Sporting Events Bill [HL]

Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 3rd June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I apologise to your Lordships. I made it into the wrong end of the Chamber at the start of the debate and then sprinted around the outside, somewhat slower than I used to be able to.

I declare my interests: I am the chair of Sport Wales, a board member of UK Sport and a trustee of the Foundation of Light, and I sit on His Majesty’s Government’s Soft Power Council, particularly looking at sport. I was part of the bid team for the Manchester Olympic and Paralympic Games when we bid against Sydney. We had 100 years of rain data to show that there is more rain in Sydney at that time of year than Manchester, and they held up a picture of Bondi Beach. We learned from each of those experiences.

My noble friend in sport, the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, and I worked on much of the 2012 Games together. It is easy to forget that when we bid for those Games, we were bidding only for the Olympics; for the Paralympics there was a separate negotiation. Thanks to the amazing work of Tessa Jowell, she made that happen. On stage presenting to the IOC, she wanted to stand up and say that we were bidding for the 60 days of the Games. Unfortunately, at that time, we could not risk anything getting in the way of the IOC awarding the Games to us. Those Games raised the bar on the Olympics, the Paralympics and disability sport.

There is a lot to be said for avoiding bespoke legislation every time we want to bid for a Games. I support much of the Bill, but I think we could be just a little bolder. It is potentially a really exciting time to look at a possible bid for a Games in the north. I am Welsh but with a geographical designation of Eaglescliffe in the County of Durham, and there is a lot of local interest. I understand that it is probably too early for the Minister to say, but I would welcome a little more understanding of what the definition of the north is. I would prefer us to say the north of England. A lot of the UK is above where I live. People remember those magical times and understand what major sporting events can do for us.

We are looking for Welsh legislative consent, and the Long Title mentions Scotland, England and Northern Ireland. I wonder whether I am missing something, but I would like to understand why Wales is not there. What conversations and discussions have taken place with the new Government in Wales?

Next year, the Tour de France grand départ will go through Scotland, England and Wales. This is a really exciting time to re-emphasise the power that the UK has in international sport. I wonder what impact the Bill might have where sport is devolved, and where there is a crossover with major events. Will we still be able to use the Bill to bid for events such as that in the future? These are important things. UK Sport and the UK have a great deal of expertise in bidding for events.

It is important to note that our international reputation is also based on holding and hosting much smaller events. That shows our commitment to sport and it is something we are really good at. Recently the UK hosted the world team table tennis event, which was incredible. It also shows the international federations, which have an impact on our bids for major events, that we are committed to a variety of sports.

The Commonwealth Games is an important part of that. We are hugely thankful to Glasgow for stepping in. It is important to Wales and Welsh athletes as a potential stepping stone to GB. It connects local people to the athletes. For all the countries in the Commonwealth—Canada, Australia and New Zealand, but also the smaller countries—it means an awful lot, and we should be proud of that.

I am very interested in what the major sporting events strategy will look like. One of the things that UK Sport recognises and works very well at promoting when bidding for smaller events is that they sit across the four home countries. In Wales we had the AIG golf in Porthcawl and world para fencing in Cardiff. All those make an impact and do not need primary legislation, but they tie to our global aspiration.

One of the things that arose out of the recent Soft Power Council meeting was that more clarity was required on what is a major or mega sporting event. I wonder whether His Majesty’s Government intend to offer a definition of this, because it would be hugely beneficial for the sector. The sport sector in its entirety is huge and significant, and this would help in some of the future planning. A number of organisations that work with current UK events are asking for this clarity. You could argue that additional help is not needed if they are currently operating and successful, but it is important to understand the jigsaw that needs to exist in what we are trying to aspire to on the world stage.

You should never underestimate the impact that the UK has in promoting disability events, not just in starting the Paralympic Games and 2012 but in our ongoing role. One such example is wheelchair tennis; the LTA is one of the best governing bodies at promoting inclusion and is doing a really good job.

The world is changing, not least due to climate change. By the time we get to Brisbane 2032, there might be a very different Games—not just the type of events that are included, as there is a move to more street and urban games, but the impact on climate change. I would like to understand more about what consideration has been given to environmental sustainability, transport—we know that is going to be an issue in Los Angeles—and how we can further push for decarbonisation. A lot of sports are already looking at this. You could argue that the easiest way to help the environment is to have athletes not travel anywhere. The Games are going to be very different. We need to be fleet of foot in what we do in the UK to understand what bidding for future Games might look like.

The legacy of 2012 was amazing. I am always slightly uncomfortable when people say that the 2012 Paralympics changed the world for disabled people. It was the best eight weeks of my life, but we also have to be careful about overselling what sport can do unless we invest in legacy. Join In, the volunteering charity, was an incredible legacy of the 2012 Games. We need to think about how we build in social and community aspects at bid stage. It is cheaper and easier, and there is more chance of it working. There is always a spike in participation after the Games, but if we think about legacy at the very start, we have a real chance of making a difference.

The cost of bidding was raised. I remember, in 2005, talking to one of the planners for 2012 and them talking about the difficulty of predicting the cost of steel seven years into the future. This is something that other countries will be looking at as well, because you can sometimes spend millions on bidding for a Games. We have to be very smart in what we do.

I know this is outside the remit of the Bill, but this year the UK is hosting the summit for the International Working Group on Women and Sport. This started in 1994 as the Brighton declaration, and it is now the Brighton and Helsinki declaration. It has support from 600 organisations around the world. The summit in July will be an amazing opportunity to network, and I hope there will be a ministerial presence there. This is a situation where the eyes of the world will be on us. We have a chance to influence sport and international federations, but it is not a sporting event as we might think about it.

In Committee we will also need to look at the cost of policing and security. Sadly, it is a necessity. We are seeing that the cost of policing and security is making it unsustainable to hold some of the smaller events in the UK, which are part of the jigsaw for what we want to do in the future.

This is not quite in the Bill, but we have been talking in Grand Committee about the Care Quality Commission and its changing guidance. It would be great if we could join up the different threads of conversation to make sure that we are in the best possible shape to go forward. I thank the Sport and Recreation Alliance for its continued discussion in this space.

I support the Bill. We have an amazing opportunity. We could be a little bit braver. If I can steal a quote from the 2012 Games, we have a chance to inspire a generation.

Sporting Events Bill [HL]

Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 22nd June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord on starting with a question that should be asked. When we have done the big games in the past, there were infrastructure measures that had to happen, but they do not seem to be in the Bill. So how do they fit in? It is that simple. I probably should have had my name down somewhere—my fault, sorry. But it is one of the things that we really must get out about how the Bill is going to work. Is it something we tag on to this, or is it something we expect to be smaller secondary legislation, or is it part of the whole that we are doing here?

As I said, we have always had to discuss this before—well, we have done it twice here; the other times, it was Scottish legislation. If we need a proper planning structure to build stuff, how is that fitting in? It does not seem to be that obvious. If the Government have a scheme coming, let us hear about it, because it is one of the things that has been of great benefit. In Birmingham, we learnt how to do it quickly; in London we learned how to do it well with lots of planning. Where do those two structures fit into what is going on here? It is a very reasonable series of questions that have been asked, and I hope the Minister has a very reasonable set of answers.

Most people who are taking part in this wish the project well. There is a lot of nodding going on here, so if we have got that going on, let us find out how that happens. If there are further questions, let us find out what inspires them, and let us see what we can do. This is something which might be very good. Let us confirm it is, or at least that it sounds like it is.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I apologise. I did not get in to speak before the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and I did not want to interrupt.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

I apologise also.

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[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

I remind the Chamber of my interests. I am chair of Sport Wales, and I am also part of the Laureus World Sports Academy, which is a group of ex-athletes who come together to raise money to put back into sport.

I have my name on Amendments 3 and 4 but support others in this group. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Evans of Bowes Park, I think the Bill is too tightly defined. If we are going to bid for major games in the future, it would be useful to have in this Bill everything that we might possibly need. We have huge experience from various national bodies and organisations in this country—I have previously been a board member of the London Marathon, so I have seen that—and it would make sense to use the expertise that they have.

The noble Lord, Lord Markham, talked about transport. One of the massive successes of the 2012 Games was the transport. It was an incredible experience for disabled people. A huge number of staff were available at various train stations and interchanges. The planning for that started years ahead of the Games, thanks in no small part to the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, and the work he did when he was commissioner at TfL. These are the things that we have to get right. The world of bidding is going to change. If we get the Bill right, it sends a strong message to the international community that we take bidding for major games really seriously and it is something that we want to do.

I joined your Lordships’ Chamber in 2010 when we were considering the then London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (Amendment) Bill. Although there was a lot of support for it at the time, that Bill was tidying up things that had happened earlier. It makes sense that if we could just slightly widen the scope and think about other measures that are needed, it would save us a lot of hassle and stress in the meantime, and it would make sure that the world knew that we are ready to bid for the biggest sporting events.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my friend the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. As it is the first time I have spoken in Committee, I declare my technology interests as adviser to the Crown Estate, Endava plc and Simmons and Simmons LLP, and as non-executive director at Avalanche BVI Inc and the Avalanche Foundation. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, it seems that I am too slow to compete with the noble Lord, Lord Addington, who never moved that quick on a rugby field. Nevertheless, he still has some pace when it comes to putting down amendments.

Before I speak to my Amendments 90, 92 and 93 in this group, I commend the remarks of other noble Lords. If this Bill’s purpose is to have a situation where we are well set when we come to bids for mega events such as the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the FIFA men’s and women’s World Cup, and so on, we need to ensure that the Bill includes everything that we can know at this stage. If we take a principles-based approach throughout, that gives us the best opportunity. As my noble friend Lord Parkinson pointed out in the form of my noble friend Lord Markham, we know now that gaps exist because we understand from 2006 the need to put in place an ODA, as it was then. As my noble friend Lord Markham said, these amendments may not be word-for-word perfect, but the principle behind them is sound. We are either doing this Bill to have everything that we know at this stage covered to put us in that pole position to host these events, or we are not. There needs to be a distinction when we are going through the Bill between adding provisions—baubling as the Government might call it—and enabling it to be full to its stated purpose. I believe that much of the debate in this group of amendments goes to that second critical point: to make the Bill as fulsome as it can be to achieve its objectives.

Amendment 90 is very much in that vein. It would exclude registered charities from the provisions of the Bill when they are acting under the restrictions of their charitable status. The amendment clearly sets out that if a charity is engaged in a commercial activity or for commercial reasons has a connection with a third party, that obviously would not be included. It also sets out the potential for government to consider a limit. If it is a mega charity, perhaps the provisions of the Bill should apply. This was an issue which we faced very clearly when we were doing the London Olympic and Paralympic Games. It is a cardinal principle when you are involved with these mega events. You have to protect and defend the rights of the marketing partners without whose funding, support and value in kind these events could not happen. It is in no sense trespassing one centimetre on the right of charitable organisations, of which we have such a flourishing community across the UK, particularly local charities, to pursue their charitable objectives without transgressing the provisions of the Bill. I look forward to the Minister’s response on that point.

Similarly, Amendment 92 looks to a social value assessment. This is not extending the provisions of the Bill; it is merely intensifying the impact that these events can have. Again, at London 2012, we looked at everything through a social, economic, environmental and cultural lens. The provisions I have set out in proposed Amendment 92 give some illustrations of social value, but they are in no means an exhaustive list. In reality, it does not impose greater restrictions on an event; it enables it to state its value, through commercial and sporting, into that wider social, environmental and inclusion potential—all positive for the games themselves. I look forward to the Minister’s response to my three amendments.

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With those introductory remarks to Amendments 8, 13, 18, 20 and 21, I say that I genuinely support the Government in wanting to bring international sporting events to the United Kingdom. However, I am, I hope, realistic in persuading the Committee that this cannot be done simply by statutory instruments that have minimum debate and no opportunity to be amended, and simply go through on a yes/no basis. We will need primary legislation, and the International Olympic Committee and FIFA will welcome the fact that we have primary legislation, because it will show that parliamentarians from all sides of the House in both Chambers are in support of that bid. I beg to move.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I strongly support the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan. I think in the excitement of thinking we might have another Olympics and Paralympics, it is easy to forget the huge amount of work in—the reality of—bidding for these Games. For me, 2012 was the best eight weeks of my life, but it is easy to forget that the process of even getting to bidding was a massive risk. A lot of people put their careers on the line in saying that we should bid. Most of the way through bidding for 2012, we were told that there was no point in bothering because it was Paris’s turn; amazingly, we were able to turn that on its head.

When you go to Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, it is easy to forget that legacy at that point was not defined as we look at it now. If a handout amendment is actually a real thing, I think one of the successes of Olympic Park was in looking at it as a mayoral development corporation—I had an amendment to the Localism Bill—and about having the foresight to see what was required and what the park would look like 10, 20 or 50 years beyond the Games. That is why we need to be quite bold with some of the things that we are doing in this Bill. We are way beyond sport for sport’s sake. Certainly, Amendment 20, where the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, would change “is likely to bring” to “will bring”, is really important, because we can do so much through the power of sport.

Back in 2000 Nelson Mandela said:

“Sport has the power to change the world”—


that is quoted everywhere. The bit that gets forgotten is what he said afterwards: that sport inspires, unites the youth and breaks down racial and societal barriers—better than Governments, he said. We should not underestimate the power of sport. We should be thinking about legacy. If we are bidding for anything, we need to build in legacy right at the very beginning, when we are talking about bidding for the Games, because the value for money and the return you can get on it is significant. We should be thinking about schools programmes, which 2012 did brilliantly—coaching, clubs and facilities. An increase in participation is such a tiny part of what we are trying to do. We should be bold and say, “Yes, actually, we demand that there is a really strong legacy as part of anything that we bid for”, so that we stop having these spikes when everyone loves football for a bit or rugby for a bit, and it actually genuinely changes the way we participate.

This group of amendments covers this, with the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Evans of Bowes Park, in terms of who we are trying to get to, to be physically active. We should look at these amendments and maybe think of a slightly different form of wording but be really bold in what we want for the United Kingdom and beyond.

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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.

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[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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Finally, I think we need AI monitoring across this whole area. We have come a long way since the days when your man in the sheepskin jacket approached with a bunch of tickets for whatever sport or music event he might be trying to pile on to you. So much of this is an online experience—or an online exclusion, because the tickets disappear before even the fastest human hand can get anywhere near them. All this activity is entirely able to be captured in real time by effective AI monitoring systems, setting the technology to solve for the technologies; and yet the Bill says nothing as to this opportunity. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I tried to add my name to Amendment 27, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, but I was slightly too late for the printing of the Marshalled List. I think there is something important in this amendment in terms of thinking about who is able to have access to major games.

If you look at the 2012 programme, there was a massive commitment right from the start to no free tickets—the sponsors paid for them. It was not just the joy on the children’s faces when they got to go and experience the events, but it was something that they will remember for the rest of their lives. It was also tied into the school programmes that were being run at the same time. As I have said before, 2012 was also the only time that I have ever been able to go and watch a sporting event where I was able to sit with more than one member of my family. With the ticketing, if someone could not sit in a high stand or needed to be at the end of a row, they also thought about how they linked that up to accessible toilets; those are all really important things. I think Wembley Stadium is the only place I have ever visited that actually understood some of those issues as well. I think there are 147 accessible toilets at Wembley Stadium, which other venues should definitely aspire to. Other things that you could do include “Pay your age”, which 2012 did really well.

As a spectator who is a disabled person—the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, mentioned smarter ticketing—you are constantly having to explain what you need, where you want to sit and who you want to sit with or check whether you actually have a guaranteed accessible seat. Again, it is about showing the world what we do and what we care about. We should be looking at ticket touting wider than this, because it is an issue not just for the events that this Bill may cover.

Another issue in this group of amendments, which I also mentioned in my meeting with the noble Baroness the Minister, relates to thinking about disabled people not just as spectators. I was commentating on a major event in a new-build venue, and it turned out that the commentator’s position was not wheelchair accessible, so I was not able to do my job properly. I spent half the time commentating in a completely different position. As a commentator, it helps if you can have some interaction with the other people that you are commentating with, so we had to move to a venue quite a considerable distance away to be able to do the last event that I was commentating on. There should be something in here about a guarantee of what accessibility means—perhaps not necessarily on the face of the Bill but just an understanding that we can do so much better. If we are going to be building new venues, whether it is for the Olympics, the Paralympics or more football clubs, we should make sure that disabled people have the ability to access events in a fair and equitable way.

I support the other amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes. He has more experience on this than anyone else in the Chamber from his work at LOCOG and beyond, and we should be listening to the things that he is asking for.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I have four amendments in this group, but the main thing about the amendments on ticket touting is that everybody agrees that something should be done. There is one principal disagreement going on here. The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, is basically saying, “Do not do it here; do it properly somewhere else” and lots of the rest of us are saying, “No, do it here, get it done and carry it on”. The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, agreed with that. From my Benches, we tried to get an amendment down that included this and we did not actually hit the target; we were told that we were out of scope of the Bill, so I salute his drafting—I take it that it is his; if it is not, he can just take the compliment.

However, when we go through this, we have got a lot of other issues here, such as disability accessibility. I do not know how many dozen times I have discussed that, and we still do not have it right. I hope the Minister will be able to say something reassuring about an ongoing process for that.

Just to refer back to my amendments, I said to myself, “Oh yes, that was it—National Trading Standards, yes, good idea, I thought I had an original point there, but the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, used it in his first sentence”. We have something here that says, “It isn’t working. Can we know what will be done?” The small series of options that we have in this Bill is actually managing to annoy people, oddly, because they are not big enough and they are not going far enough, and we do not have anything else that is immediately coming. We have a pocket of legislation around this Bill, which we have not seen even in draft, and that is one of the problems here. I hope that the Minister can start a process that could be finished by Report, when we get an idea of what we are going to get on ticket touting and where it is going to come in, if we are not going to do it here—and this would have been an opportunity to bring in everything under this Bill, so we had something that would actually work.

There are some other smaller amendments. A charity auction for a ticket is not ticket touting—yes, I would hope that that would be the case. But to have some clarity around some of the issues that we have raised, is the maximum penalty enough? One of the amendments in my name suggests

“leave out ‘£20,000’ and insert ‘an amount not exceeding 10% of the person’s annual global turnover’”.

Some of these organisations are so big that £20,000 would basically be the cost of doing business.

Could we have an idea of the whole picture? At the moment, the Government by doing a nice thing in this Bill are annoying everyone, oddly. I do not envy the Minister in her response. The Government may well have good intentions, but the old cliché that this might well be the thing that paves the road to hell might well be true with this.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in the debate on this group of amendments. I will speak to the two amendments in my name. The first, Amendment 39, is incredibly straightforward and simply seeks to exclude charities from the restricted advertisement zone, as set out in the Bill. It replicates the wording from the London 2012 Act of 2006. I am very interested in the Minister’s response to that wording.

My second amendment in this group, Amendment 63, seeks a retrospective on the enforcement action to assure it from an equality and inclusion perspective. It simply sets out equality enforcement assessments so that the data is there and can be reviewed, s actions can be taken where there are disparities, and there can be learnings in real time for that event and for other events that will be hosted across the country. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I wonder whether I could briefly help out the noble Lord, Lord Addington. There was also a case in 2012 when a lady decided to do knitting patterns of the mascots and made a Games maker. It is incredibly important that the rights and brand of these major events are protected. I think I am right in saying that they issued her a warning for knitting one and trying to sell it at her local church. They then recognised the importance of stepping back from that, because they became hugely popular, were a lot of fun and did not impact anybody.

However, a line has to be drawn between what we are seeing quite a lot with FIFA in terms of ambush marketing versus somebody just doing something that is quite nice. There is some merit in these amendments to make sure that local businesses are protected and are able to carry out their day-to-day work without threat of legal action.

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to my Amendment 56 in the group. The Bill unashamedly tries to snare and capture the large global events that can make a national impact in our country, but national impact and national scale also have local effects. One of the purposes of hosting these big events is to transform the local economies, drive investments and spread love and enjoyment in the local communities that act as hosts. It is naive to think that this is front and centre of the organisers’ minds. The promoters of the global events line up their sponsors, sports rights and big global brands, and there are pallet loads of merchandise to shift. We know that money follows sport, and the Bill makes sport all about the money by law. I am concerned about the powers to designate zones around stadiums or other undefined places—which might be fan zones, I suppose—where local trading will be made illegal.

At Second Reading, I gave the example—and it was on “Yesterday in Parliament” actually, which I was very pleased about; that was my first time—I gave the example of the 10-minute walk from Twickenham station to the Allianz Stadium down Whitton Road, where every type of food is available, from licensed food vans to stalls set up in front gardens, where the enterprising home owners have demolished their garden walls. There is not just food; there are old boys selling tat, and there is the little guy with his roadside kebab van and the youth club, with its pop-up gazebo, frying chicken wings. It is all part of the grittiness, but all these places have a licence. The way in which the Bill bans this trading means that little of the money will be assimilated in the local economy. That is not right, because the people who are hosting these events should have a right to expect that some of the benefits will be retained locally.

I accept there needs to be some sort of control, so that it does not become a scrum—Twickenham to one side—and we need to have minimum hygiene standards and sensible limits, so we do not get overwhelmed. That is why, over decades, a series of local licensing decisions by the local authority has evolved. It is tried and tested, it has public safety and hygiene at its heart and it has allowed an ecosystem of local traders to flourish. The Bill casts all that aside. Even if you have licence, you will be excluded from participating in a whole-community effort to host a big event. The local little doers will be cast to the wilderness. How does this help the local economy? Why have we got it in for the Cubs and Scouts who are trying to raise money for the jamboree?

My amendment is simple. It would protect the ability of the local council to ensure that at least some of the benefits of hosting an event are retained locally and are not outsourced to national firms or multinational burger corporates. I want to ensure that local flavours are part of the mix and that fans are not just force-fed cardboard burgers and gassy lager served in soulless stadium concourses. Under my proposal, it would be up to the council to strike the right balance between the local needs and the rights holders in exchange for issuing licences. In a local territory, the council will hold some of the cards. The Bill gives the organisers all the cards, and that is no good. It is an affront to the bloke who prefers a cheap kebab to an overpriced burger or a bucket hat to a baseball cap, or the fan who fancies ale rather than lager. If the council gets it wrong, there are elections to sort that out.

At Second Reading, I was grateful that the thoughtful noble Lord, Lord Mann—who is not in his place—supported the principle of locals being able to get in on the act. He was on the side of the working man, the local charity, the youth group and its pop-up gazebo. I say: let us empower them all. They collectively, over decades, have created so many different rituals and traditions associated with going to the game, more so than the game itself. Families, groups of fans, clubs and societies work with the community in a sort of foreplay that heightens the pleasure of the big event itself. I know that the Minister would not want to deny fans their pleasure, so I ask her to accept my amendment, so that everybody gets to enjoy themselves in the way that they want to, but, most importantly, so that some of the benefits are retained in the community, which is potentially so inconvenienced by the disruptions of hosting it. The economic benefits must be retained locally.

Sporting Events Bill [HL]

Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 86 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Sater. I am very grateful to her for tabling it and to the noble Lord, Lord Markham, for speaking to it, because I think this is very helpful to keep the discussion on the CQC live. I understand where we have got to with the new guidance that is coming out on the back of the Manchester bombings. It is completely understandable. It has elicited very strong views in the sector. I thank the CQC for the meeting, but I think many of us have probably come away from that more confused than we were at the start. A better explanation of the plan would have helped.

As the noble Lord, Lord Markham, said, on what is an individual, what would happen when a parent steps in at an event? I think of a local rugby event; if there is a doctor there and they are asked to step in, they may not be covered by insurance. It has set a lot of hares running within the sector, which I do not think necessarily needed to happen. I also realise that the consultation is ongoing. The big events—I spoke to the London Marathon—will be fine, because they are already set up to deal with this, but I am thinking of the smaller events. I know there is a cut-off or a line at 200 people, but lots of very local events would have more than 200 people taking part. Yes, they are run under the auspices of a national governing body, but unless we get this absolutely right there is a real risk that volunteers will not continue to step up to run these events.

Yes, there will be risk assessments, but they might not have access to threat assessments. You could end up in an unforeseen circumstance and end up in court for something you have done. While we are waiting for case law, which could take several years, there could be a very big detrimental effect of volunteers stepping back, so understanding the impact is very important. I certainly think it is important to keep this discussion going, and more clarity on this would be really helpful as we go forward.

[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.

Sporting Events Bill [HL]

Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 15th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I have attached my name to Amendments 11 and 13. I remind noble Lords of my registered interests: I am chair of Sport Wales and, with that, I sit on the board for UK Sport.

We have a rich history of organising sports events in this country. The noble Baroness, Lady Evans of Bowes Park, is absolutely right. We do not get much of an opportunity to discuss sport, but what we need with this Bill is some flexibility around what we are trying to do.

The world of major sports events bidding has changed quite a lot. For many cycles of bidding for the Olympics and Paralympics, we bid seven years out, but that changed when the international landscape changed, and the IOC has moved to announcing several Games in one go. We can look at what happened with the Commonwealth Games, when Australia pulled out and then Canada ultimately pulled out of one of the Games. We have to be fleet of foot if we want to bid for these events.

As someone who has worked in and been in sport for a very long time, I do not think that we should underestimate the power of these governing bodies coming together. They are wide-ranging and work on quite different events, but the fact that they all agree that these amendments are needed is important. We should listen to them. These amendments are important for what we are doing, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, let me first say that, like all sensible Scotsmen, I will be supporting England tonight. I can tell the noble Lord, Lord Addington, that soccer is my main interest, as a former chairman of Heart of Midlothian Football Club, so I have a particular interest this evening.

I support this amendment for all the reasons I gave at Second Reading and for the excellent reasons put by the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, in her speech. However, I have had an opportunity over the last few days to discuss this issue with my noble friend the Minister. She has assured me that this will be looked at over the Recess and sympathetic consideration given to the points in this amendment. Accordingly, I hope that we will not divide the House this evening, because we want to look forward to finishing before the witching hour, as we all know.