Data Protection Bill [HL]

Lord Maxton Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 13th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Falkland (CB)]

My Lords, this is the first time I have intervened on the Bill. I confess that I am one of those who has been lobbied, as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan. I will speak about horseracing uniquely, which is different from the kind of doping to which the noble Lord addressed himself. Doping has of course gone on ever since the early 18th century, when horseracing as we know it started to grow into the complicated and well-run sport that it is today. We still have quality racing in Britain, but more importantly to this debate we have the reputation of having the best control by the bodies that deal with racing, particularly the horseracing association.

I have given the association’s concerns some thought over lunch. It said in a brief that was a little too complicated for me to present to your Lordships that it is afraid that if the regulations are brought into the legislation in the way suggested, the very detailed work that it does to prevent the spread and, indeed, to stop the existence of doping in horseracing faces a new hurdle. These days, as in the sports that the noble Lord addressed, all kinds of substances are developed genuinely for good purposes, but criminals are clever people. They get hold of the latest kind of substance that may make a horse go faster, or slower. It is quite easy to stop a horse going very quickly—you just give it a bucket of water—but to make it go faster is a more complicated business.

Maintaining the cleanness of the sport in terms of corruption—it is all about money and betting—is becoming even more complicated because the new technologies and the moving of betting online is complicating it enormously, away from the old days when people went round in slouch hats with a man they employed to administer a substance. The problem the governing body faces is the uncertainty. It is following leads and information all the time—racing is all about information, whichever way you look at it—which is essential for it to get a step ahead of the game as far as the criminals are concerned. I understand from the association’s brief that it fears that, admirable though this Bill may be—I have sat through a lot of it and think it is a good Bill overall—we are creating a hurdle which will make the bodies go by the book. Going by the book—if I may use that expression in this field—would be a slow business. The bodies would be prevented doing the things which they normally do in jumping straightaway into a position where they can prevent whatever doping they have been informed is about, and they would fear infringing what is in the Bill in terms of the duties of the Secretary of State. There would be a need to consult the Secretary of State and the bodies fear the time that that would take. It would be useful if the Minister could give me some idea of what procedures would relate to horseracing and how quickly the bodies could get a line to the Secretary of State to get permission to move more quickly and cut out some of the actions and investigations that they would have to undertake, so that the bird had not flown by the time one got to dealing with the problem at hand. That is the bodies’ main concern as I understood it through my quick lunch—they have a concern in relation to a later amendment which is more complicated, but this one is quite simple.

A lot of hard work goes into this and a lot of success is achieved through the controlling bodies of all sports. That is particularly true of the horseracing authority, because it is essential that one keeps criminals from being able to affect the results of horseraces through doping. I hope that the Minister can help me on that, and maybe they will ask me again.

[Lord Maxton (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall not follow the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, down the road of horseracing because I have a confession to make, which is that I have never been in a betting shop in my life as far as I know—unless I was taken in as a very young child. I have three points to make. The first is the question of what sport is, because it is vital to the amendment—which I will be supporting. Darts and snooker are considered sports. They are therefore covered by any legislation relating to sport. You have only to watch “Strictly Come Dancing”, however, to know that a lot more physical activity is involved in dancing than in either darts or snooker, yet dancing is not covered by this legislation because it is not considered a sport.

Secondly, there are differences in the drugs taken by snooker players, for instance. A snooker player would be banned if he took a beta blocker, because a beta blocker slows the heart down, slows the pulse down and slows everything down, but if any other athlete took it, it might be for medical purposes—although it would not be to his benefit or advantage to do so.

Thirdly, I gather that under this country’s present doping laws recreational drugs are banned by all sporting bodies and the UK sports drugs authority. In some countries, however, it is legal to take, for instance, cannabis—to be honest, I am one of those who think it should be legal in this country as well; it should be part and parcel of the legal system that we allow people to take cannabis. But it would be banned. If it is illegal—this question may be one for the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, directly—and an athlete comes to this country to take part in an international event, be it football or whatever, from a country where it is legal to take cannabis, and if he has taken cannabis in the last 24 hours and it shows up in a drugs test, will he be banned from taking part in that event? Some countries allow it. Why are recreational drugs part of that authority anyway? It is a police matter in this country, not a matter for sporting bodies, therefore we ought to take recreational drugs out of the equation altogether.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government must be quaking in their shoes whenever a Back-Bencher offers to come to their help. I looked across at the Dispatch Box when I heard the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, make that offer and I saw a definite quiver come over the Minister’s face. Clearly, we are in for something rather interesting. We were entertained by the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, with his worries about the BHA, but he said he thought that it is really quite simple at the end of the day—we need to keep the money out and sort out the betting influences that are affecting all our sports. He is absolutely right. The public have come to the end of their tether and it is time that we got this sorted: we have to keep sport clean and eliminate cheating. The data is key to this, as the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, said.

We expect a great deal of our athletes in terms of their whereabouts and their strict liability, so we have to make sure that the systems under which they operate are fair, properly organised and regulated. In short, we have such high stakes in this that we have to be sure that we up our game—I am sorry about the puns. We should be clearer than we are at the moment about who has responsibility for what and how it is operated, and that is what this amendment is about. DCMS needs a stronger NDPB, in the form of UKAD or a successor body, and there needs to be an authority exercised with care and consideration as to how the rules will apply and to whom they apply. All these definitional points, all the concern about where it goes, are tied up in that set of constructs, which is what this amendment deals with. I think it is very powerful.

If noble Lords look back at the way in which a state was able to influence the way that the drug-testing system operated in the winter Olympic Games in Russia, they will understand how this thing has got to a new level of concern. We must have appropriate safeguards and ways of operating in place to insulate those who are trying to do the right thing from the charge that they are involved too closely. The public will stand for no less. I recommend this amendment very strongly and we will support it should it be necessary to take it to a vote. I hope that that will not be necessary, because as the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, said, this is an area of such importance that the right thing to do would surely be for the Government to accept this amendment today and bring it back at Third Reading with a proper wording and proper consideration that will reassure any who still doubt it. In the interim, we will support it if necessary.