Sporting Events Bill [HL]

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

I am in agreement with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, on these amendments. I think she was very wise to bring this before the Committee, because this is a case where many of the international governing bodies and federations— the IOC in particular—have taken a lead. Without this legislation reflecting that, we would be seen to be behind what are important international obligations set by organisations such as the IOC. I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, so there is cross-party support for his amendments. Whether the wording is right and sufficiently enabling is a matter for the Government to consider. I declare my interests. As the Minister knows, in 2012 I was chairman of the British Olympic Association, a member of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games and a member of the Olympic Board.

I will develop my argument and the reasons why. The International Olympic Committee has what it calls sustainability essentials, and any city bidding to host the Games has to meet those sustainability essentials when it bids. It then has a sustainability strategy, which it expects governing bodies around the world and all the national Olympic committees associated with the IOC to follow. When it comes to bidding for major events such as the ones we are talking about this afternoon in the context of this Bill, those who are bidding have to meet exceptionally high standards of sustainability and environmental protection, and it is right that they do.

I declare the fact that I sat on two commissions of the International Olympic Committee considering bids from other cities and then advising the members of the International Olympic Committee on the merits of those bids. One of the critical aspects of that was sustainability and the environment. If a city failed to meet those standards, it was very unlikely to succeed. For that reason, in the very early days of working closely with Ken Livingstone, the British Olympic Association sought to place sustainability right at the heart of the London bid that was judged in 2005. When I complete my remarks I will come on to the exceptionally important point that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, made about judging the environmental legacy.

All credit should be given in this Committee for the work of Sir John Armitt and the Olympic Delivery Authority. Sir John Armitt is one of the most outstanding men of his generation when it comes to engineering and the work he did as chairman of the Olympic Delivery Authority—the body that organised the building of the venues, facilities and infrastructure for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games—and the key environmental measures he implemented over several strategic areas, including waste management. He diverted 100% of operational waste away from landfill. An impressive 99% of waste generated from venue construction and decommissioning was reused or recycled.

On energy and emissions—an important point for the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, on every occasion that he contributes to a debate such as this—it was incumbent on the ODA to cut carbon dioxide emissions by at least 20% compared with standard practices, so even where it was expected that we would see reductions, we had to go 20% further. The Olympic park energy centre utilised a combined cooling, heating and power system alongside biomass boilers burning sustainable fuels—far more sustainable than at Drax, I might add. Then there was the sustainable construction. The Olympic Stadium was built to be the most sustainable in Olympic history, repurposing old gas pipes and reducing materials.

Water conservation was important. Water was a serious challenge to the organisers of the Games in 2012, because the quality of the water that we had to achieve was tough to meet. For the organisers of the Games, it took many days of discussions with Thames Water at the time to meet the standards that the International Olympic Committee required in its contract with London to host the Games.

On the biodiversity side, the ODA implemented an Olympic biodiversity action plan to restore local rivers. Everyone knows what the East End of London looked like before the work started to bring the Games to London. They planted over 300,000 wetland plants and installed hundreds of bat and bird boxes.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, talked about public transport. It was a requirement that, when it came to hosting in London, we had to design a public transport Games that banned spectator parking at venues and instead relied entirely on public transit, walking and cycling networks to manage emissions.

I mention those as examples, but there are many more. Many committees were put in place to implement one of the most impressive sustainability Games there has ever been. That was made even more difficult at the time because the transformation of the Lower Lea Valley into the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park required the most comprehensive environmental enabling works ever undertaken in the United Kingdom. Before 2007, when the work started, the 246-hectare site was nicknamed “London’s scrapyard”, serving a neglected, heavily polluted brownfield site packed with light industry, active landfills, a soap factory, gasworks and overhead power pylons. A great deal of work was done on site clearance and deconstruction. Over 98% of all demolition materials were recycled and directly reused in the new infrastructure. Workers removed 52 massive overhead electricity pylons and buried 13 kilometres of power cables in deep underground tunnels.

Then there was the green cleaning up: the soil washing. The soil was choked with a century of industrial toxins, including oil, tar, arsenic, lead and cyanide. Soil hospitals were created. The Olympic Delivery Authority, again under Sir John Armitt, set up onsite laboratories and five industrial soil-washing machines. A huge amount of work was done, and I would be very happy to talk at length about it because I am proud of the work that we did in London 2012. The reason for mentioning a number of these examples is to reinforce how import it is that, with legislation of this kind, when we are sending a signal to the world of sport that we want these major events to come, and they are going to pick up this Act, as hopefully it will then be, and look at it, if they do not see a real commitment to environmental sustainability on the face of the measure, they will question why, especially since we cover so many other aspects.

We need to find the right words that make it enabling. We must not be too prescriptive, because the prescription may be even tougher when it comes to the International Olympic Committee, FIFA or an international federation. But there is merit in looking at this seriously and I hope the Minister will respond positively. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has done a service to the Committee by tabling these amendments, as have the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and my noble friend. If we can attempt to find a framework to add to the Bill along the lines that they have suggested, the Bill will be significantly improved.

[Lord Mawson (CB)]

I was not going to speak on this, but I thought I might follow the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, because we both spent many years of our lives grappling with the London Olympics.

I first became involved in the London Olympics in 1999. The first meeting on day 1 was with someone called Richard Sumray, someone called Paul Brickell and myself. We met at the Bromley by Bow Centre over coffee and began to wonder, first, what would it be like to take on Paris in 2012 when it was the next city on the list? And where on earth was there enough land to do such a project?

--- Later in debate ---

In conclusion, it is simply about taking the opportunities of these human-led technologies to enable the experience of the event, to drive efficiency and effectiveness in the planning and the delivery of these events, to make them more secure and safer, and to make sure that when the flame goes out at the end of the event and the athletes, players and the media go to Heathrow or other airports and departure points, everybody has had an inclusive, safe and secure experience, powered through human-led technology. I look forward to the Minister’s response. I beg to move.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

I support my noble friend Lord Holmes’s amendment. Just over a year ago, Jarrod Bleijie, who is the Deputy Premier and Minister for State Development in Queensland, came to visit this House and listened intently to a debate on sport. One of the aspects that he focused on was that Brisbane was actively integrating digital twin modelling into the preparations for the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The technology is being utilised across several phases of development, including urban planning, venue design and, as my noble friend mentioned in particular, transport optimisation. The points that my noble friend made are very relevant, because the Queensland Government’s SEQ—South East Queensland —digital twin initiative is leveraging predictive analytics to model traffic congestion, crowd movement and transit scheduling. This was exactly the point that my noble friend made about modelling in the locality. On the construction side, foundational projects such as Cross River Rail have built immersive replicas to test structural functionality and simulate passenger flows prior to their completion. There is no doubt that the importance of digital twin modelling in all major spectator sports events is now both understood and implemented.

My noble friend is right to alert the Government to embracing within the Bill, in some form, in the right terms and with the right phraseology, the challenges of integrating digital twin modelling as it stands. It will unquestionably morph into more sophisticated forms in the future. It would send a signal to potential bidders that we are very much on top of this technology and legislation.

Amendment 96 is focused on a cyber resilience plan. I do not want to be pedantic, but we really need a cyber security strategy, because that would provide the framework for what I think my noble friend seeks to achieve. We absolutely need to redouble our efforts to prepare for and prevent cyber threats. Everybody involved in major spectator sports events around the world now is completely focused on this important factor. There are too many bad actors out there looking to disrupt major events. Unfortunately, the major events that command global television coverage are targets for them, as was seen in the many cyber threats on the Paris Olympics. This will only increase.

The more we highlight the importance of these issues by placing them in the legislation in a suitable way to indicate that we are very cognisant of the importance of this as a part of preparing for any bid and, indeed, for the delivery of games that could face these threats in the future, the more we will be well-received internationally. The whole purpose of the legislation is to send a signal to the international federations—the IOC, FIFA and others—that we are not only prepared but aware of the major challenges that we face and that we are responding to them as a country. With those very few remarks, I absolutely support my noble friend’s intent.

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, the point about cyber is really important. At Second Reading I referred to my involvement in the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Prior to the Games I had the opportunity of visiting the transport management hub, a group that, among other things, had put gizmos in all the traffic lights throughout London so that they could change the lights at a moment’s notice to enable traffic to move through. A cyber attack on that would have brought the whole of London to a standstill.

The noble Lord, Lord Holmes, raised this as an important issue, but he did not point out that this is a reality for sports organisations already. The latest research shows that 84% of the major sporting bodies around the world report that they have had at least one cyber attack recently, and 57% say they have had more than one. This is a very real issue. I look forward to the Minister’s response. It is vital that we have it included, ideally on the face of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

When it comes to further consideration of the importance of Amendment 76, to which my noble friend is speaking at the moment, the noble Lords, Lord Mawson and Lord Addington, may well agree that we possibly need to expand on this so that we have the opportunity, not just within six months but within a year, five years and 10 years, to see that there has been an appropriate sporting, social and economic legacy, and indeed a sustainability and environmental legacy. It is really important, because so many commitments are given at the time of hosting a major sporting event. Admirable as it is to have a review after six months, for legacy this is vital. By working together we can learn a lot of lessons that can benefit other host cities around the world for major sporting events. I put that to my noble friend. Does he agree that we can at least look at that before we come to Report?

[Lord Mawson (CB)]

It is a rich conversation, and it is really important that we learn this lesson. One of the things we did not achieve with the London 2012 Games—and it is no one’s fault—was to have someone caring about the legacy and really worrying away on day one when we won those Games.

When we first had that meeting in Bromley-by-Bow in 1999 to worry about all this, we were blue-sky thinking and thought, “How on earth do you make movement on a thing that’s going to be impossible? Paris is going to win—they’re the next one on the list and the IOC has decided already”. Fortunately, through a good friend of mine, Ian Hargreaves, at that time the deputy editor of the Financial Times, I was taken one Saturday morning to meet the architect Richard Rogers at his house in Royal Avenue. I had never met Richard before. We had a conversation to check whether we were mad in pushing this kind of idea. When I shared the thought, he was quiet for about 10 seconds, and I thought, “He thinks we are mad”. But Richard was actually a great risk-taker and had built some amazing things. He said that he thought building a mixed community was the right idea, and that he would like to join us, with his mate Mike Davies, who was just finishing the Millennium Dome at that point. At our second meeting, we began to worry about not only where the venues might go on those 248 hectares but the detail of, for example, the press and broadcast centre. None of us had ever done this before, and we had a conversation about how many journalists there would be; we thought maybe 100 or 200. Richard said he would go away and find out. He had an interesting idea of putting the press centre under the stadium, in a way that only Richard Rogers could have thought of. He came to the next meeting and I asked, “How many is it?” He said, “Andrew, it’s about 100,000”. The press and broadcast centre was a building bigger than Canary Wharf.

During the journey, because no one was at that point owning the legacy, into that building went a massive cable that all the press could use—fantastic value despite its cost—that was then going to be removed in legacy, along with that massive building, at the taxpayer’s expense. Unless a few us—including Gavin Poole who built the Here East development, now a fantastic innovation hub in the middle of the East End of London generating jobs, skills and university investments —had owned that issue of legacy, and the significance of that cable coming into that building, it would all have been lost. My thought to government is this: how do we ensure that on these big events some individual is owning those questions from day one? When Governments put millions of pounds into these things, they need to have longer legs than just six weeks.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment put forward by my noble friend Lord Parkinson. It comes to the heart of this Bill. This is, in effect, an enabling measure. It is agnostic about the events, but it is clear that it is about the major spectator sporting events of the future. It can provide a framework that will help to convince international federations, the IOC or FIFA that we are prepared, willing and ready to host one of those events. It is a pity it is agnostic because, as we heard on the first day in Committee, there are many events that would like to be included in this and, at present, we are unsure whether Wimbledon, the Open Championship et cetera could be covered.

Since the focus is on major events, such as a potential Olympic bid in 15 or 20 years’ time, it is concerning that what appears to have happened here is that we have enabling legislation that will come back to Parliament in the future through statutory instruments. When it comes to spending £10 billion at 2012 prices, that is simply not going to be acceptable to Parliament. We will require primary legislation. We will require a money Bill in order to consider whether that significant public spend is appropriate—even more so when you take the 2012 example, where the original bid was costed at £3.4 billion and it ended up at more than double that, and that is before accounting for the excellent work of the country’s intelligence and security services. I was present at a major debate about whether you included the security services’ work and costed it or you accepted that the security services would be working on something else at the time, so there was no additional cost as they simply switched across to the protection of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Leaving that aside, the important point is we had circa £10 billion-worth of public funding, and there is no way that secondary legislation on a regret Motion in your Lordships’ House is going to be sufficient for parliamentarians to come to a conclusion on that.

That brings me to the second point about the way that international sport is run under fiercely protected autonomy. To take the example of the Olympics, the bid committee is not initially set up by government to bid. The bid committee is the National Olympic Committee, and for us that is the British Olympic Association. The bid committee comes forward with the proposal for a city and it is responsible for preparing the bid documentation, which is known as the candidature file. That is formed by the city that is bidding, in the case of the Olympics, and the Olympic association of the host country. They go to their Government.

On the financing of a major event such as the Olympic Games, the role of the Government is to provide legally binding guarantees regarding, above all, funding. That is what is looked for from the Government: a legally binding guarantee regarding funding, taxation, customs and immigration. I shall take a few minutes to demonstrate this point and bring it to life in the context of what happened in London 2012. The guarantee that the Government provided in support of London 2012 was,

“to provide all necessary financial support to the Games”.

That was clearly made as a commitment by the providers of the public funding package for the Games. It was absolutely right that Parliament questioned that and asked what that guarantee meant.

The applicability of the guarantee in the context of London was confirmed by the Government in three concrete cases, where third parties requested additional assurance in respect of obligations undertaken by the organising committee. The first was Ticketmaster. The arrangement with Ticketmaster required assumption of responsibility for the refund of ticket purchases should the event be cancelled. The Government needed to step in to provide that security. Ticket revenues were a significant element of the organising committee’s budget and its cash flow. In lieu of requiring either that funds be held in escrow against potential refund claims or the provision of a costly letter of credit to support LOCOG’s undertaking to refund, Ticketmaster agreed to provide LOCOG with ticketing funds as received and recognised its obligation to refund as a binding and enforceable contractual obligation. The guarantee from the Government established the Government as the ultimate guarantor of any such shortfall. It is incumbent on a Government to let Parliament know that that is a potential financial requirement and to allow Parliament to decide whether that sort of decision can be taken by the Treasury, in the absence of coming back to Parliament, or by the relevant Minister—in the case of London, the Minister for the Olympic Games.

Another interesting point concerned the London Borough of Greenwich. One of the conditions specified in the grant of planning permission for the use of Greenwich Park required the organising committee to put in place arrangements to provide financial assistance so that the reinstatement of the park after the Games was funded and completed as envisaged in the planning applications. Again, to make sure that everybody was happy in that context, the Government provided the funding support.

In the IOC broadcast refund share agreement pursuant to the host city contract, the IOC made advance payments to LOCOG from the fees paid to the IOC by broadcast rightsholders, but, importantly, if the Games were cancelled fee rebates were due to the broadcasters. These were subject to a written assurance from the Government as the back guarantor.

I mention those three cases because I think they are important. They are significant, given the exposure of the Government and their support for that international event—in this case the Olympic Games. It is essential that, in providing that sort of support for a major international event, where the public are particularly interested in all aspects of it, the Government come back to Parliament and put into a finance measure or primary legislation the requirements that the Government are being asked to make by the International Olympic Committee, which owns the rights to the Games.

I hope the Minister will stand up and say that she accepts my noble friend Lord Parkinson’s request. He put it admirably. I have tried to add colour to it and to explain what it would mean in the practical reality of a major event. I very much hope that, if the Minister cannot accept the wording that my noble friend Lord Parkinson has put into his amendment, we can revisit this. It is of such importance for parliamentary accountability that issues of this nature should be considered in primary legislation or in debates in both Houses, rather than simply in a one-hour debate on a regret Motion.

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lords, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, Lord Markham and Lord Holmes of Richmond, for tabling the amendments in this group. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Addington. We do not believe the amendments are required either.

Amendments 68, 72 and 73, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Parkinson and Lord Markham, are intended to require parliamentary approval before financial assistance under Clause 25 can be given in relation to sporting events. This Government completely agree that scrutiny and transparency when it comes to public spending are vital. However, we do not believe that these amendments are necessary. First, for the avoidance of doubt, the funding power is not intended to lead to spending above and beyond what would have been provided anyway. Rather, it is a legal mechanism intended to ensure that any funding provided to sporting events has a clear statutory underpinning. This is in line with the principles set out in Managing Public Money.

Secondly, I want to be clear that this funding power is in line with established precedent for similar funding powers. Parliament already has responsibility to authorise government expenditure in this area through the supply estimates process, such as allocations for bidding for and staging major sporting events and legacy programmes.

These amendments, however, would go much further, effectively requiring the Government or devolved authorities to seek the approval of the relevant legislature every time they rely on this funding power, be it to fund a smaller-scale, grass-roots event or arts and culture programmes affiliated to sporting events. This has the potential to require parliamentary approval numerous times over the course of each year. To put this in perspective, over the past decade alone the UK secured and delivered almost 150 major sporting events, many with the support of government investment, and that is even before you count related activities. Once we add funding for domestic sporting events to the mix, the potential number of funding cases within scope goes up significantly.

I hope noble Lords understand therefore why the Government’s view is that these amendments are disproportionate and would place an unsustainable burden on Parliament. However, I assure noble Lords that, where financial assistance is provided by relying on this power, it will rightly remain subject to the same existing processes and ministerial accountability as any other spending of public money. Departments are required to produce robust business cases when spending public funds, in line with public Treasury guidance. Where funding needs are significant, this will also require a departmental spending review bid to His Majesty’s Treasury to be subject to even further scrutiny. There are a number of existing mechanisms which provide Parliament with additional ability to scrutinise such funding, including the Public Accounts Committee and the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, as well as committees in your Lordships’ House.

Amendment 71, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, would require organisers of major sporting events to publish, and commit to comply with, an environmental, social and governance impact compliance plan before funding can be provided where it exceeds £1 million in aggregate to a single recipient. As I hope I have already made clear, the Government are in full agreement with the point being made by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes that, where public money is given in support of a major sporting event, it should be used responsibly, secure value for money for the public purse, and ensure that benefits are shared with local communities. This is something the Government will be thinking about even before we consider funding a major sporting event.

As already noted, the Gold Framework is clear that, where event organisers are seeking government investment, they must demonstrate the social value of these events, including with regard to many of the criteria the noble Lord sets out. Among other expectations, it outlines that event organisers must have meaningful plans in place to generate this positive social impact even before the event has started. Where the Government do decide to support a major sporting event, this requires a robust business case proportionate to the expenditure, in alignment with Green Book and Managing Public Money guidance. These frameworks expect departments to consider environmental, social and distributional impacts, including those set out by the noble Lord, such as through the public sector equality duty and environmental principles policy statement assessments.

Finally, as has already been made clear, Clause 25 already sets out that event funding can be given where needed, subject to conditions. This could absolutely include conditions related to all these areas, where warranted. Furthermore, international federations and event owners often specify their own expectations and requirements with regard to the social and environmental impacts that prospective bidders would be required to meet. For instance, UK bids for World Athletics events are required to comprehensively integrate sustainability to align with the governing body’s mandatory Athletics for a Better World standard, with the Glasgow 2024 World Indoor Athletics Championships having secured a platinum rating, which is the highest rating possible under the standard. For these reasons, I ask the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, to withdraw his amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Doyle (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I want to build on what the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said in one specific regard. He is obviously right in what he says about London 2012, but I want to reflect that there was an initiative that attempted to deal with this—which I know very well because I worked for it at the time—called Join In Local Sport. Indeed, Members of this House kindly got involved in events that we held.

I shall focus on what we knew was a core challenge. The noble Lord, Lord Coe, spoke to us about this at the start of our initiative: after the 1984 Olympics, on going back to his sports club, he saw that there were queues of young people there who suddenly wanted to participate, but the key resource that they were missing was volunteers. We do not speak enough about the role of volunteers or the barriers that there are for people who want to be coaches and to support teams. Parents often get involved when it is their own child who wants to participate, but we need to keep them around and supported as volunteers for longer. As we look at participation in sport, I urge the Government to make sure that one of our key focuses is the pathways, incentives and encouragement that we can give to get more people to feel valued as volunteers within sport.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I am not sure the Government are going to accept these amendments as drafted, although I very much hope they will. For the record, it was the noble Lord, Lord Willis of Knaresborough, who chaired the parliamentary Select Committee that looked at the sports legacy from London 2012. We suggested in an earlier amendment that there should be frequent reviews—maybe after one year, after five years and after 10 years—of the sports legacy, the urban regeneration legacy and the social legacy of the significant investment that is put behind major sports events that are covered by the Bill.

It is wise and helpful to end my few remarks by saying that I completely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Doyle. We lost the opportunity after London 2012 to continue to encourage the many outstanding and wonderful volunteers who made the Games. It was the volunteers who made the Games, and they could so easily have been captivated by the atmosphere of a great sporting legacy and gone down to their clubs or initiatives such as the noble Lord’s excellent initiative and continued to be involved, but we lost those people.

I shall quote from the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Willis, when we reported to the House on the sadness that the sports legacy had really not been delivered while so many other legacies had. The regeneration of the East End of London was outstanding, for example, and the Games themselves were historically wonderful in everyone’s memory, particularly the Paralympic Games, as well as the Olympic Games—they matched each other. This is what he said:

“How is it possible that the UK is world-leading in elite and professional sports, that 3 billion people across the world watch our Premier League matches in over 187 different countries and that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, has consistently said, at Olympics after Olympics we are near the top of the league in terms of our elite activities, yet for decades we have failed at grass-roots level to get more people from more diverse backgrounds to be more active, despite all the investment that successive Governments have made?”

The point that he was really emphasising was that this was successive Governments; it was not a party-political point. He concluded:

“With one-third of the adult population at the moment getting less than 150 minutes of moderate activity each week; with schoolchildren doing consistently less activity both at school and at home; with PE marginalised in the school curriculum and no longer inspected by Ofsted while, as we heard in our evidence, many primary school teachers get less than three hours’ training in a three-year degree course, which is shameful, so physical literacy in most of our primary schools means nothing, frankly, because it does not appear on the league tables; with access to facilities ever more difficult; with local authorities closing swimming pools and leisure centres to save resources; and with transport non-existent for large parts of the day for large swathes of the community, we have become one of the most lazy, inactive nations in the … world. Those sections of the population with the poorest diets and the worst levels of deprivation are, not surprisingly, the least active, too, and of course the pandemic has disproportionately affected all the target groups”.—[Official Report, 4/2/22; col. 1208.]


That is the concern that many people on all sides of this Committee feel has been underestimated by successive Governments, and it is why the noble Lord, Lord Addington, has brought forward his amendment. The spirit of his amendment, and what he intends to do to remind us of these important facts, are vital. I welcome his work in that context. I hope the Minister is in a position to respond positively.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Doyle, on Amendment 83. As I said earlier, this amendment is just basically wrong—end of.

On Amendment 86, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. It conforms with my experience that you have to be flexible; you have to understand about local events, and you have to keep the structure going. Clarity is required here about what is wanted, so I hope we step towards that clarity or at least find out when it is coming. That is one thing about Bills in Parliament: you do get a chance to pin a Minister down for a worthwhile answer. I hope we have assurances on both of these.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I will be equally brief, but let me preface my remarks by saying that I am delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Dacres, is contributing to this debate. We both have a long history in Lewisham, and Lewisham East in particular. It is a very sporting constituency, as it happens, with Chris Chataway being the first Conservative Member of Parliament for that seat. I was nothing like as eminent as he was when he was a fairly impressive pacemaker in the historic 1954 Bannister run, when he broke the four-minute mile. The noble Baroness is a much-loved mayor in Lewisham, very hard working and very respected, so it is great to see her contribute to a sports debate.

Equally, when the noble Baroness, Lady Blake of Leeds, acting as Minister at the time just now, spoke of talent transfer, it is important to recognise the outstanding work that the noble Baroness, Lady Grainger, has done in that context in UK sport. Talent transfer has been an absolute pillar of the success of many of our sports in recent years, since we really professionalised elite sport. My friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Grainger, was critically important in that work, and it is a great delight to see her in your Lordships’ House.

I support the comments made about Amendment 86 in the name of my noble friend Lady Sater. It is very important indeed that these CQC regulations remain on the agenda, and I hope the Minister is going to give us some comfort today and say that they should be looked at again in the context of the smaller events, the ones that local authorities run. The noble Baroness, Lady Dacres, was completely right in what she said about the role of local authorities in grass-roots sport. These CQC regulations are really quite critical now to the cost of running those smaller events that are so important in the development of sport. I hope they can be kept under review and looked at again by the Government. My noble friend Lady Sater’s amendment, and the comments made in particular by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, just underline how important it is to be reviewed now so that it does not do irreparable damage to many of the sporting events that we are talking about.

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Markham, for introducing and speaking to the amendments on behalf of the noble Baronesses, Lady Davies of Devonport and Lady Sater, and the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton.

Amendment 83, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton, would carve out a broad category of criminal conduct from the preventive football banning order regime by seeking to exclude behaviour framed as “expression”, even where that conduct has crossed the threshold into criminality. This carve-out is intended to include conduct at sporting events to which the Bill applies, or banning orders resulting from offences under the Bill. On the latter, to be clear, the offences under the Bill will not be added to the football banning regime. On the former, football banning orders may be imposed only by a court and are a very serious measure. They arise either following conviction for a relevant offence listed in Schedule 1 to the Football Spectators Act 1989 or where the court is satisfied that the individual poses an ongoing risk of involvement in football-related violence or disorder. As the noble Lord, Lord Doyle, said, this amendment is not the bar we want to set. Sport should indeed, as the noble Lord said, be the best of us. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, echoed that sentiment.

Your Lordships’ Committee will recall the disgraceful racist abuse directed at Black England players following the Euro 2020 final. The noble Lord, Lord Doyle, rightly pointed out the lack of out gay male footballers in the sport. That behaviour at Euro 2020 was rightly condemned across your Lordships’ House, and it underpins why the banning order regime was strengthened to include communications offences to ensure that those who engage in such hateful, harmful conduct can be excluded from the game. It would therefore be inappropriate to carve out a category of criminal behaviour from the football banning order regime simply because it is described as “expression”. Parliament has already determined that such conduct can meet the criminal threshold. Weakening that framework risks undermining the ability of courts and police to deal effectively with those who jeopardise safety and enjoyment for the vast majority of decent fans, and indeed for sportspeople.

Amendment 85, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Davies of Devonport—who is not able to be in her place today—proposes, in the context of events to which the framework provisions are applied, a duty to ensure provision of single-sex competitions and facilities. It also sets out that where the rules of a sporting competition are framed by reference to the gender or sex of the participants, that reference must be to biological sex. Any events to which the Bill’s framework will apply must comply with existing legislation and guidance. In the UK, the Supreme Court ruling provides clarity around the definition of sex within the Equality Act on the basis of biological sex. The EHRC’s updated statutory code of practice has been laid before Parliament, providing essential legal clarity for sports providers, national governing bodies and participants around the country. National governing bodies of sport, local authorities and sports organisations also have guidance and policies in place. We will continue to engage closely with our arm’s-length bodies, Sport England and UK Sport, and the wider sporting sector as Parliament considers the updated EHRC guidance.

Amendment 86 was tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, and introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Markham. I accept the spirit in which this amendment was laid, and I noted the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, who also spoke to this amendment, as did the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan. This amendment requires a review of the impact of recent regulatory changes that allow the Care Quality Commission to regulate the treatment of disease, disorder and injury—TDDI—at sporting and cultural events. These regulatory changes bring sporting and cultural events in line with other settings where the treatment of TDDI is regulated, such as within hospitals and care homes.

The change means that TDDI health provision at sporting and cultural events will be delivered by professionals with the right set of skills, training and equipment so that the audience and participants receive the right type of help when they need it. It means it will be easier for organisers to pick skilled and safe providers, as they will be listed on the CQC website. As noble Lords are aware, the changes were made following the recommendations by the Manchester Arena inquiry.

During its parliamentary passage, it was clear that Members of both Houses were concerned that this change may have unintended impacts. Ministers at the Department of Health and Social Care have undertaken to work with stakeholders to consider options to mitigate any unintended consequences. The concerns included the impact on events staffed by volunteers, or on specific groups such as search and rescue teams and athletes. Noble Lords who spoke to this also spoke about volunteers, which was a theme in the debate in the Grand Committee I was present at.

This work is ongoing. The Care Quality Commission has met with a broad range of representatives as part of its consultation on this change. DHSC officials are due to meet with chief medical officers from a range of sporting and cultural bodies to discuss this matter further, and I will attempt to clarify when those meetings will take place. Department of Health and Social Care Ministers are in the process of convening a round table with the Peers who spoke during the debate on the statutory instrument on the CQC regulation amendment on 15 April, and I will ask my noble friend Lady Merron to make sure that those who spoke today but were not present at that meeting will be invited. I will also make my noble friend aware of this debate. In the meantime, I ask that the noble Lord withdraw the amendment.