to be in five or 10 years’ time. Therefore, to decree in this piece of legislation that you can have certain sporting events, and I noticed that it suggested that they might be extended only on—I will use the jargon although I have indicated that I do not agree with it—a free-to-air basis, when multiple levels of platforms will probably be available in a few years’ time does not recognise the changing technological world in which we live and which the sporting world will have to adapt to.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 26. The noble Lord, Lord Hayward, makes an interesting reference to free-to-air. As well as not knowing what platforms are going to be available, we do not know even what events there are going to be. The Olympics and Paralympics are going to change radically in the next few cycles, not least because of the impact of global warming. In quite good timing, there was an article this morning online on the Broadcast Sport website which talked about the changing world of events. Rights holders have more choices about where to go to put their events on, and they can ask for more money. It has been estimated that FIFA is going to make about £3 billion from organising the World Cup. Where is that money going to go? If you look at something closer to home such as Wimbledon, it puts a considerable amount of money back into the grass roots, which is incredible.

How people watch is going to change as well. The same article on Broadcast Sport was saying that even if you are watching a live event, you are probably checking your phone at least 10 times during that event to see what else is going on and what other comments are being made. We should be looking at how we make available these major sporting events. A number of people are disappointed that the Commonwealth Games is not going to be readily available, certainly on BBC TV. Everything that Team Wales does is going to be shown on S4C. There will be two hours’ live coverage a day, which is amazing—in Welsh, which is really important in terms of continuing to develop the Welsh language. I am sure there will be lots of other home country athletes competing who will be seen within those time slots. I do not think we can underestimate the importance of being able to watch the Games.

If we look back through history—we have been talking about this today—when the BBC covered the Sydney Paralympics in 2000, one of the decisions behind putting the Games on at teatime was so that schoolchildren could watch the Games. That developed a much better understanding of disability and the Paralympics. It got an age group of children watching sport that they probably would not have been able to see before. Whether it is free to air or however we define that, it is important that the public in the widest possible sense are able to watch these events in real time without spending some quite significant sums sometimes on monthly fees.

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[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

To fail to commit for the whole of this Parliament, when we have years to run, is disappointing, given the strength of the comments made by the Prime Minister and other Ministers in recent months. It is vital that the Government indicate by the time we get to Report whether they will legislate during this Parliament.

The public have longed to get legislation on to the statute book to protect people from being ripped off and turning up at many concerts, having paid a lot of money to bring their kids down from wherever they live, to find out that they have a forged ticket. That must be stopped. We must have tough legislation. That is why I share with the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, the need to legislate on this and why we were so pleased that the Government were willing to come forward with legislation that Parliament could consider. To know that this might not happen in the current Parliament would be deeply disappointing.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My noble friend emphasises the importance of tackling touts in a broad piece of legislation that does not cover just these events. Could he also emphasise, as my noble friend Lord Fuller raised, ensuring the obligation of those selling the tickets to maximise the controls to avoid touting?

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

I absolutely endorse that comment. As my noble friend, who has sat with me on this subject many times over the past five years, will know, ever since the Waterson report and many others, I have sought to table and introduce legislation—sometimes successfully—to give far greater clarity and visibility on tickets and to make sure that when people sell tickets, they follow the conditions that the organiser of the event has brought forward. If the organiser has set the condition that it should not be sold on the secondary market, it should not be. We have needed legislation to be introduced in order to achieve that.

I am absolutely tough on this subject, as the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, knows. I have the privilege of co-chairing the All-Party Group on Ticket Abuse. We have to take action on this. I really hope that, following the Minister’s response, she will be able to go away and consider before Report an absolute commitment that this Government will honour their word and introduce legislation not during this Session but during this Parliament.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I follow my noble friend Lord Fuller in his expression of concern about the impact on small businesses. Sadly, many noble Lords will know me as a statistician who spends all his time looking at opinion polls and numbers in one direction or another and then commenting on them. I have spent inadequate time looking at the impact assessment, to which no reference has been made yet in these debates. Despite my apparent facility for statistics, all I can say about the impact assessment is that my head hurts. I found it incredibly difficult to comprehend page after page of low-impact, central-impact and high-impact estimates.

I will comment on one section. I could comment on others, but I address my comments overall. I find it very difficult to understand the impact that each of the different events would have in terms of positives and negatives, because they are aggregated in a very odd way. Page 41 of the impact assessment refers to the impact on street traders. It says:

“The low estimate reflects that 50% of traders will be able to continue to trade due to potential mitigations”.


Therefore, 50% of the traders will not be able to continue trading—and that is the low estimate. It goes on to say:

“The central estimate reflects the likelihood that 75% of traders in the affected area will be unable to trade while the provisions are in place. The high estimate serves as an upper bound where all traders operating in areas where prohibitions apply are unable to trade”.


We are therefore talking about a very substantial impact on businesses. We debated earlier the duration under which these provisions would apply, but we are talking about potentially every single street trader in those relevant areas. There are pages identifying the numbers of traders affected, whether it be at the Everton stadium, the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, at Hampden Park in Glasgow or wherever you choose to name. There are numbers and numbers of street traders. That is their livelihood. If these events are running for several weeks, which is likely to be the case, they are losing their livelihood for that period.

I therefore share my noble friend Lord Fuller’s concerns about the impact that is identified—but identified in such a complex way that it is incredibly difficult to understand what we are talking about.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My noble friend has painted a picture and enumerated it with examples of sports stadiums. Under the Bill, there is to be a zone cast around the stadium where trading will be banned. But there are other provisions that have other events; for example, fan zones. Has my noble friend considered that fan zones could be in town centres? Town centres could be sterilised from trading. Has he considered that the net may be cast much further than just street traders, to other organisations too?

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that intervention and for identifying other areas. I tried to make it clear that I had taken only one element of one page of an impact assessment. It was on page 41. The impact assessment is over 90 pages long, with central, low and high estimates in all sorts of different categorisations There is no overall assessment of cost potential for any small or large business or the impact on the economy.

There is lots of explanation that tells us how wonderful it is going to be week in, week out, because of the benefits of sport. That is right—we have all recognised that—but there is an indistinct identification of the potential costs to some small and very small businesses, and we really should recognise the potential implications for all concerned.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, in many senses, we have outperformed a World Cup football squad tonight, because we have hit the target ahead of schedule for this first day in Committee, and we have done it without a hydration break.

Let me begin with the two amendments I have tabled in this group. It is an important group on which to end our debate, because it deals with the significant impact of the Bill on the restrictions on commercial interests, small as well as big, a point that my noble friends have rightly accentuated. My Amendment 40 seeks to create an exemption for charities from the advertising offences in the Bill, applying only where a charity is advertising wholly or partly for the purpose of promoting itself or a specified list of charitable services. I hope the Minister will be attracted to it. It is word for word taken from the provisions in the Birmingham Commonwealth Games (Advertising and Trading) Regulations 2021. If it was suitable then, why not for the new framework that we are seeking to set out?

Amendment 55 similarly relates to charitable exemptions. Paragraph 1(2)(d) of Schedule 3 to the Bill states that a “Trading activity” includes

“appealing for money or other property (whether for charitable or other purposes), with the exception of begging”.

That means that the offence of trading in a restricted trading zone applies to charitable fundraising but not to people who are begging. I wonder if the noble Baroness can explain why it has been drawn up in that way. Surely we do not want to restrict people from collecting for good causes where that can be done in a way that is consistent with the sporting event, particularly when we consider that charities historically have been exempted from the advertising offences when we have hosted sporting events of this nature in the past.

I have tried in doing that to follow the example that my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond has taken with his Amendment 39. As he said, that mirrors the approach taken in the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006, which provided carve-outs for community and educational uses, and I congratulate him on the way he set that one out.

I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Addington, undersold his Amendment 38 a little. It concerns the impact of exclusive advertising authorisations on small and medium-sized enterprises and, as my noble friend Lord Hayward has done, it is worth drawing the Committee’s attention to what the Government’s own impact assessment says about this, because it is rather revealing. The final stage impact assessment, published by the department, acknowledges candidly that the provisions most likely to affect small and micro-businesses are the trading provisions of this Bill, which could prevent established street and market traders operating as usual in and around restricted zones. It recognises that there may be

“small disproportionate impacts on local traders relative to the broader business community”.

Therefore, it acknowledges that the greatest potential impact will fall on street traders in affected areas—as my noble friend Lord Fuller said, the people who add to and enhance the enjoyment of many people going to sporting events. The impact assessment promises that

“careful consideration will be given to how best to mitigate these impacts when making regulations on a case-by-case basis”.

That is a candid admission, but candour in an impact assessment is not the same as a legal safeguard in the Bill. Amendment 38 from the noble Lord, Lord Addington, seeks to translate the Government’s own stated intentions from the impact assessment into an enforceable obligation. I think that one is worth the Minister looking at carefully in her response this evening but perhaps also as we consider all the issues we have looked at today between now and Report. I am grateful to noble Lords for all their amendments in this group.

Sporting Events Bill [HL]

Lord Hayward Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 3rd June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, before I comment on the Bill, I will first make one or two observations on earlier speeches. First, I welcome back the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, on behalf of the whole Chamber. We are all very pleased to see him delivering a speech in his normal style—I think that would be the best way to describe it. The noble Lord, Lord Wood, referred to the fact that nothing could make 80% of a nation taking one view or another. I think there are occasions when referees’ decisions could achieve far more than 80%—almost unanimity. I say that for those who are unaware that I was a rugby referee for many years. I also observe that the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, has probably introduced a new sport into the Olympic world, which is getting from one end of this Chamber to the other via a Division Lobby at a speed she said was nowhere near what she used to achieve. I can assure noble Lords that I was amazed: I watched her leave and, no sooner had she left than she returned almost immediately.

I welcome this Bill enormously because it is intended to enable organisations to come together to make bids for major sporting events. I do not intend to repeat the comments that many other people have made. We are proud of our sporting tradition. My noble friend Lord Young referred to a particular case. I am not in favour of woke policy and restricting people’s observations, but I merely observe that I am wearing this evening the tie of the world’s first gay rugby club. Atmospheres generated in crowds, in one form or another, reflect on a community. I find it completely unsurprising that there is not one professional footballer who is out and gay, because of much of what goes on in football stadiums, credited as general banter. I say that as somebody who is distinctly not woke.

Coming to the Bill in general, I said that I support it—as I think everybody does who has spoken—because it enables sporting organisations to be brought together. The noble Lord, Lord Barber, said that he was present at the England v Mexico match in 1966. I was also present at that game, along with two other young boys and my father. Sport is supposed to bring you together. We three boys persuaded my father to take us to the Mexico game. It achieved a great degree of unanimity among the four males who watched that match. The only problem was that, when we got home, we discovered that my father had forgotten that he was supposed to be hosting a dinner party with my mother. On that occasion, sport certainly did not bring certain parts of my family together.

Sport is an international operation. I recognise people’s loyalties in one form or another. The Bill is intended to clear certain barriers so that we can bid, but there is a serious risk, identified by speakers from different Benches, of overreach in this Bill. Fine, let us make it possible to have international events here, but international events are precisely that—they are international. Trying to set down terminology in this country’s legislation will achieve one thing, as the noble Lord, Lord Mann, forcefully said: it will frighten people away and they will host events elsewhere. Do not try to do something such as banning touting because it sounds nice, when, as the noble Lord so ably identified, much of the problem of ticket resale is outside our shores. In the other direction, as the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, identified, trying to have blanket bans around stadia is a very risky process, because it has impacts on all sorts of small businesses there that operate very effectively every time there is a major event.

As far as I am concerned, the original objective of the legislation is clear. I support the questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, and others as to why music events are not covered on the same basis as sporting ones; it would make sense, and if it is not done now, I envisage that we will be here debating a piece of legislation that will drag those areas into the same piece of regulation in one form or another. But, please, do not try to overreach the legislation because it sounds good. It will not achieve what people want, because sporting events are international. They cannot be regulated into existence in this country. We need to do what we can to achieve the best in sporting occasions for this country, but not go beyond that and frighten people off—or say, “We’ve done this”, when actually we have not done anything at all because it is outside our capacity to regulate.

One noble Baroness will have identified that I have not gone into a sphere that I have a feeling she is just about to: the bid by Bolton for the Ryder Cup, to which I think there has been no reference whatever during this debate. I welcome the Bill, but there are very grave risks associated with it if we try to overreach in one direction or another.

Football Governance Act 2025: Implementation

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I was delighted to see David Kogan endorsed as the Government’s preferred candidate for chair of the regulator. David was subject to a pre-appointment hearing with the CMS Select Committee on 7 May, giving Members of Parliament an opportunity to scrutinise this important appointment before it is made. The committee endorsed David’s appointment, noting his extensive football and media experience. As noble Lords will be aware, the Commissioner for Public Appointments is conducting an inquiry into the process and DCMS is co-operating fully. No conclusion has been reached at this stage and it would not be appropriate for me to comment further.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, following on from the noble Lord’s observation about the women’s football team, I take the opportunity to welcome and congratulate the Rugby Football Union on the excellent start to the Women’s Rugby World Cup tournament. Rick Parry, the chairman of the EFL, at a meeting of an all-party group on football a few months back, commented that he saw that the necessity in terms of regulation in this country and the numbers employed should be somewhere between six and 99—preferably closer to six. Does the Minister agree with Mr Parry’s observation? If not, why not?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

Does the noble Lord mean in relation to how many people are employed by the regulator? To be honest, that will be largely down to the incoming regulator itself. As the noble Lord will be aware from our lengthy discussions during the passage through Parliament of the Bill, now an Act, there is a broad understanding of what we think the overall operational costs will be. We put them at around £8 million to £10 million. Clearly, the staffing costs, as well as other operational costs, would need to come within that.

Community Sports: Impact on Young People

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, this afternoon I am wearing my rugby club tie: Kings Cross Steelers Rugby Club. Given the presence of both the noble Lord, Lord Wood of Anfield, and the noble Lord, Lord Hannett of Everton, I probably should have worn my referee’s tie—although it would have been a different sport, and we would have required more courtesy.

While referring to previous speakers, I also take this opportunity to say that it is an odd thing about this House that there seems to be more experts on electoral law here than at the other end of this building. I have had the good fortune to know the noble Lord, Lord Shamash, for some 20 years. It has been a pleasure and will continue to be so.

I would like to concentrate on the benefits of team sports, which the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, has just referred to. They contribute substantially to the community, in whatever form. Team sports take children, teenagers and young adults away from the family home and should, and often do, provide another form of support network. The younger ones who misbehave should be supported and guided by the older ones. However, on rugby tours I have, on occasion, been amazed and sometimes embarrassed at the behaviour of the older members of the tour, rather than the younger ones. There is no doubt in my mind that, overall, team sports contribute substantially to society at large.

My opening comments related to my own club. I will confine my comments specifically to rugby, but I think they apply elsewhere. I acknowledge wheelchair rugby, women’s rugby and the like. In a week’s time, I will be in Rome celebrating the Bingham Cup. It is the world’s largest gay rugby tournament, and it will be attended by 3,500 people from all over the world. It is named after Mark Bingham, who played for the San Francisco Fog and was one of the people who tried to fight off the terrorists on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania on 9/11.

There are many teams coming from the United States—from Atlanta, Boston, Philadelphia and New York. It is a truly worldwide competition. But I am pleased to say that we play at different levels. The Kings Cross Steelers firsts and seconds will be defending the relevant trophies which they won two years ago in Ottawa.

When we founded the club, the intention was just to find a convenient home for people who happened to be gay to play rugby. It has gone on to become much more than that, as have all the other clubs for other minority communities, such as people with disabilities and women. I remember first standing on a touchline and being told by a supporter of our club that he thought that, had we not existed, his boyfriend would be dead.

Team sports so often provide support that goes way beyond physical activity. It is about mental health. We have a player, a young guy called Ethan Phillips, who felt alienated from his whole community—and had been in a psychiatric ward aged 17—until he discovered the Kings Cross Steelers. A few years ago, Eammon Ashton-Atkinson, an Australian journalist who came to this country and had been bullied at school, made a film called “Steelers”, which featured three particular players: Nic Evans, our coach, who was female and had played for Wales and been subjected to misogyny in a bad way; Drew McDowell, a black player from the United States who knew all about life’s difficulties because his father was brought up in the deep south; and Simon Jones, a top-flight lawyer for Google who admits that, until he discovered rugby and a gay rugby team, he would curl up on the floor, go into fits of tears and cry for a prolonged period. Team sports can provide an enormous amount of support in such a different way to so many people. As far as I am concerned, sport and physical activity improves all sorts of health, not just physical health.

I will conclude on somewhat happier matters, and revert to the Liverpool/Everton saga that we have heard so much about today. I used to negotiate as management in a bottling plant in Fazakerley for Coca-Cola. This was in the 1970s and I remember there was a match where one of the two Liverpool teams was due to play at Wembley. The shop steward turned the ticket over with pride and said, “Look, we haven’t got a map on our tickets to get to Wembley. The other club needs a map to get there”. I will leave it to the two noble Lords to work out which club he was referring to.

Human Rights: Sportswashing

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, first, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, on moving this Motion and on the powerful way in which he covered some very important issues, specifically those relating to Bahrain. I will pick up on some matters that other people have commented on and should identify that, as I think the House knows, I am fortunate enough to be the founder chairman of the world’s first gay rugby club. It is worth remembering that, as was pointed out by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, human rights matters are issues not just in Bahrain but for the disabled, for women and for the LGBT community, in all sorts of different ways.

On the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, I checked the term “inspiration porn” on my phone and was not confronted by tractors or anything like that. Fortunately, inspiration porn is exactly as she said. However, it is well worth remembering that human rights issues do not apply only to countries in the Middle East, the Far East and to Russia; they apply to all of us, in different ways. Having been the founder chairman of the world’s first gay rugby club, I am fortunate enough to have watched the progress that all gay and lesbian teams have made in this country as they have broken down barriers over the past 30 years. We were an oddity when we were first formed in 1995; now, we are just part of the local leagues and regularly field four teams. There has been a complete change in society and attitudes towards us and our teams, and that is true on a worldwide basis. Sport can change attitudes.

The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, referred to the growth in awareness of women’s sports. It has been quite sensational. Attendances at league matches have grown so much in a short time. Having said that, I remember having a text exchange with the noble Baroness in the middle of the Commonwealth Games, during the disabled marathon. She commented somewhat ruefully, when progress was being made in other ways, on the lack of participation in some disabled sports over the past decade. They have not grown in the way one hoped they would after the great successes of 2012 and onwards.

Several noble Lords referred to sports governing bodies. We all throw up our hands in despair at the behaviour of the vast majority of them. Some have been shown to be corrupt, while we know that others are just chasing the money in some form or another, but my noble friend Lord Moynihan made an important point: any sports boycott or action is effective only when taken as part of an overall international governmental approach. Otherwise, there is no point in asking sportsmen and sportswomen to boycott.

I remember having a conversation with my noble friend Lord Moynihan and Lord Coe about the 1980 British Olympic team being asked to boycott Moscow at the same time as the Bolshoi Ballet arrived in London. What on earth was the point of saying one thing to one group of people and a totally different thing to another? If we are going to send messages, we have to do it across the whole of society. There have been many references to F1; I am pleased that there is no F1 in Russia now, in part because of the international boycott. It no longer takes place. However, I say to F1 that, like other international bodies, it ought to listen to what is taking place.

There is a difference between the four-yearly Olympics and annual events such as Grands Prix. You can sign a contract for a Grand Prix over four, six or eight years and say, “If you don’t make progress, we’re going to cancel the contract immediately through force majeure. Alternatively, the contract won’t be renewed when it ends”. In the case of the Olympics, it is somewhat different, but the Olympics is awarded many years in advance so the International Olympic Committee should be willing to say, “We’ll award it but we want to see progress at the start of the contract, not at the point when the games take place”. That is absolutely the pinnacle of the event but much can be done beforehand.

There has been reference to sportswashing in events right through from the Berlin Olympics in 1936. It is tragic that the person who designed the first Olympic village, which was in Berlin in 1936, committed suicide two days after the closure of the games because it had been identified that one of his grandparents was Jewish and he would rather commit suicide than face anything thereafter.

I want to touch on one element of sport that has not been referred to this afternoon. The sponsors, such as Coca-Cola, Bridgestone and Visa, have an enormous amount to answer for. If they did not sponsor the events, they would not take place where they were. In conclusion, I really think that everybody should look at sponsorship. I quote the Coca-Cola website:

“Coca Cola has been associated with the Olympic Games since 1928”.


Take note: that is before Berlin, yet it is mentioned with pride. It also says that it gives the

“opportunity to … celebrate with sports fans in … countries”

around the world. What do the Uighurs in China, the lesbian and gay communities in Bahrain, and other oppressed minorities think of that? It is not just about sports organisations or Governments; the sponsors also have a lot of questions to answer.

BBC Funding

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Tuesday 12th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The whole of the Government are committed to the BBC’s important role as a public service broadcaster. My right honourable friend in her Statement in another place rightly called the BBC “a great British institution” that

“plays a vital role in our culture and creative economy”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/12/23; col. 514.]

As we look at future funding options, we will look at how public service broadcasting is delivered in other countries, both the ways in which that is done and the pros and cons of those models.

The noble Lord is right to highlight that the BBC plays its role in a globally exceptional way. I have already talked about the more than 360 million people who tune into and rely on the BBC World Service for impartial news and analysis. We should be very proud that it is our national broadcaster that people across the world tune into, and we want to ensure that it is sustainably funded for many decades to come.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

When considering the financing of the BBC, will my noble friend clearly bear in mind all the issues that have been raised by noble Lords across the House concerning its importance worldwide and its contribution to society in general? However, what concerns me is that the BBC has not looked deeply into other areas to see what can be brought under control. I have typed “apple crumble recipes” on my phone. The first four entries come from the BBC. Why on earth, when the BBC should be providing services worldwide in multilingual circumstances, are we confronted by an organisation that provides food recipes to anyone who wants them and who can get them for free from other sites as well?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I did not know there were so many ways to make an apple crumble, but I am sure my noble friend’s was delicious, however he made it. He is right. The BBC is getting more than £3.8 billion, which is a large amount of money, for it to continue to do the important work that it does. It is up to the BBC to decide how it spends its money, but it is right that it makes sure that it is doing so in a way that would delight all licence fee payers.

UK Concussion Guidelines for Grass-roots Sport

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The noble Lord is right that this is work that engages other government departments and many institutions in education and healthcare. A range of government departments and representatives from the education sector and medicine have been engaged in the process, and the guidelines will be published through all those channels to make sure that schools, teachers and doctors are aware. As I say, it is for the national governing bodies of each sport to make sure that this baseline guidance is tailored to the specific context and setting of their sport, and we would like to see that built on. It is for them to give any additional messages. The guidance is an essential first step, and fundamental to it is the simple overriding message: if in doubt, sit them out.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I have returned from a three-day rugby tournament, excellently organised by the Birmingham Bulls, which involved 47 teams participating this weekend. I am interested by the use of the word concussion or brain injury. Can my noble friend clarify why the term concussion is persistently used when, in effect, what we are actually talking about is potential brain injury?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I send my congratulations via my noble friend to the Birmingham Bulls and everyone involved in the Union Cup. We have chosen to use the word concussion because it is what is most widely understood. Certainly, as a non-medical and not particularly sport-playing person, it was the term which was most self-evident to me. As we want to get the guidance out to as many people as possible, using layperson’s terms such as that seemed like a good way to do it.

National Women’s Sports

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Addington, both on obtaining the debate and on his erudite and detailed analysis of the circumstances of women’s team sports over recent years. I intend, as is natural for me—as with the noble Lord—to concentrate on rugby union and leave football to the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, and others.

I start with the observation that, tomorrow evening, my rugby club, the Kings Cross Steelers, will be celebrating on the Terrace their victory in the worldwide gay tournament, the Bingham Cup. In itself, that victory is not relevant; what is relevant is that we will have three members of the England women’s rugby team present: Shaunagh Brown, Ellie Kildunne and Sadia Kebaya. We are honoured, because their success in recent weeks has caught the attention of the nation. I say to Sarah Hunter, our captain, on behalf of the whole team, not only have you caught our attention but you have gained our respect. We all know how difficult it is to accept defeat—and such a close defeat, at that—but you have gained our complete respect.

Why? When I told my members that we were going to have three members of the England women’s team present, the reaction was a communal, “Wow, that’s great!”. For the first time ever, because of television coverage and the like, the rugby union team has attracted our attention in the same way that the football team has done. Why has it attracted our attention? Let us be honest, with the level of professionalism that we now have—which is rising and can go on rising—the skill levels in team sports have risen. Therefore, nobody dismisses them now and says that it does not matter, or that they are just out there playing rugby union, football, cricket, rugby league or whatever; there is a skill level now available which everybody can and should appreciate.

Along with a number of other Members of both this House and the other place, I had the pleasure of pressing the Government for funding for the women’s Rugby World Cup in 2025. I was pleased that the Government granted that assistance. In Auckland, a week ago, the stadium was full to 40,000—its maximum capacity. The RFU has set a target of filling Twickenham, with a capacity of well over 80,000, for the final in 2025. It is a great target and it should be achieved. It reflects the growing interest in women’s sport that is being displayed across the nations.

As the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said, although we can admire the achievement and the increased professionalisation and skills, we must recognise that it is not a total success story. I served on a committee with the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and others. We looked at the statistics in relation to activity levels. Among women, those levels are on average 10% below male activity levels, and markedly lower among certain socioeconomic groups and ethnic communities. Those are the people who need to be attracted by the performance of women in team sports to generate an interest on a day-to-day basis at a lower level in sport generally, because role models are not the only solution to achieving participation.

The Politics of Polling (Liaison Committee Report)

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, before I start my comments in relation to both the committee and the Liaison Committee’s review, I pay credit to the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, for his chairmanship. He alluded to his ill health. I think that everybody who was on that committee, and Members of this House who were not, are extremely pleased to see him looking so well in his place in this Chamber. I think we all welcome that.

In relation to polls, we automatically assume that everything is fine as long as the polls got the figures and the direction right in the last general election. The moment the pollsters fail to get the correct party in government, they are blamed for everything, and that is not fair. As the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, said, there are large numbers of polling companies in operation now. I believe they work incredibly hard. It is in their own interests to produce the right results, because that is what they market to the public at large, but I do not share the confidence of the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, in relation to the possibility that they might make errors in future. He indicated that they could, but I am not convinced that they are any more or less likely to make an error than they were previously. I say that because of the reason he identified: polling companies have to identify major demographic shifts, such as university education as against age or class, and the changes that have taken place over the last decade.

It is very interesting that the noble Lord referred to Peter Kellner, who in some of his research recently identified that some 50% of the nation’s voters have voted for different parties in the last decade because of the issues of Brexit and the changes in the red wall. Polling companies always tend to be somewhat backward-looking, because they are using how people voted last time by class, age, education or part of the country. Unfortunately, that is rather like fighting a war using the weapons they won with last time around. There is the probability that they will make the same errors again in future, when there is that same demographic shift.

The other aspect that still concerns me—I will come on to a further, small element at the end—is the way polls are reported. Again, I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, that journalists report things well. I am afraid that the pressures to which he referred—to sensationalise—result in a high level of hyperbole being applied to figures in any poll.

Take Ipsos MORI, which this afternoon published a poll saying that this year 31% of people have reduced their expenditure on their holiday plans. When people are asked questions, there is a temptation to give the answers they think they ought to give. Polls try to deal with that issue, and in fact the wording in Ipsos MORI’s question is quite clear—it says “noticeable reductions”. But if one compares that 31%, which produces a dramatic headline if you choose to use it—and all too often the media do use those sorts of figures—does that actually match up with what is happening at the moment?

The other day I listened to Michael O’Leary from Ryanair talking about revenge tourism. I checked just now, having seen this figure from Ipsos MORI. A year ago, his load factors were 67%; he had 1.04 million passengers in April last year. In April 2022 he had 14.24 million people flying on Ryanair, with a load factor of 91%. Does that really match up with the 31%? No—one has to take things in the round.

What worries me is that, when the media present figures from polls, they fail to take things in the round. The tendency is to give two or three questions and then we are on to the next subject. I recognise the pressure that journalists are under from producers and editors, but I wish that the media would look at things in much broader detail, rather than dashing on from one subject to the next, and that they would try to help educate.

In conclusion, I shall pick up one point from the response to the Liaison Committee by the BPC. This is associated in part with my previous comments on the use of figures and concerns where organisations pay for polls which are clearly intended to produce a certain result so that the result can be portrayed to the media, who can then portray it in hyperbolic form. This is not good for anybody. The Library briefing notes that

“The BPC also rejected the suggestion that its members should be obliged to disclose who funded each poll”.


I understand matters of commercial confidentiality; I have been involved in negotiating such agreements, though not in the field of polling. I understand the issue, but it really ought to be clear in every poll—on the can—who has funded it, so that the listener, reader or viewer can clearly understand what the intended message was in the first place. I do not think it does polling, or anybody, any good to be less than open on such matters.