Lord Moynihan
Main Page: Lord Moynihan (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)
Lord Moynihan
That this House takes note of the governance of sport, both nationally and internationally.
Lord Moynihan (Con)
My Lords, during the 1980s there was ready acknowledgement that sport and politics were uncomfortable bedfellows: that sport was a recreational activity, principally for amateurs to be enjoyed in leisure time, and that government responsibility was limited to a total departmental budget of less than £50 million. In the 1990s, that perception changed. Sponsorship, television rights and the world wide web fuelled a burgeoning market which, by 2004, generated an economic impact of €407 billion and employed 15 million people in Europe. Yet politicians left the world of sport principally untouched by legislation.
Since then, the world of sport took flight from the sovereignty of Parliaments. FIFA, the IOC and international federations designed their own lex sportiva. They built frameworks to control doping in sport through WADA, while their own governance of sport became accountable to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Sport had become so powerful a universal language that the international federations found themselves able to determine legislative changes in countries keen to benefit from the sporting gold dust of hosting the Olympic Games or the World Cup, securing legislation and providing open- ended multibillion dollar guarantees to which Governments would often bend the knee.
At the same time some politicians, many of whom are participating in this debate, have taken a more visionary approach—not least the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, who could not be more welcome in your Lordships’ House. They saw the value of sport in the promotion of a healthy and active lifestyle to combat obesity, the value of competitive sport in schools and the opportunity that sport created to divert the socially disenfranchised off the escalator to crime.
In summary, nothing short of a tapestry of government and political objectives became woven into the world of sport, while sport and recreation has now become an important contributor to virtually every department of state. As my noble friend Lord Holmes said at the governance of sport seminar organised on Monday by Slaughter and May, there is no separate world of sport. Not surprisingly, the moment has arrived when the worlds of sport and politics need to find an alignment to create a mutually acceptable legal framework to protect the sportsmen and the fans who increasingly call for improvement in governance, both nationally and internationally.
It was for that reason and at this time that I wrote the Governance of Sport Bill, a Bill intended to stimulate debate on a range of issues central to the development of sport in the United Kingdom. As time available before the 2015 general election means that the Bill will not make progress through all its parliamentary stages, I hope that today’s debate will attract the attention of those responsible for the task of drafting manifestos and developing sports policies for the future.
The autonomy of sport is important but it must be earned; it is not a right. Governments, either directly through Treasury support and financial guarantees for major events or indirectly through lottery funding, have significantly increased investment in the sector. We need to address the consequences of this generational change. We also have a duty to capture the imagination and inspiration of a nation looking to Government to deliver a sports legacy from the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games—a legacy that is still capable of transforming the sporting landscape of the United Kingdom in terms of facilities and opportunities, especially for children, both able-bodied and disabled, in all our schools. In this context, the Bill endorses the all-party consensus of the work of the House of Lords Select Committee on Olympic and Paralympic Legacy, which sought far-reaching reforms to secure the sport and urban regeneration legacies required in the future.
I also sought to draft a Bill which would bring professional management, accountability and transparency to the organisations that run British sport. The need for good governance in professional sport is no less and no more than the requirements for FTSE companies. It is essential if we are to protect the interests of athletes in the future. Only by demonstrating good governance in sport can Government and British sports administrators use their influence internationally to good effect. Only through the introduction of best governance to international federations will the problems that have already beset the IOC, FIFA and Formula 1 in this century be consigned to history.
In that context, I believe that we need to promote the interests of supporters and spectators. Supporters should have seats on the boards of their football clubs, thus ending years of disfranchisement. We should strengthen the opportunities for disabled access to sporting venues, in line with the guidelines of the International Paralympic Committee. We need athletes charters, ensuring that the voices of our sports men and women are heard and that the many concerns they express are acted upon by governing bodies of sport that are truly fit for purpose. We should look to Government to become more directly accountable to Parliament for the formulation and delivery of sports policy, principally but not exclusively through the Department of Health and the Department for Education, the Home Office and the DCMS. We should also look to Government as an enabler and to the Minister responsible to have the influence to co-ordinate policy from the centre.
Specifically, I believe in the increased accountability and transparency of governing bodies of sport which are partly, wholly, directly or indirectly in receipt of public or lottery funding. We should introduce legislation to implement wider application of the Equality Act, while acting against the continuing unacceptable and outdated discrimination against women in certain clubs, despite the welcome steps taken recently by the R&A at St Andrews. I am of course of the view that we should place the interests of sports men and women at the heart of all aspects of sports policy by including a proposed new single entity overseeing government and lottery funding in sport. It should: have the mandate to empower governing bodies of sport but not to micromanage their activities; require better protection for athletes at risk of concussion and injury; and address the disillusionment of an increasing number of athletes, who feel that the fight against doping has lost direction and momentum. Those who knowingly cheat fellow athletes out of selection and career opportunities by taking performance-enhancing drugs should face criminal charges, as they do in Austria, France and Italy; it is now proposed in Germany and parts of Australia.
There needs to be recognition that the World Anti-Doping Agency should move away from the unacceptable premise that athletes are guilty before being proved innocent to a globally fair, effective and just system which respects athletes’ rights and ensures that their voices are heard. WADA needs to be an effective global body in the fight against doping in sport, but it cannot be until its rules are universally applied, until monitoring is the same in every country and until the regulations set out in the new code which comes into force in January, particularly on intent, emerge from what I predict will be years of legal wrangling and lengthy hearings.
I recommend that Government should be directly and effectively accountable to Parliament for decisions regarding the future of British sports. For example, there was the withdrawal of substantial lottery support from a wide range of Olympic and Paralympic sports in 2014, including basketball, synchronised swimming, water polo, weightlifting, football for the visually impaired, wheelchair fencing and goalball. I support those who argue that there should be a presumption in favour of equal prize money, requiring event organisers to explain publicly their reasons for not giving equal prize money to men and women.
I hope that future Governments will require an annual report to be laid before Parliament by the Secretary of State for Health, setting out policy objectives to deliver a proactive health agenda through the promotion of sport and physical activity programmes to tackle obesity and enhance healthy lifestyles, and suggesting measures to be introduced to increase participation—male and female, able-bodied and disabled—in active leisure pursuits.
I also hope that future Governments will require an annual report to be laid before Parliament by the Secretary of State for Education, documenting the state of physical education and sport in schools in England and Wales, while setting out policies and financial support to improve facilities and opportunities for all young people. It should include the consideration of: a longer school day; the need for improved teacher training provision in sport and recreation; and strengthening the role of Ofsted by requiring its inspections to cover the quantity and quality of physical education, physical activity and sport provided during and outside school hours. It is also incumbent on Parliament to introduce a wide range of measures to improve safety for cyclists, as well as delivering measurable targets for boosting cycling across the country, ensuring cycling networks for commuters and auditing road projects in order that they become cycle-proofed.
The report in February 2010 from the Sports Betting Integrity Panel, known as the Parry report, was a seminal document. We should bring UK legislation in line with the leading countries of the world in the fight against match fixing, bribery and corruption, regarded by the former IOC president Jacques Rogge as the greatest threat to the integrity of sport in the run-up to the London Olympic and Paralympic Games. We should, with cross-party support, continue to challenge the £1 billion fraud industry by ticket touts by always placing the interests of the consumers, the sports fans, first.
I hope that we will further protect playing fields from being lost to development, and that sports facilities under threat are secured to meet the sport and recreational needs of both current and future generations. In my view, this should lead to a presumption in favour of the maintenance of the status quo, in the absence of compelling evidence to support the loss of sports facilities. We should go further in helping the governing bodies of sport. We should give them the ability to generate income through the extension of intellectual property protection at major sporting events. These are some of the building blocks for a true sports legacy from the Olympic and Paralympic Games. They build on the experience of London 2012. We should consider regulating advertising and trading within the vicinity of major sporting events, enhancing the protection of logos of the governing bodies of sport and thereby increasing income generation for the benefit of the athletes that they represent.
I hope that the next Government consider a wide range of additional measures, including the merger of UK Sport and Sport England into a new entity—called, let us say, Sport 2022, a proactive, forward-looking body, as its name suggests, providing light-touch regulation to governing bodies of sport but assisting them with the implementation of sports policies presented by the Government to Parliament for approval over the next two Olympic cycles, including recognition in the Bill for the application of British Cycling’s “aggregation of marginal gains theory” across all sports; an obligation to set out the progress made on urban regeneration, inside and outside the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park; and the importance of a lasting and far-reaching sports legacy throughout the United Kingdom.
The overwhelming majority of these measures can be implemented through voluntary agreements, which is preferable to legislation. There is an urgency for action and a commitment to design and implement a comprehensive sports policy. The DCMS must lead and be without reproach in its own governance if it hopes to win the respect and support of the sports agencies, Sport England and UK Sport, which in turn need to lead by example if they expect to see improvements in the governance of the governing bodies of sport. At each and every level, open, transparent and foolproof policies should be implemented to ensure that no conflicts of interest exist and that the toughest of action is taken if they do. Sports administrators should not be making personal fortunes out of the business of sport. Inevitable conflicts of interest arise, and if it would be unacceptable governance in a FTSE 350 company, it must be unacceptable around the boardrooms of sports governing bodies and international federations.
Governments and sponsors should engage openly and consistently with international federations of sport, particularly, at this moment in time, with FIFA. Only with a co-ordinated international approach will such an approach be successful. A co-ordinated international approach to governance is critical if we are to defend the interests of sports men and women both here and abroad. I beg to move.
Lord Moynihan
My Lords, I have been sent three notes telling me that I have no time to thank your Lordships but I defy the Whip: thank you very much indeed.