Sporting Events Bill [HL]

Committee (2nd Day)

16:47:00

Northern Ireland, Scottish and Welsh legislative consent sought. Relevant document: 1st Report from the Delegated Powers Committee

Schedule 4Unauthorised association provisions

Amendment 58

Moved by

58: Schedule 4, page 37, line 26, at end insert— “(5A) The provisions of sub-paragraph (1) are not breached by the use of a representation by the holder of a premises licence under the Licensing Act 2003, Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005 and the Licensing (Northern Ireland) Order 1996 if—(a) the representation is used solely for the purpose of indicating to members of the public that the licensed premises will be screening or broadcasting the sporting event,(b) the use of the representation does not suggest, expressly or by implication, that the licensed premises is an official sponsor of, or otherwise commercially associated with, the sporting event or its organiser, or(c) the representation has previously been used for a continued amount of time, independently of the sporting event taking place.”Member’s explanatory statement This amendment would ensure that, in the case of a sporting event being hosted in an area where a small or medium-sized enterprise’s (SME) pre-existing advertising may conflict with an advertising provision as laid out in this Bill, that SME is protected proportionately.

Lord Addington (LD)My Lords, I apologise to the Committee—I had not quite got myself in the right position to start proceedings. This is a probing amendment that looks at some of the minor problems that arise when a big Bill such as this comes out. The amendment probably refers more than it should to licensed premises, but it is a way of finding out how the Government perceive we should proceed. For those small firms that are making a living and are affected by this, what happens next if we take on the structures in the Bill? This has been one of the small niggles we have had about these Bills and processes. Let us see if we can get it right or at least give certainty to those affected. I beg to move.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Twycross) (Lab): I thank the noble Lord for tabling Amendment 58, which would introduce an exception to prohibition on unauthorised association. I understand that this amendment seeks to ensure that a licensed premises’ use of representations in pre-existing advertising material will not breach the prohibition, providing that the use does not suggest that the premises is an official sponsor of, or otherwise commercially associated with, a sporting event to which the unauthorised association provisions have been applied.

I can assure the Committee that a licensed premises’ use, or indeed any wider business use, of pre-existing advertising materials in this way will not breach the prohibition on unauthorised association. That is because the prohibition on unauthorised association applies only where a business uses a representation in a way that is likely to suggest to the public that it has an official association with the event. It is for event owners to agree with athletes and their individual sponsors—in response to the noble Lord, Lord Foster—the types of promotional activity that are to be permitted during an event. That is not for legislation.

I can also provide assurance to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, that the Bill expressly provides that a business will not breach the prohibition on unauthorised association by providing factual information about the services it provides. The intention of this exception in paragraph 3(4)(b) of Schedule 4 is to enable businesses to factually describe goods sold and services they provide in the course of their normal business, where this is done in accordance with honest business practice. For example, a pub will be able to state that it is screening Euro 2028 matches without breaching the unauthorised association prohibition, provided it does not imply that it has an official association with Euro 2028. A B&B will also be able to state that it is within walking distance of a venue for Euro 2028 without breaching the prohibition.

We want to ensure that local businesses can show their support for major sporting events and we will work with event organisers to ensure that this is the case. The prohibition applies only to activity that would suggest to the public an official association with an event, meaning that there was a realistic chance that everyday members of the public would consider that such an association existed. The noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, cited the case of Olympic sausages; the example I have been asking officials about as I have gone through it is whether it is likely or unlikely that this Bill would prevent a local bakery selling football-themed cupcakes in support of Euro 2028, and I have been assured that it is not likely that that would happen. So, for the reasons I have set out, I ask the noble Lord, Lord Addington, to withdraw his amendment.

Lord Addington (LD)I thank the Minister for that reply. Yes, I think the idea is that everybody is saying, can we avoid what we can only describe as the cock-up school of history? That is when something goes wrong that is unintended and gets in the way of the enjoyment here. I will take away what the noble Baroness has said, speak to people and see whether it is enough, because we might want to have a go again if it is seen that there is still some danger and we need some more clarity. In that spirit, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment and hope that we do not have to return to it—but if we do, we do. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 58 withdrawn.

Schedule 4 agreed.

Clause 17 agreed.

Amendments 58A and 58B not moved.

17:00:00

Schedule 5Transport provisions

Amendment 59

Moved by

59: Schedule 5, page 42, line 3, at end insert— “(2A) A plan prepared under this Schedule must—(a) have regard to sustainable modes of transport, including public transport, walking and cycling,(b) aim to minimise greenhouse gas emissions associated with travel to and from sporting events, and(c) include arrangements for admission tickets to a sporting event to confer entitlement to travel on specified public transport services serving the event.”Member’s explanatory statement This amendment seeks to ensure that transport plans for sporting events promote public transport and other sustainable modes of travel and seek to minimise transport-related emissions, and include integrated ticketing arrangements allowing spectators to travel on public transport using their event tickets.

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)Thank you. I am so sorry I was not at Second Reading. This is very much the sort of thing that I feel very strongly about. My three amendments in this group are on three different topics. One is transport, one is sustainability reporting and the third is on climate duty, all of which I feel very strongly about. I am going to find it hard not to bring these back if there is not progress.

It is extraordinary that this week, the hottest June day ever for the UK has been measured in Surrey. We are hotter here than California’s Death Valley, and that is saying something. We really are not weatherproofed and we are not heat-proofed. We are very lucky in this Chamber. I sat in Portcullis House at 9 am this morning: it was baking. We stewed in there. Of course, a lot of people do not have the advantage of air conditioning like this in their offices and in their public places.

I find it extraordinary that, in a week where parts of Britain have once again seen record temperatures, when red warnings have been issued because of extreme heat, and when climate change is impossible to ignore, we are debating a Bill that contains detailed provisions on transport planning for major sporting events but does not mention climate impact once.

Schedule 5 goes into considerable detail about transport plans. It tells organisers what they should consider, how they should co-ordinate and what arrangements should be put in place. Yet there is absolutely nothing about the environmental impact of those transport arrangements. For major sporting events, transport is often the biggest source of emissions. At the Birmingham Commonwealth Games, spectator travel accounted for more than half of the event’s carbon footprint. At Euro 2024, fan travel accounted for almost 80% of emissions. We need to be serious about reducing the environmental impact of major sporting events, and transport is the obvious place to start.

This amendment has two components. The first is that transport plans should have regard to sustainable travel options,

“including public transport, walking and cycling”,

and should seek to “minimise greenhouse gas emissions”. I am sure the Minister is well aware of all the work that happened in Ken Livingstone’s period at the London Assembly: we achieved a lot. The Government already tell us that rail is one of the greenest ways to travel. The Government’s own active travel investment strategy tells us that walking and cycling help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. So we need to tell event organisers to take account of what the Government already recognise to be the lower-carbon options. Parliament has gone much further before, such as in the London Olympics, the majority of which was planned in the period of Ken Livingstone in London, and I am suggesting that we can do that in my later Amendment 88.

The second element concerns integrated ticketing. If we want people to leave their cars at home, we need to make the alternative the easy option for them. Again, we have a very recent and very successful example. Every match ticket for Euro 2024 came with a 36-hour public transport pass built into the ticket price. The result was a success, because more than 80% of fans travelled to venues by public transport and fewer than 5% travelled by car, and hundreds of thousands of rail journeys were made between host cities. This was achieved by making the sustainable choice the convenient choice. Integrated ticketing also benefits spectators. It is easier, cuts costs, and helps avoid congestion around venues. It improves the experience of fans while reducing emissions.

That seems a rare example of a policy that is good for the climate, organisers and the public. If there were ever an example of why we need to be adding in these amendments and preparing for climate resilience travel, it is today, when trains are cancelled due to heat and people are being asked not to travel. The Climate Change Committee has warned that climate risk will increasingly affect the operation of major events. When tens of thousands of people are trying to reach a venue within a narrow timeframe, those risks become particularly acute. What would it look like if we had today’s weather on the day of the Euro 2028 final?

Asking those preparing transport plans to think about sustainability and resilience is absolutely vital. The Government’s own impact assessment argues that legislation is necessary because voluntary arrangements alone do not provide sufficient certainty and consistency. If legislation is needed to ensure transport plans work effectively, why should climate impacts and climate resilience be left entirely to chance? Given the climate challenges we face and the examples of best practice we have already seen across Europe, that seems the very least we can expect.

On Amendment 87, on sustainability reporting, we hear the same language every time a major sporting event is bid for, such as world-leading sustainability, greenest games ever and low-carbon legacy, and it all sounds incredibly impressive at the time. But I get a bit fed up with the gap between the promises made and what actually happens. The Paris Olympics, for example, set itself up as the lowest-carbon games yet. In some respects, it did better than previous Olympics: emissions were lower than London or Rio, largely because they reused venues, cut down on new construction and made some sensible choices about energy and materials. But when you look a bit closer, the picture gets more complicated. Transport still dominated emissions; international travel still drove a huge carbon footprint; and, in the end, we are talking about millions of tonnes of CO 2 . Yes, there was progress, but it also showed something else very clearly: without proper reporting, it becomes very hard to know what was genuinely achieved, what was just assumed and what was simply good marketing.

That is the point of this amendment. We should not be relying on glossy bid documents and press releases to tell us whether promises have been kept. If we are serious about sustainability being part of these events, then we need to be just as serious about checking afterwards whether it actually happened. Right now, too often, the pattern is this: big promises at the bidding stage; celebration at the event; and very little scrutiny afterwards. This amendment says that, if you make environmental commitments before the event, you report on them afterwards—accurately, obviously—so that we can see what was delivered and was not.

Of course, there are already sustainability requirements for major sporting events, but they are patchy and inconsistent. Some bids are strong, while others are vague; some report properly, while others barely report at all. That makes it very hard to know what is actually being delivered. We need something more uniform: clear expectations that commitments are measured properly and reported before and after the event. Without that consistency, we are not tracking progress; we are just collecting promises—and, quite frankly, people are getting tired of empty promises.

Amendment 88 is on climate duty. We have had this kind of duty at past events—for example, in the London Olympics framework, where sustainability and wider environmental considerations were explicitly built into delivery. What we are seeing here in the Bill is a step backwards from that approach, just at the point when climate risks are more immediate, not less. We are told, including in the Government’s forthcoming major events strategy, that major events will continue to drive economic growth, enhance the UK’s soft power across the globe and strengthen social cohesion. Of course, they can do those things, but they cannot only be about that, and they certainly cannot deliver those benefits at the expense of our climate and environmental responsibility.

At the moment, the Bill is built around delivery, organisation and facilitation, but it is silent on sustainability. We need to put in place something that should already be clear here: a clear duty that, when exercising functions under the Bill, we must have regard to greenhouse gas emissions, sustainable transport, waste reduction and the UK’s climate and environmental targets. We can continue with a system where climate is assumed to be somebody else’s problem, or we can put in place a basic duty that ensures it is properly considered every time decisions are made on these events. I beg to move.

Lord Harlech (Con)My Lords, my Amendment 91 seeks to insert a duty to clear up waste after a sporting event. This is a probing amendment that puts a clear, time-bound duty on the relevant local authority to keep event areas clear of litter and refuse during the event and to clean them at its conclusion. It extends explicitly to the public processions and assemblies connected with the event—the parades, fan zones and crowds—not only the stadium.

Why is this needed? I speak from lived experience and may incur the ire of the noble Baroness sat near me. Three weeks ago, as an Islington resident, I saw exactly what happens when no one is clearly responsible. On the morning after Arsenal’s title parade, the residential streets around me were strewn with broken glass, vomit, bottles, cans and bins overflowing. In its own guidance before the event, the council said, “We’re not putting any additional Portaloos out, so you’ll just have to find a pub or cafe to go in”. I pity people who live in the area who have a garden.

It is just crazy. Arsenal is not a poor club. It has just won the league. It is known to be a very financially successful club. Either Islington Council did not charge it enough money for the clean-up or the council funnelled the money that it got into another expense. Either way, it was unacceptable, especially considering the extortionate amount of council tax that I pay.

It stayed that way for the better part of 48 hours. There was no overnight clean-up. I had to steer my child around broken glass on the way to nursery drop-off. It is completely unacceptable. I am not a party pooper, I think the parade should absolutely have gone ahead, but residents already had to live through the parade; the least that could be expected is that it would be cleaned up properly afterwards.

For an example of how it can be done differently, turn your mind to Kensington and Chelsea and another big multi-day event that happens—with millions of people, so we are talking about exactly the same kind of scale. I know it has its fans and detractors, but Notting Hill Carnival happens over two days and by the Tuesday it is absolutely spotless on those streets. That is because the council gets a grip of the situation. I dare say Arsenal Football Club has a lot more money and funds available than the organisers of Notting Hill Carnival. So, there is something to be looked at there.

Why does this matter for the Bill? This is the framework for the events that we want to host the most: the Euros, the World Cup and the Olympics. They bring processions and assemblies across many host boroughs, over weeks rather than hours. If a single club parade can leave one London borough looking like it did for two days, picture a multi-week tournament with no clean-up duty written into the framework at all. The Bill covers ticketing, advertising, trading and transport, but the most basic civic question is absent: who keeps the streets clean and clears them afterwards?

My amendment would make the duty event specific, time-bound and explicit about processions and assemblies. It would close the gap that residents fall through. I am not wedded to the drafting. I am seeking a commitment in principle. Will the Government ensure that the framework does not leave host communities living with the aftermath and that host authorities are properly resourced to meet this duty, whether funded centrally or recovered from organisers?

Lord Whitty (Lab)My Lords, I have two amendments in this group, which follow up the remarks by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, in that we ought to write into the Bill the requirement for the sports industry to recognise the effects of climate change and the need to adjust sporting facilities, materials and stadia to the fact that over the next few years we will see significant changes.

There is already a problem. Those of us who have been following the football in America have seen different stadia and different degrees of comfort for players and spectators. I think we need, at least for major events, to look at ways in which we can anticipate this and get the sporting industry to make its contribution towards the modification of climate change in this country and to adaptation to climate change.

17:15:00

My Amendment 94 would direct the two major sporting organisations, UK Sport and Sport England, to report on how climate change will affect their sports and their venues and on what they will do to cope. That builds on a reporting power in the Climate Change Act, on which I have spoken many times before. It is important that sport is brought within that context because it has major participation and major impact. It is part of the nation’s heritage and culture, but, as others have said, we are speaking on allegedly the hottest June day ever in England. Things are changing. DCMS commissioned research and found that adverse weather already costs grass-roots sport about £320 million a year, rising by a further £95 million if we go up by a full 2 degrees of warming and by £190 million if we rise by 4 degrees centigrade.

Although we are talking largely about major events today, there is an important need for grass-roots sport, as well as major events, to recognise the need to adapt and to provide for climate change. My Amendment 94 would direct UK Sport and Sport England to report on these matters. We have already passed much legislation in this House that has picked up the provisions of the Climate Change Act in areas such as pensions and railways, and it is important that we do it for sport.

It is important to recognise that both the sporting bodies named in Amendment 94 have already begun to consider such means, and as have major events in this country, starting from the Olympic Games in 2012. Since the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has done it for Ken Livingstone, I will put in a good word for Boris Johnson, which is unusual for me. I remember having a serious discussion with him before the 2012 Olympics, when he was still Mayor of London, about how we could green the energy for the Olympic Games. Sport has recognised this and major events have recognised this, but it needs to be institutionalised. It needs continuing focus, and we need to provide for that in this legislation.

In two years we will be in the middle of the 2028 Euros. There is every likelihood that we will be facing roughly the same or, worse, higher temperatures than those this week. If we fail to take action now, there is every possibility that we will look back and wish we had done something while we still had the chance. These amendments make a start on doing that. I appreciate that those bodies and others are already looking at it on a voluntary basis, but it is important that this is built into our whole strategy in relation to climate change and that we have some leadership on this issue.

We would not be the first. For example, the Irish Government have climate impact and sustainability as one of the policy objectives that any major event should deliver, including sporting activities. In Germany, the national strategy for major sporting events secures minimum standards in the field of environment, including climate change. France has a national adaptation strategy for climate change in relation to sport. I ask my noble friend the Minister to make a commitment that in subsequent stages Sport England and UK Sport at least will be brought under the adaptation reporting powers in the Climate Change Act, and that the major events strategy will have sustainability and, in particular, the impact of climate change as key pillars of what will need to be considered during the planning of a major event.

I should have declared my interest as a director of Peers for the Planet. I hope to have support for these amendments around the Committee.

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 upthe 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?

17:30:00

Fortunately, by that point I had been in Bromley-by-Bow quite a long time. Indeed, as a clergyman, my church treasurer’s dad used to man the gates in Stratford railway yards. The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, has just described the dereliction of the six and a half miles of waterways, which were full of Tesco trolleys at the time. Yet members of my congregation in our community in Bromley-by-Bow had a rich knowledge of the Docklands and those waterways that had driven the economy of east London for 2,000 years. When you got to know the place and the people, it was a rich tapestry that had been forgotten by the London Government and some of us had to remind them. It was very much a project of trying to join the dots and create a narrative that took seriously the place, its people and the amazing history of innovation in east London, which we had forgotten for 50 years since the closure of the Docklands.

One of the challenges we were very aware of in the early days with the IOC—and it took a while before the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, and some of us all got to know each other—was the siloed nature of these developments. John Armitt played a really important role in the Olympic Delivery Authority, fortunately, and LOCOG was where Seb, the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, and others ran the Games. Paul Brickell and I ended up writing the structure for the legacy company for Hazel Blears, the Minister in the Labour Administration responsible for ensuring that for the first time we had a legacy company to drive all that stuff.

I will just share a thought, because it is important. Policy and stuff in legislation is all very important for sustainability, but what we knew on the ground was the granularity. I ended up chairing the regeneration programme for a number of years and was a director of both the original Olympic Park Legacy Company with Baroness Ford, who did a brilliant job and was great to work with, and its successor, the London Legacy Development Corporation, which had planning powers. It was a very long journey.

I will just share one or two of the lessons learned. One was that good, long-term leadership that could be trusted was really important. We had Ken Livingstone, then dear Boris, who originally I do not think quite knew where east London was. It took us a while to show him, but he then became enthusiastic, which was great. Then there was Sadiq Khan, who I think never really got the real detail of what some of us were doing. How do you handle all of that? More importantly, how do you get these siloed structures coming out of government to talk to each other? We really grappled with that.

Noble Lords will remember that, before the Games, we had terrible weather in this country. The Olympic Stadium had a very short roof. The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, is laughing, because he and I both know that we were all panicking about what it was going to be like if the weather persisted. But then, when the Olympics happened, suddenly, like today, the clouds blew away, an act of God happened, we had amazing weather and the roof worked. But, because there had not been a proper joined-up conversation between the legacy company and the ODA, really, before we laid any concrete, some of us were worrying about the long-term sustainability of that £0.5 billion building when it would be used for football in winter in England. That meant an actual cost to us as a legacy company—think about the sustainability numbers and all of that—was £323 million to extend that roof to make the stadium fit for purpose for what it is today.

I share the thought that leadership, people and relationships early on in these large projects really matter. Words are all fine but, unless we think about these things together very early on and lay the foundation stones correctly, the costs, not just commercially and financially but also in terms of sustainability and all the issues we are rightly worrying about in this Chamber this evening, get lost. Some £323 million of taxpayers’ money, let alone the carbon and other costs of all that, is a very big cost for some of us not getting that relationship together earlier, as it should have been. I just throw that in because learning by doing, the practicality of these big projects, really matters.

Lord Addington (LD)My Lords, I just want to make a few comments on this. The idea that we would not have some sort of ongoing environmental impact built into one of these assessments is unthinkable, to be perfectly honest. The exact wording used in any of these might not be the one that has come through, but there should be something in there. There has been in previous projects and should continue to be. I hope the Minister will stand up and say, “Yes, it’s here, it will go in, here is the assurance”, because without it we have missed a trick and gone backwards on ourselves.

I remember the arguments about the roof. I am afraid that the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, might think I was being flippant because, as someone who was consistently raising this, I stood up and said, “If you’re that bothered, I’ll have your ticket”. We can go on about such things, but let us remember that it was about the Games. It should be in here, but we need make sure it is the norm, because if it is exceptional then we are going backwards. I hope that the Minister will be able to give us that assurance when she speaks.

Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)My Lords, I, too, am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for leading the debate on this series of amendments. As she says, it is unavoidably in our minds today in the current heatwave. I am sure that noble Lords are particularly grateful to all the organisers of major sporting events who are working to adapt and tailor their events to the extreme temperatures that we are experiencing.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, is right to point to the importance of public and sustainable transport options. She is also right that they enhance the experience of people who are attending sporting events, both large and small. I have declared my interest in Formula 1 and my interest in the register of attending the British Grand Prix weekend last year. I did so by train and on the shuttle bus that the organisers at the Silverstone Circuit have been working so hard to make available, so that people can travel there in a sustainable manner. This was part of the broader commitment by Formula 1 to be net zero by 2030. Sports organisations, governing bodies and international bodies are all doing a great deal in order to provide the leadership and the changes that people rightly expect.

Major sporting events can be important focal points and rallying cries. As outlined in the contribution by the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, they can be catalysts for important change in this area. He and my noble friend Lord Moynihan and the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, spoke about the experience of the work done in the run-up to the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

My noble friend Lord Moynihan mentioned water quality. I thought, too, about the extensive debates in Paris about the quality of the water in the River Seine. When hosting these events, there is an important opportunity to bring focus to those discussions. Towards the end of his contribution, my noble friend Lord Moynihan mentioned ensuring that anything we do here is enabling and not too prescriptive, that it gets the balance right and acknowledges the leadership that many sporting bodies are already providing to try to achieve this. He and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, are right to raise this: there is merit in looking at what we can do with this legislation to drive that change in a positive way. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.

Amendment 95, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, refers to the major events strategy. Again, this is an area where it would be helpful to hear some of the Government’s thinking and whether there will there be a section on the environment and sustainability when it comes out.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Harlech. Like my noble friend Lord Moynihan, he was unable to be here at Second Reading for constitutional reasons, but I am very glad to have him back in his place in your Lordships’ House. He has provided a strong example of the benefit of having a young, working parent on our Benches, taking part in debates such as this. On behalf of the residents of Islington and north London, he powerfully set out the impact of the celebrations that took place. Sadly, these were not dealt with and cleared up by Islington Council in the manner people would have expected—and certainly the manner that those who pay the large council tax in that borough would want.

I congratulate my noble friend on not reigniting the row that he had with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb—who is a staunch Arsenal fan—during the debates on the Football Governance Bill. He has raised a very serious matter in this debate, and he clearly explained the impact that these things have. I hope the Minister will take seriously the concerns that he raised and make sure that the impact of major sporting events, and celebrations such as that, do not cause such hazards, inconvenience and dangers to local residents who are affected.

Baroness Twycross (Lab)I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, and my noble friend Lord Whitty for their amendments. As highlighted by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, there was clearly considerable consensus during the debate. I will, I hope, add to that a little, but I will probably not go as far as noble Lords would like.

This Government fully agree that environmental sustainability should be, and is, at the heart of planning and delivering the major sporting events that we host, not least—as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, pointed out—as we experience the extreme heat of this week. I, for one, am delighted to be in your Lordships’ Committee this afternoon, rather than outside in the extreme temperatures.

I pay tribute to the noble Baroness for her work on the London Assembly and as deputy mayor for the environment and on sustainable travel. It was fascinating to hear from noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Moynihan and Lord Mawson, about their work relating to London 2012. It was a reminder of the true expertise and experience in your Lordships’ House, which the ministerial team in DCMS is keen to make use of. This should not be seen as an issue that is not cross-party. It is our desire, and it is in all our interests, to make sure that we use the expertise and experience in your Lordships’ House. I will set in motion the setting up of a ministerial meeting with people who have been involved in previous bids. Why would the Government not want to benefit from the considerable knowledge that we have?

On the approach taken in the Bill, and to give just one example, we are proud of last year’s Women’s Rugby World Cup, which introduced a dedicated environmental sustainability programme across all eight host venues in England. As the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, said, we need to learn from current practice to get the balance right. The sector is already doing a lot.

Amendment 59 relates to sustainable transport. This Government recognise the importance of sustainable travel and are committed to supporting effective transport planning that helps spectators reach major sporting events safely, efficiently and, where possible, by lower-carbon modes of transport. This issue is not about the desirability of those modes of transport in principle but whether these detailed requirements should be mandated in primary legislation.

The Government’s view is that the plans prepared under Schedule 5 retain sufficient flexibility to reflect different venues, events and local transport networks. For those reasons, we do not consider it appropriate to prescribe this level of operational detail in the Bill. Major sporting events already vary significantly in scale, location, venue layout, spectator profile and local transport provision. Requiring admission tickets to confer entitlements to travel on specific public transport services would not always be within the gift of an event organiser or designated body. It may depend on commercial agreements between multiple transport operators, as well as on existing ticketing systems, service capacity and local network coverage.

It could cause unintended consequences for people using trains to commute in a sustainable way. As someone who lives on a train line that covers Wembley, I regularly share trains with people travelling to events. Most recently, when travelling while the Harry Styles concerts were taking place, I felt very underdressed— I lacked the sequins that seemed to be a requirement. In this Government’s view, sustainable transport is better secured through proportionate, locally appropriate event planning, rather than through potentially inflexible statutory requirements, but we agree that using sustainable transport is the aim.

I turn to Amendments 87 and 88, which would require organisers of events to which the Bill’s framework has been applied to publish reports on the environmental impacts associated with the event, and require the Secretary of State and event organises to have regard to climate and environmental objectives when exercising their functions under the Bill. Again, we agree with the spirit of these amendments. This is why the Bill explicitly stipulates that a sporting event must be likely to bring social or economic benefits to the United Kingdom or a part of it in order for the framework to be applied. Social benefit here encompasses environmental and climate impact.

17:45:00

In fact, the Gold Framework sets out that, when bidding for funding from the Government, event owners must demonstrate how they deliver against key government priorities. Environmental sustainability is explicitly stated to be one of these priorities in the framework. This means that impacts such as these must be assessed by the event organisers before we would even consider supporting their bid. A government decision to support a major sporting event also requires a robust business case in alignment with the Green Book and Managing Public Money guidance. These frameworks expect departments to consider environmental, social and distribution impacts.

Furthermore, as outlined by a number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, international federations and event owners often set requirements on the social and environmental aspects that prospective bidders would be required to meet. We also assess the environmental impacts of major sporting events after they conclude, as this amendment calls for. Take the independent evaluation report we commissioned for the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, which looked specifically at environmental sustainability. It revealed, for example, that the carbon footprint of the Games was less than we had originally estimated, with progress also being made towards off-setting this further.

Amendment 91, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, would ensure that, where one or more parts of the Bill’s framework is applied to a sporting event, relevant local authorities would be required to take all reasonable measures to ensure the cleanliness of land and highways in all the areas where that event may be held. This duty would extend to any public procession or public assembly that may occur in connection with any part of that event.

There is no question that ensuring the cleanliness of the environment where we hold our major sporting events is vital not just for the benefit of local communities but to uphold our world-leading reputation for excellence in hosting major events. Local authorities already have duties to support this. The Environmental Protection Act 1990 requires local authorities to keep their land, including the majority of trunk roads and other more minor roads, clear of litter and refuse within acceptable cleanliness standards. We have also published the Code of Practice on Litter and Refuse statutory guidance, which outlines the standards expected of local authorities with regard to their duty to keep their land clear of litter and refuse.

Under the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, local authorities have powers to tackle persistent unreasonable behaviour that is having a negative effect on a community’s quality of life. They can issue community protection notices, which may be used to require the owner of premises, such as a sports stadium, to take certain actions to tackle litter created by their activities. I appreciate that the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, feels this was not the case in the example he gave, but we know that local authorities take their duties seriously. Brent Council, for example, specifically increases street-cleaning operations surrounding Wembley Stadium, one of the UK’s most heavily used event venues, on and after event days. I also agree with the noble Lord on the example of a clean-up after the Notting Hill Carnival.

Where impacts on the environment are a direct result of activities regulated by this Bill, provisions also exist within it to help us safeguard the local environment and communities. Specifically, where advertising or trading authorisations are granted, conditions can be imposed for purposes including preventing or reducing congestion, litter or noise. This current system allows for a holistic approach to what is often a multifaceted challenge, enabling organisers and local authorities to work in tandem to tackle the challenge of cleanliness at major sporting events as and where needed.

I turn to Amendment 94, tabled by my noble friend Lord Whitty, which would require the Secretary of State to direct UK Sport and Sport England to produce reports assessing the impacts of climate change on major sporting events and related infrastructure within the Bill’s scope. These reports would also have to include proposals for adapting to those impacts. Although we agree on the intent, these are not necessary for all the reasons already set out. Furthermore, like government, UK Sport and Sport England are already working to ensure that environmental and resilience considerations underpin how we bid for and deliver major sporting events.

I note my noble friend’s point about the impact of climate change on grass-roots sport. Indeed, we have seen an impact on professional sport this week. This is of concern to us all. I also note my noble friend’s points about Euro 2028. I am happy to provide further information on this and meet him to discuss that further.

In its recently released sustainability strategy, UK Sport committed to ensuring that environmental considerations form part of funding decisions and the way the organisation assesses and invests in major events. It also launched its first-ever event social impact partners programme to leverage the potential of major events to generate lasting positive change. It has committed to adding a sustainability-specific partner in 2026 and to providing partners with practical support and shared learning, including toolkits to measure environmental impact, and peer learning networks across sport. Similarly, Sport England’s Every Move strategy commits to helping the sector reduce its environmental impact and adapt to the impacts of climate change. As such, I hope my noble friend can see why these amendments are not required when climate resilience and environmental sustainability are already being seriously considered by both UK Sport and Sport England.

Amendment 95, also tabled by my noble friend Lord Whitty, would place a duty on the Secretary of State to have regard to promoting environmental sustainability and ensuring climate resilience when exercising functions under this Bill and when producing strategies relating to relevant major sporting events. The Secretary of State would be required to publish and lay before Parliament guidance explaining how those matters will be reflected in the framework and in any future major event strategy.

I will not repeat my points on the importance this Government place on environmental sustainability and climate resilience. However, I understand from the explanation provided that my noble friend wants the Government to include climate adaptation in relation to sporting events to which the Bill’s framework may be applied in the forthcoming major events strategy. The major events strategy will set out priorities covering major events in all sectors, including sport.

On the question from the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, we have been consulting major events industry bodies, government departments, arm’s-length bodies and regional representatives to ensure that we reflect on the very wide range of issues impacting major events, including the important ones on environmental sustainability raised during this debate. We plan to deliver this strategy within the next 12 months. For all these reasons, I ask that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, withdraws Amendment 59.

Lord Mawson (CB)I thank the Minister for raising the point about us maybe sharing some of the knowledge we gained through the Olympics. I certainly would be really willing to do that, and I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, would as well. Some of us are concerned that, under successive Governments, lessons are not being learned from some of these projects. Some of us care a lot about the future of east London, and I worry that just a mile down the road, at the Royal Docks, we are not learning the lessons and are in danger of building the next phase of poverty in the East End of London, with developments literally with weeds between them. With the Olympic park, we were clear that we were building a mixed community that would connect housing, jobs and skills, health, and a whole range of enterprise and sport together in an integrated development.

I share with the Minister the thought that we need to get better at learning lessons. This Government rightly want to do some major regeneration programmes, which is correct, but I worry that the dots are not being joined here. I worry that if we do not do that then what we are seeing on the Royals will start to happen in lots of other communities across the country. I suspect that a conversation needs to happen—particularly with a new party leader, who may or may not know some of these things about place-making—about how there is an opportunity here that I fear will be missed unless we grab hold of it.

Baroness Twycross (Lab)To confirm, I will set up a meeting with people who have been involved in setting up previous major events. I would not have said that I would without checking with colleagues in the department, so I will try to set that in motion as soon as possible. I thank the noble Lord very much for his offer.

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who spoke. On the point from the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, I am an Arsenal supporter but I do not take responsibility for every single Arsenal supporter. It is appalling that there was so much waste. I thought he showed great discretion in not mentioning that Islington Council is a Labour council—that was very kind and sweet of him. Sadly, the Greens are only in opposition there, so perhaps by 2028 we might have more sway.

The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, tabled his Amendment 95 after the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, tabled hers. Had I seen his, I would probably have just supported it, but this has contributed to a debate, so it has been quite useful in that way.

The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, made some very kind comments. After his tabling that regret amendment yesterday on the Climate Change Act, and winning the vote, I really thought I would never speak to him again. But obviously, his kind comments have completely changed my mind. It is a pleasure to agree.

On the difference between the two Mayors of London, Ken Livingstone and Boris, I would just like to say that Ken did all the back-breaking work for the planning and in carrying it through. As for Boris Johnson, to cut any further emissions he put potted plants along the major roads, which was a fairly inadequate way of dealing with carbon emissions. But, you know—that was Boris.

It was fascinating to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, about these different things that happened during the Olympics. I felt quite heavily involved, but I had completely forgotten about the water situation, and all the pre-planning as well, which I did not know anything about. That was all fascinating.

In response to the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, I hope the Conservative Opposition are going to be really heartened by the fact that there was so much support for putting climate change issues into the Bill. Given that we have had support from all around the Chamber, I hope we can do something much more progressive.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, said that really, this is an obvious thing to do. The Minister knows I have huge respect for her and for her work here, but also at the London Assembly. But the Government have a problem here. With so much unanimity on this issue, the Government have to give way a little bit on this—a bit more than they perhaps want to.

Quite honestly, something that annoys me again and again with this Labour Government is that they talk about climate change, but they just do not get it. They do not see how to apply climate change measures to all the legislation they are putting through. The fact that it was completely left out, especially the transport sustainability issues, I just find astonishing. So, I will be pushing on this. The Government have to be seen to be aware not only of climate change but of the measures we can bring in to improve it.

I do not want to overstate the case, but we are responsible for future generations here. This really matters. I would love to be included in the discussions—although the Minister might not want me there. But if I can be, that would be great. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 59 withdrawn.

Amendment 60

Moved by

60: Schedule 5, page 42, line 35, at end insert— “(9) A plan under sub-paragraph (1) where the event is expected to attract 50,000 or more attendees on a single day must include—(a) a digital simulation model of anticipated crowd and traffic flows, validated against comparable event data,(b) accessible route modelling specifying the routing available to attendees with mobility impairments,(c) a real-time adaptation protocol that enables the relevant authority to implement AI-assisted adjustments to transport operations during the event, and(d) a post-event data-sharing obligation requiring anonymised crowd and transport flow data to be provided to relevant local authorities within six months of the event's conclusion for legacy infrastructure planning purposes.”Member's explanatory statement The amendment requires digital twin modelling, which is now standard practice in infrastructure planning and was used, for example, in preparatory work for Euro 2024 in Germany.

Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)My Lords, it is a pleasure to move Amendment 60 and to speak to Amendment 96 in my name. I look forward to the other amendments in this group.

This amendment continues a theme that I began on day one of our Committee debate on the Bill: the singular lack of anything in the Bill to take advantage of all the technologies, if human-led, that have such an incredible impact for the betterment of these major and mega sporting events when we bid and bring them to the United Kingdom. Amendment 60 in essence just seeks to put in the Bill a digital twin to be part of the transport planning for major events involving 50,000 or more spectators. This would enable a variety of technologies to be deployed to drive a far better experience for spectators, all those involved with the event, and, equally importantly, all those who are not involved but are in the locality.

18:00:00

It is critically important, to understand the impact on those local communities and local businesses, to have real-time and effective planning by deploying digital twins so as to be able to have AI automated responses to real, live situations. We would then have that data to give to future bids and future events, for their benefit. This would deploy many technologies in concert to add to the spectator and overall event experience.

Although this involves using many so-called novel technologies, there is nothing novel, unique or ground-breaking that the Government would be doing by putting these words in the Bill. Digital twinning is well-understood and well-deployed. In fact, was a key part of the planning at, for example, Euro 2024. When I was lucky enough to be involved with the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, from the outset we had many key principles, but the one I found to be the most useful, effective and impactful was to think about the experiential before doing anything operational. That is what the amendment would bring to life: what will the experience be like for all those coming to and affected by the games or the event, with human-led technologies effectively deployed to enable the spectator, fan, media and community experience while the event is taking place?

On Amendment 96, it is critically important to have something on cyber in the Bill. It is becoming an increasingly clear and present danger for major and mega sporting events and across the piece. Imagine if we had the Commonwealth Games or a FIFA Women’s World Cup and a cyber attack happened on the ticketing machines and people could not access the venues. Imagine if there was a cyber attack on the vehicles being used to get the players to the event or a cyber attack on the transport network, with spectators trapped underground or at traffic lights that either do not change from red or have no colour on them at all. These are just some examples of how even one element of a cyber attack would be extraordinarily disruptive and import unnecessary danger and safety considerations into the event, but for having cyber planning and cyber resilience in the Bill.

I will be interested in the Minister’s response, because I cannot think why the Government would not want to have this set out in the Bill. It would not tie bids or events into any particular technology or cluster of technologies; it would set out the clear principles, which the bidders and local organising committees could work out the finer details on and, indeed, the regulations that would sit underneath them. That is the purpose of making these Bills.

We have been told from the outset that the purpose of the Bill is to be able to pull it out of the file whenever we want to bid for one of these major or mega events without needing to create primary legislation again. Although we heard on day one that that is unlikely to be the case in any event, if we at least think through these issues and have them set out in the Bill, it would mean that this has been thought through at the principles level and covered off, so we do not need to have this included in the subsequent statute, which will inevitably have to happen in any event.

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.

Lord Addington (LD)My Lords, I will briefly run through the amendments in my name. One of the things about the Bill that we do not really like is the fact that there is nothing on infrastructure. It may be implied. My Amendment 78 is trying to put some infrastructure in there.

Amendment 77 is about the accommodation. Much of what we are talking about and much of the reference in the last debate about the legacy from London has been to do with accommodation of athletes, et cetera. If we do not get that in a games bid, suddenly it loses one of the big attractions when it comes to renovation, especially on the model of the London Games. I hope we get some reference in there. Championships may be different. They are different things with different structures. In Birmingham we had a thing about repurposing and borrowing the accommodation that was used, and in London we created new stuff. I hope we get a few thoughts on that.

The amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Bonham-Carter are about having a strategy towards a bidding process and making sure we have the capacity to intervene and get on with it. Even if it is seen that we have the capacity here, you have to organise it and bring it together. What are the Government thinking about to bring that latent capacity together and make sure it is always there? There are opportunities here. In most of the discussion on the Bill, I have not heard, “Oh no, we don’t want to bid; it’s a horrible inconvenience that will ruin my day”. I remember certain protests about the 2012 bid down in Greenwich being the best ones. If we are assuming that it is going to be a good thing, where is the capacity? What are we doing to draw it together? There is a series of suggestions here, to be treated as probing amendments at the moment, about how we can do this and about infrastructure. Please can we have some thoughts on this? It is a very important part of this process going forward. If we do not bring it in, I think this is a Bill for a championship as opposed to a games. It fits better for a championship, when you are using sites and moving around the country, as opposed to a games. I hope the Government can say that I have got it all horribly wrong and missed something here. I wait to be informed.

18:15:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Lord Markham (Con)I thank both noble Lords for their interventions, and it shows the richness of this discussion. I agree with my noble friend Lord Moynihan on review timeframes that should be not just six months but longer terms. To the point on legacy from the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, I will add my own small contribution. I was chair of London and Continental Railways around 2019 and 2020. For those noble Lords who are not aware, that was the body responsible for all the regeneration around the Stratford area, as an arm of the Department for Transport. We were developing housing on from that accommodation, and it has been a very successful site for affordable housing. One of the legacies is that on the housing and regeneration front it was massively successful.

18:30:00

To conclude with a point on the amendment in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Parkinson, we are not the only ones making these points. The Sport and Recreation Alliance, which represents 280 national governing sports bodies, said in its evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee:

“Event organisers face growing financial and regulatory burdens—policy and legislative changes must be proportionate and support the long-term viability of events”.

It went on to say that

“the nature of the changes may make England a relatively less attractive destination for mobile international events”.

That is a very real warning that as changes are made and burdens are put on businesses and employers, they have an impact on not just the economy but our very ability to hold these types of events. I look forward to hearing the noble Baroness’s thoughts on this, and I thank all noble Lords again for a really good debate.

Baroness Twycross (Lab)I thank the noble Lords, Lord Addington, Lord Holmes of Richmond, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay and Lord Markham, and—although she is not in her place today—the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury, for their amendments. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Markham, that this has been a really helpful debate, in series of helpful debates on this Bill.

Amendment 60, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, would require digital modelling to be used in planning for certain sporting events, which the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, also spoke to in the example he gave of Queensland. Although the Government recognise the potential for digital tools to support transport planning for major sporting events, we do not agree that their use should be mandated through primary legislation.

Planning for such events must remain proportionate, flexible and responsive to local circumstances. Existing planning processes already allow event organisers, local authorities, transport operators and safety advisory groups to use digital modelling where that is helpful and appropriate. A city centre venue with established transport links may require a very different planning approach from a temporary venue or one in a less well-connected location.

We should also be cautious about placing specific technologies or methodologies in the Bill. Digital simulation, AI-assisted adaptation and related tools may be valuable, but technology, as noble Lords will be aware, evolves quickly and legislation should not risk becoming outdated. In addition, the proposed data-sharing requirement may raise practical questions around data governance, consistency, ownership, privacy and commercial sensitivity, even where anonymisation is envisaged. More broadly, effective transport planning for major events depends on local knowledge, venue design, crowd profile, policing, security, weather and wider network conditions. Those matters are best addressed through flexible operational planning supported by the transport measures in the Bill as needed, rather than by imposing a rigid statutory template.

On Amendment 76, in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Parkinson and Lord Markham, hosting major sporting events is a highly competitive global market, with a number of rival nations investing heavily to attract and secure events. The sector continues to face challenges in delivering these events, with costs rising and consumer expectations continuing to grow. However, we disagree with a requirement to publish a report assessing the impact of the Government’s economic policies on the UK’s ability to attract and host major sporting events. We do not think that is required.

The Government remain committed to continuing to engage across the major events industry—not just sporting events—to better understand how we can support their growth, tackle these challenges, share learnings and support collaboration. Moreover, the UK’s competitive advantage is based not solely on the funding it provides or its wider economic landscape but on the strength of our overall offer. The UK is a proven, innovative and experienced host nation. We provide a stable and trusted environment, strong delivery partners, leading experts and world-class facilities. We have a world-leading reputation for excellence in event delivery because we stage complex events to the highest standards. We should be proud of this and the Bill seeks to build on this reputation. Our future pipeline of sporting events is a strong indicator of that reputation. The Bill is intended to increase regulatory certainty, further enhancing our credibility with event owners.

In June 2025, the Government committed more than £500 million to support the delivery of major sporting events hosted in the UK, including the Grand Départ for the Tour de France, the Tour de France Femmes in 2027 and UEFA Euro 2028, as well as a commitment to support the UK’s bids to host the 2029 World Athletics and World Para Athletics Championships, and the 2035 FIFA Women’s World Cup. I also want to highlight that UK Sport already evaluates the economic impact of major sporting events hosted in the UK, which naturally takes into consideration wider government policies. We will continue to work with UK Sport and partners on how we can maintain and strengthen the United Kingdom’s position globally.

Amendments 77 and 78, on accommodation and infrastructure respectively, were tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Addington. I would never say the noble Lord has got it “horribly wrong”; however, I would probably say that the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, got it right in his analysis.

Noble LordsOh!

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

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

Baroness Twycross (Lab)I would say there are on occasion. There is so much expertise in your Lordships’ House with regard to sporting events. I have always felt that where there is a good idea, we should not be partisan, so I would not disagree with the noble Lord.

However, the measures the amendments cover are exactly the type of technical requirements that are already set out in contractual hosting agreements and specified by the event owner. This means that there is a dialogue throughout the bidding process between prospective hosts and the event owner about existing capacity and infrastructure, what is required and where improvements would need to be made. Through this, prospective hosts provide the necessary assurances to the event owner that there is or will be sufficient capacity and infrastructure in place to deliver a successful event. Ahead of this, we would also expect the national governing body to work in collaboration with the relevant local authority that is ultimately responsible for delivering these key elements. As these are already accounted for in the bidding processes, these amendments could potentially place onerous or duplicative requirements on key delivery partners. I am happy to discuss that further with the noble Lord, Lord Addington, should he wish.

Amendments 80, 81 and 82 were spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, but are also in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter. We recognise the important intent behind them; taken together, they aim to ensure that the UK maintains its ability to bid for major international events. We also recognise that the amendments aim to increase transparency around the prioritisation of and bidding for sporting events to provide more certainty to the sector. However, in our view, it is not necessary to set this requirement in statute. I reassure your Lordships that the Government are committed to ensuring that the UK continues to build on its already world-leading reputation in this field. At the risk of agreeing too often in one debate with the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, I agreed with many of the points he raised in this part of the debate.

There is a pre-existing process which sits behind those events the UK chooses to bid for, which is set out in the Gold Framework , as I have referenced previously. This also sets out the criteria against which events are assessed and prioritised. UK Sport undertakes a horizon-scanning of all the available hosting opportunities, and it undertakes feasibility work alongside formal engagement with the UK event co-ordination group, national governing bodies and local authorities twice a year to develop and agree the UK’s longlist of potential future major sporting event targets.

This hosting target list is also endorsed by DCMS. It is published online and is shared annually with the sector, as well as with cities, regions and nations across the UK, to facilitate event-hosting partnerships. This ensures transparency about our potential targets. It also aims to ensure that there is an ongoing 10-year major event strategic programming list in this regard. There is a balance to be struck, in our view, in ensuring that the UK does not hinder our competitive advantage by giving detailed insights to our potential competitors. UK Sport has also published Making Live Sport Matter , which sets out a series of guiding principles and key objectives for event hosting as the basis of a strategic framework for maintaining the country’s reputation as a world-leading host nation.

On noble Lords’ points around resourcing, UK Sport exists for exactly this purpose: to provide expertise. This includes conducting feasibility studies, including on alternative and sustainable delivery models, and evaluating the annual value of events. It also provides a range of strategic guidance and technical support to the sector. This includes a knowledge transfer programme to enhance and develop the sector’s expertise and develop collaborative and sustainable networks. We also believe it is important to retain the ability to be responsive and effective with public resources, as the requirements of bidding for and delivering major sporting events will change over time.

Amendment 96, also tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, would create a power for the Secretary of State to

“direct a qualifying person to maintain and share a cyber resilience plan … for a sporting event to which this Act applies”.

The noble Lord gave some powerful examples of the impact that cyber attacks might have, and I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, that it is some bad actors who create the threat, which was also illustrated by the noble Lord, Lord Foster. As he says, this is potentially a very real issue. The noble Lord talked about the gizmos in traffic lights and the advantage these may give to getting home. There were those of us at the London Assembly at the time who suspected that Boris already also had that in mind—but I move swiftly on from that.

This amendment would introduce a new statutory power, together with detailed requirements about the content, maintenance and review of cyber resilience plans. The National Cyber Security Centre guidance on cyber security for major events, to which this amendment refers, recognises that cyber security arrangements and requirements will differ according to the scale, location, systems and threat environment of the event in question. Such a legally binding list may not be relevant to every major sporting event.

Finally, there is also a practical challenge of monitoring compliance here. Details of cyber security plans are typically necessarily restricted to event organisers and do not generally involve government oversight. For those reasons, I ask that the noble Lord withdraw his amendment.

Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. Ultimately, sport is about winning, and it seems pretty clear that, in this group of amendments, my noble friend Lord Hayward won without even having an amendment in the group. That is, perhaps, how sport can go sometimes, as anybody who has played or spectated will very much appreciate. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have commented on my amendments, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, who brought up gizmos—you can tell he is a scientist.

I say to the Minister that the wording may not be quite right in the amendments, but I ask her to reflect on the principles, strategies and criteria that any technology, while being technology neutral, would have to meet to achieve these objectives. Would that not be worth considering in a Bill of this type as we put it together at this stage? If we take the point of criteria, for example, you can effectively be technology neutral and largely technology future-proof because you focused on criteria and principles. It will be worth reflecting on whether some of that might be of value in the Bill.

Again, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part, and, at this stage, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

18:45:00

Amendment 60 withdrawn.

Schedule 5 agreed.

Amendments 61 and 61A not moved.

Clause 18Enforcement of offences

Amendments 62 and 63 not moved.

Clause 18 agreed.

Schedule 6 agreed.

Clauses 19 to 21 agreed.

Clause 22Guidance etc

Amendment 64 not moved.

Clause 22 agreed.

Clause 23 agreed.

Clause 24Interpretation

Amendments 65 to 67 not moved.

Clause 24 agreed.

Clause 25Power to give financial assistance

Amendment 68

Moved by

68: Clause 25, page 19, line 11, at the beginning insert “Subject to subsection (4A),” Member’s explanatory statement This amendment and another to Clause 25 in the name of Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay would require Parliamentary consent before financial assistance can be granted.

Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)My Lords, in moving Amendment 68, I will also speak to Amendments 72 and 73, all of which are much shorter than my previous amendment, which was just dispatched with.

The amendments in this group, which my noble friend Lord Markham has signed as well, are intended to prevent the financial assistance provisions in Clause 25 of the Bill becoming a blank cheque that successive Governments could fill out as they see fit. To do this, our amendments require that, before the appropriate national authority grants financial assistance in connection with a sporting event, the appropriate legislature must approve that assistance by resolution. This means in practice that, if the Secretary of State wants to help fund a particular event, the House of Commons must agree to any financial commitment. When the appropriate national authority is the Scottish Ministers, the Scottish Parliament must approve the funding, and where it is a Northern Ireland department, the Northern Ireland Assembly must give its consent.

It is a long-established principle that financial measures must be subject to approval by Parliament. Erskine May says in paragraph 33.2 that the “basic constitutional principle” of financial procedure is that

“the Crown requests money, the Commons grant it, and the Lords assent to the grant”.

It continues:

“In more modern terms, the Government presents to the House of Commons its detailed requirements for the financing of the public services; it is for the Commons, acting on the sole initiative of Ministers … to authorise the relevant expenditure”.

That is the crucial pointthe Government must come to Parliament, specifically another place, with proposals for the sums to be spent on each object of expenditure, and those must be detailed requirements.

Of course, there are many Bills presented to Parliament which grant the Crown a more open-ended authorisation of expenditure, but, when those Bills are considered, Members of both Houses usually pass them knowing the object of the expenditure for which they are authorising, and the sums they are authorising. The impact assessment or a briefing or explanatory note from the Government would contain the Government’s estimate of how much the measures in that Bill would be likely to cost the public purse.

The Bill before us is not a usual piece of legislation, in the sense that it seeks to create a framework for future sporting events. We do not know to exactly which events the Bill will be applied in future, nor how much financial assistance the Government of the day might wish to grant those events. Clause 25 is an open-ended financial commitment, which potentially spans many decades into the future.

It is possible, without necessarily even looking many decades into the future, to envisage a Prime Minister who is fiscally less disciplined than others. I want to make sure that we are future-proofing the Bill for all eventualities.

Of course, the Bill is not accompanied by a detailed assessment of how much money the Government propose to spend as a result of Clause 25. That is not surprising. In fact, it is perfectly understandable. The very nature of an open-ended framework Bill such as this means that it is unknowable. But, if the Government are not able to tell us how much the Bill will cost in the long term, it is not just reasonable but a clear requirement to ensure that legislative consent is required for each instance of financial assistance granted under it. That will help us to ensure proper parliamentary scrutiny of each measure and, I hope, guarantee that fiscal probity is baked into the legislation. All that our amendments seek to do is apply a very sound constitutional principle that the appropriation of public money should be agreed to by the House of Commons, elected by the people. I hope that the Minister and other noble Lords will agree. I beg to move.

Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay and to agree with everything that he said. I will build on his blank cheque, which was perfectly positioned phraseology. My Amendment 71 seeks to build on that in order to get the most from the moolah. If we are going to put financial assistance in place, as we do and will, it is only right and proper to make the most of that funding, to not restrict the funding and to not put issues around it that would make it less likely for us to win these major and mega sporting events. But we need to put in conditionality that will benefit the bid itself, the event and local communities and other organisations, not just at the event time but, if correctly put in place, for years and perhaps decades to come.

In no sense am I suggesting that the wording I have set out is exhaustive or covers all the issues at hand. I seek to demonstrate a sense of the threads of E, S and G running through this funding. It has to be right that local communities benefit directly from these events, because for mega events such as the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, they put up with a lot: the bid process, the extensive build process, Games time and a significant deconstruct of all the overlay and temporary venues. They deserve, and must have, an upside during that process, at the event time and, indeed, post event. It is not just the sport that should benefit. The local community is hosting these events as well and must be included in the upside and benefits that come from that.

In my other proposed subsections, I quite rightly set out to put everything around pay gap reporting, minimum wage, procurement and supply chain in the Bill. There is so much positive impact that can be driven through the procurement and supply chain process. It is worth, at least at a principles-based level, having something in the Bill to send out the signals as to what kinds of events we want to stage in this nation: not to limit the bid, not to control and not to affect the flexibility that one needs when a governing body is bidding, but rather to enhance, sharpen and add to the bid, and to the Games and the championships experience, and to have a sense that the stadia, community, part of a city and part of our country can look forward, post Games and post event—not looking back at something that has happened in the past but taking things forward that would not have happened and would not be part of that local community were it not for the staging of that event or that Games.

It is right that we seek to get the maximum and think about what we want to say about the funding put into these events. Criteria and principles seem a perfectly acceptable way of doing this. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Lord Mawson (CB)My Lords, I support this amendment. But, when you have spent many years at the other end of the telescope of these large events and have responsibilities for building the kit, enabling it all to work and making sure that it integrates in those communities, the detail really matters. One of the things we managed to achieve with the London Olympics—which was in no small part to do with the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, Lord Coe and others—was to get cross-party support for this very big event, which we knew would probably go through different Governments and Mayors of London, and actually I think we achieved that. It was a very big and long event—and, by the way, we are still building out the Olympic Park today, so it was a big thing.

It is really important that, while there needs to be responsibility for large amounts of taxpayers’ money— I absolutely get that—if we are serious about these events, there also needs to be responsibility among our political parties to get cross-party agreement very early on.

That needs to happen not only at a national level. One or two of our colleagues in east London who were involved in the Labour councils there—I mention in particular my colleague Paul Brickell, who was a Labour councillor in Newham and ended up playing the lead role in regeneration as executive director—spent a lot of time building working relationships with the five Labour boroughs surrounding the Olympic Park, which when we began had a long history of being at war with each other. There was a lot of detailed work over cups of tea to build the relationships that support events such as this.

So, although I am in favour of being very careful about the money and get all of that, if we are serious about going for these events, there is a responsibility across our political parties to build working relationships early on and come to an agreement, so that those of us on the leading edge with day-to-day responsibility to make fast decisions tomorrow will not be held up by politics being played out on them somewhere else.

Lord Addington (LD)My Lords, this is an interesting group of amendments that I assumed would not be needed. I assumed that we would have a series of debates about this. The noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, did a forensic job on the basic principles of where taxation comes from and how money is raised, going through. If the amendments are not needed, can the Minister tell us when she expects the interaction between the public system and Parliament on where the money comes from? That is a fairly reasonable question. If they have a structure behind what we are debating, we should know. I hope this is just a classic probing amendment, because that is what you should have at this point. We should know where we are going.

I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, that unless you get a commitment that everybody is prepared to buy into, there is no point doing anything, because it all needs a long-term plan. That is absolutely true, and if you start messing about with that, we just will not have any of these events, because no organising body in its right mind will come within a mile of us.

We have to have a degree of long-term planning. To get the benefits from events, we have to accept that even if Government A do something in a way that Government B do not particularly like when they come along, they will have to accept it and go along with it. Do not let your version of excellence be the enemy of the good on this.

I hope that, when the Minister responds, she will tell us exactly when these debates are to take place, what the structure will be going forward and what the spirit behind them is. The point is reasonable. I hope that there is an equally reasonable answer.

19:00:00

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 M anaging P ublic M oney .

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.

19:15:00

Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)I am grateful to the Minister for her response and to all noble Lords who spoke in support of the amendments. It was a useful discussion and I will look carefully at what the noble Baroness said as we move to the next stage of the Bill. As I said in opening, this is not an ordinary Bill. It is not normal for Parliament to be presented with a piece of legislation that permits completely open-ended financial commitments, so this is an important area for us to look at carefully.

For instance, when Parliament was considering what became the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006, the Mayor of London and the Government had already by that point entered into a memorandum of understanding, setting out how the Games would be funded were we to win the bid. Parliament, therefore, was aware of both the event for which it was legislating and approximately what the financial liability would be. My noble friend Lord Moynihan set out in great detail—adding, as he says, colour and practical reality—the complexities of the agreements and guarantees that are required when we host events of this scale.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, that cross-party support is so important. That is why we are broadly supportive of this legislation and of the Government’s ambitions in this area. But having a proper debate in Parliament, where all the parties can get their concerns off their chest and reach a resolution, is an important part of securing that cross-party agreement. My noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond in his Amendment 71 sets out just some of the many areas that Members of Parliament in both Houses will rightly want to raise when we look at these things.

At one point in her response, the Minister talked about making a departmental funding bid to the Treasury. That is fine, but it is an internal scrutiny in Government, not a role for the elected House. This was a probing amendment, as everything is in Committee, but it is probing a very important matter, so I think we ought to look at this in more detail on Report. But, with gratitude to the Minister and all those who have spoken, for now I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 68 withdrawn.

Amendment 69

Moved by

69: Clause 25, page 19, line 15, at end insert— “(1A) The appropriate national authority may, in connection with a sporting event, set expectations as to the investment to be made by relevant organisations in—(a) grassroots sporting venues or organisations, and(b) participation in sport at grassroots level, including community sporting projects and facilities.(1B) Financial assistance under subsection (1) may, in particular, be given subject to conditions requiring the recipient to make, or to secure that another person makes, investment of a kind mentioned in subsection (1A).”Member’s explanatory statement This amendment, and others in Lord Addington’s name, enables the appropriate national authority to set expectations on event organisers and others who benefit commercially from a sporting event to invest in grassroots sport and community participation, and to make financial assistance under Clause 25 conditional on such investment.

Lord Addington (LD)My Lords, I feel rather sorry for the Minister, because this amendment is once again going back to lessons learned from previous sporting events, particularly from the London Olympics. Although it was a success in many ways, one thing it did not do was encourage more people to play sport. This is universally accepted. When the committee on which I served, as did the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan —he might have led it, I cannot remember: it is a long time ago now—looked at this to find out what happened, the idea that it is just a straightforward inspiration for sport does not work. You have to do a bit more to encourage people to play sport.

There are good examples in world championships for rugby union and netballthere is argument about who devised the model first. You have a great spike in interest, but you must prepare the grass-roots clubs for people turning up who have not played. This is one of the cases when I found out just how old I am. Advertising for the Rugby World Cup totally missed me, because it was aimed at those aged 18 to 25. It was encouraging those with recent skills to get back to being involved in the game. But you had to make sure the clubs were ready for them. You have to have the grass roots ready to receive and you have to help them to do it. Big gestures from the boys at the top do not help with participation unless you have somewhere coming through where you can do it.

As has been said, these are probing amendments, but the Government need ideas. What are we actually going to do? We have this big sporting event, and we can use the models that the sports themselves have devised and take them further. That might help. I am not saying how it should be done—it may be greater capacity for playing facilities, training or coaching—but we have to make sure that we get people playing the sports. That is what this is about. This is an accepted failure from something which, other than that, was a success. We just did not do that one thing.

There is no point in someone watching something happen on television and saying, “Isn’t it marvellous?”, if we do not find out whether we have the capacity to do it, or even to start that process. We have to get them out and playing. That is what I would like, and it is what I am trying to get at: what is the Government’s thinking about getting a proper sporting legacy at grass-roots level that will give us the capacity to start finding champions? Unless we go down the route of testing everyone at the age of 14 to see who our champions are and saying, “The rest of you, just sit down and watch. There’s a box here. You press a button and watch other people”, because that is not what it is about, or it should not be.

Amendments 74 and 75 merely follow on from the spirit of Amendment 69. Can the Government tell us their thinking about encouraging people to correct the one big failure of something that has changed our whole debate about this issue—that is, the Olympics—by getting people playing sport? I beg to move.

Amendment 70 (to Amendment 69)

Moved by

70: After subsection (1A)(b) insert— “(c) measures to improve the resilience of sporting infrastructure against the impacts of climate change, including flooding, extreme weather and heat.”Member’s explanatory statement This amendment adds climate resilience to the list of considerations to be made by national authorities providing financial assistance to sporting events.

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)I fully support Amendment 69 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Addington. Obviously, major sporting events generate significant commercial benefits, but we have to ask what their legacy will be or could be. Too often we celebrate the spectacle, the television audiences and the economic boost, but the local clubs, pitches and volunteers, which sustain sport every week of the year, may see little benefit.

Amendment 69 seeks to address that by creating an expectation that those who benefit from major sporting events should also invest in grass-roots sport, community facilities and participation. After all, elite sport does not emerge from nowhere. Every international player and every Olympian starts somewhere. They start on local pitches, in community halls, in amateur clubs and in local swimming pools, with volunteer coaches giving up evenings and weekends. In many places, the local sports club is one of the few remaining community institutions where people of different ages and backgrounds come together regularly. So I warmly support the principle that grass-roots foundations, on which all sport ultimately depends, should be strengthened.

My Amendment 70 takes that further to add that the climate resilience for grass-roots sport should be included too. This is a month when I was locked out of my office because of potential flooding and, of course, we now have this incredible heatwave, so I argue that this amendment seems particularly relevant.

When we talk about investing in grass-roots facilities, we must also talk about protecting them. Across the country, grass-roots sport is already experiencing the effects of climate change. Football matches are cancelled because pitches are waterlogged, clubs face increasing repair costs after flooding and storms, and facilities are damaged by extreme weather. Heatwaves are clearly creating new challenges for us all, and these are real present-day problems for sports up and down the country.

Estimates suggest that between 120,000 and 150,000 grass-roots football matches are cancelled each season because pitches are unplayable due to rain and flooding. In parts of the country, pitches are already losing weeks of playable time every year because of changing weather patterns, and every cancelled match means lost revenue for clubs, disruption for volunteers and fewer opportunities for participation. Over time, of course, it threatens the viability of facilities that communities depend on.

The irony is that we can spend money improving a clubhouse, upgrading a pitch or expanding facilities only to find that those investments are increasingly vulnerable if resilience is not built in from the start. If public money or event-related investment is helping to support a community sports facility then surely it makes sense to ensure that the facility remains usable for years to come.

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.

19:30:00

Lord Mawson (CB)My Lords, I was not involved in this aspect of the Games, but I was aware of the conversations going on about it at the time in east London. The Government might benefit from talking to Sir Robin Wales, the then Labour Mayor of Newham, who was deeply concerned about all this, and Tessa Sanderson, who tried to engage with this area. I suggest that the problem is seeing projects such as this as being about structures rather than people. If you really want this stuff to happen, you have to get interested in the Tessas and others of this world, on the ground, who want to do something about it, and back them. If my memory serves me correctly, they felt very unsupported and doubted whether the various large structures around them would do anything consistent long term. There are lessons to be learned here. Maybe if we have a conversation with some of these people, we can learn some of those lessons.

Baroness Dacres of Lewisham (Lab)My Lords, I want to add to this briefly. I have been sitting and listening to what has been said, and the one thing I have not heard about is working and liaising with local government. At the end of the day, it is at the forefront of providing the facilities noble Lords are talking about. Over the years, underfunding has meant that swimming pools have been closed and other sports events have not been able to function. There needs to be recognition that we in this Committee and those higher up can say what we would like to see, but we have to work with local government because it has the routes into the community and the grass-roots organisations. Those volunteers—the parents noble Lords are talking about—have the reach and their first port of call is local government.

I just wanted to add that to the debate so we can bear that in mind. We cannot do this in isolation. We must involve local government.

Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)My Lords, this very helpful debate has, in many senses, continued the discussion we had thanks to the amendment from my noble friend Lord Moynihan, on day one in Committee, about the huge importance of leaving a legacy when we host a major sporting event. The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, spoke very powerfully about that on Monday as well. The huge importance of our grass-roots sports organisations is clear once again. They do so much—not just when we are hosting these major events but particularly when the spotlight is shone on them—to get young people and people of all ages more active and more physically fit, helping improve their health and helping the pipeline of elite sports people for the future.

The Saturday morning football teams, the local cricket clubs and the swimming squads that meet in leisure centres up and down the land are the real heartbeat of the sporting culture in this country. The noble Baroness, Lady Dacres, is absolutely right: three-quarters of grass-roots sports clubs depend on affordable, local, publicly funded leisure facilities to provide opportunities for people to get involved, try new sports and get more active. They certainly deserve our support. That is why it is sad to see the Government, in other departments, looking at watering down the role for Sport England in the planning system in protecting grass pitches and sports facilities. I do not know whether the Minister, when she comes to respond, can say a bit more about this review of the planning system and the role of Sport England. It has drawn concern from the Lioness, Jill Scott, and organisations such as Fields in Trust, and I hope their words of warning will be heeded.

Noble Lords are right to mention the sadness, as my noble friend Lord Moynihan put it, quoting the noble Lord, Lord Willis of Knaresborough, about that aspect of the last time this country hosted the Olympic and Paralympic Games. That summer of 2012 was one of the highlights of this century for this country, but that was a part of the process that we did not get as right or make as successful as we all wanted, in spite of great initiatives such as the Sport England’s Places People Play programme and the initiative the noble Lord, Lord Doyle, mentioned, with which he was associated at the time. There is a real opportunity when we host future major sporting events to make sure that we are driving forward that grass-roots legacy and driving the improvements we all want to see for future generations. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Blake of Leeds) (Lab)My Lords, it has been a real privilege to be part of the debate today and, with my own background, I have really enjoyed the rich contributions from around the Chamber. I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the other noble Lords who have supported these amendments, especially referencing the importance they rightly attach to grass-roots sport, community participation and the legacy of major sporting events.

Taken together, these four amendments seek to enable expectations to be set around investment in grass-roots sport, including community projects and facilities, as well as in climate resilience, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has raised again. I know we had opportunities to discuss this earlier, and I probably will not dwell as much on that aspect as a result with these amendments. The amendments would also ensure that any funding under Clause 25 could be made conditional on such investment.

I said I was particularly pleased to be involved because, as a former local government leader, I recognise and completely understand the comments about the importance of local partnerships. As my noble friend Lady Dacres rightly stressed, we need to make sure that local government is at the centre of these plans. That runs throughout the Government’s approach in this regard. I emphasise that the Government are fully committed to maximising the positive legacy of major sporting events and, of course, this includes protecting and upgrading world-class facilities. But they are not just for elite athletes; they have to be accessible to local communities afterwards, and I think we have heard a great deal about that.

Picking up on the points that were made, DCMS, I am very pleased to say, is developing a national plan for physical activity that will demonstrate commitment to place-based working, embedding physical activity into local systems to strengthen the ties. We cannot look at this in isolation: it is leisure, health, civil society—all the benefits coming together. Of course, I have discussed this a great deal with the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, who emphasised detail. Details matter, particularly in the setting up of local partnerships.

We have clear principles in place to do this. The Gold Framework outlines that when seeking investment from the Government, event organisers must “have “meaningful plans” in place to generate a positive “social impact” even before the event has started. This includes considering how the event could lead to improvements in sporting facilities and infrastructure, as well as helping to tackle environmental issues. Critically, the Gold Framework is clear that the best legacy programmes are developed through engagement with the communities that they are meant to support. Picking up on the well-made points from the noble Lord, Lord Addington, this is what enables us to target funding where it is truly needed.

Participation, obviously, is the key thread running through all these principles. For example, we are investing £23 million into delivering legacy initiatives for the UEFA Euro 2028, which this Bill will help us to deliver, featuring the largest-ever community programme for a Euros tournament. It is obviously a multi-city hosting model; this also means that it is committed to supporting locally led legacy programmes, directly engaging diverse communities in design and delivery. The plans will be delivered by local stakeholders in both England and Ireland—the two host countries—to harness the power of sport and culture, bringing communities together and inspiring positive change. As mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Doyle, we talk a lot about the issue of volunteers, and why we are not attracting as many as before. This is all part of the strategy that the Government are bringing forward.

The current system worksit recognises that one size does not fit all, and provides flexibility that these amendments, in our view, would not. We need to continue to be able to be guided by evidence in any provision of public funding, as we have been doing, to allow us to maximise the benefits of our world-leading sporting events for the diverse communities we serve throughout the UK—of course, sport is a devolved matter for Wales and Scotland. The Sporting Events Bill will increase the UK’s prospects of hosting even more events, and with it the potential to generate more lasting socio- economic benefits for athletes and communities across the UK.

Where needed, Clause 25 of the Bill already sets out that event funding can be given subject to conditions: these could include conditions relating to supporting these important areas where warranted. The Government are already doing what we can regardless: for example, we are investing £400 million across the next four years into new and upgraded grass-roots sports facilities, promoting health, well-being and community cohesion. Some of that money has been used to upgrade clubhouses and pitches, but reducing our carbon footprint and improving overall durability is also absolutely fundamental. We are funding the Sports Grounds Safety Authority, providing evidence-based guidance to help ensure that both physical structures and fan welfare are protected during volatile climate events.

I just want to reference—because I am very proud of it—the bringing of the Grand Départ to Yorkshire. It was one of the proudest things that I have been involved in, and legacy was a thread running through it. I live on the edge of Leeds, and I know that it was scouts going round schools who found Lizzie Armitstead, who was not a cyclist then but a runner. The scouts went to the school and discovered her talent in cycling. That was first-hand, real experience of how this can work. Most important was the parallel event running alongside the Grand Départ, with thousands of people volunteering. They kept the route open for all the amateurs to go along afterwards for the whole day. Those events, and indeed all cycling events in Yorkshire, are now flooded with participants. It can be done.

There are many other examples of positive models. I have referred just to one that I am familiar with and am very proud of, but there are examples all over the country. We need to look at those examples with great positivity and recognise the incredible benefits they bring to a wide selection of communities, and the pride from families seeing their kids participating. There is a huge amount to be positive about in the approach that the Government are taking.

I hope, with the comments I have made, that the noble Lord, Lord Addington, will feel able to withdraw his amendment at this point in the proceedings.

19:45:00

Lord Addington (LD)My Lords, when we have these debates we tend to follow this pattern: we talk about great things and wonderful events; we talk about the volunteers coming in and helping out and how wonderful it all was. But this amendment was not about that. It was about the second teams: it was about getting participation up and getting people to turn up. It is about making sure you have people playing the sport. Local government has its role, but it is all about facilitating people to do their own stuff. The Government have lots of initiatives, but we are not as good at this as we used to be, and there has been a cultural shift.

Many of our own sports have added to this. Rugby union turned pro, and great, famous clubs got rebranded and lost eight teams on a Saturday. Just think what that did to the local sporting economy. The Government have to get back to grass-roots sports, because that is where the infrastructure is to expand from: namely, from the volunteers. One can do all sorts of things, like redo a clubhouse, but unless we take advantage of that, and encourage them, we are going to miss.

There have been lots of examples about good volunteers, and we could have another amendment about that, because we know that volunteers quite like to do a finite, one-off project, and then they stop and have a rest. Somebody running a small club is a different type of volunteer: they turn up, as part of a lifetime’s commitment almost, to make sure that every new generation of children or junior players get coached properly, that somebody fills out the forms and that there is a secretary and a treasurer—that all that stuff happens.

With this amendment, I was trying to ensure that this goes down through sports, and maybe it needs to be done on a sport-by-sport basis, and some sports will be doing it anyway. When we talk about great examples, we miss the point. It is about making sure that we have something that goes down to the people who are already there—a little shot in the arm to help them carry on—because we are missing this. Parliament tends to do that. We forget about this when we talk about sport. We think about big, exciting events; most sport is not big and exciting. I know because I have played in it.

I understand the Minister’s answer, which could have come from anyone else, because they do not quite get what we are talking about. The noble Lord, Lord Doyle, started saying, “Yeah, we tried: it was all big and exciting, but we didn’t manage it”. This is because we do not go to where the actual volunteers are. The idea was to make sure we got some support, some structure, some help going down to the volunteers. Until we do that, we will continue to struggle, and then local government will say, “Oh, well, you’re not using that facility, so we can shut it down”—that is the negative side—and a few people will determinedly fight it, but they will always have the argument coming against them.

Baroness Dacres of Lewisham (Lab)I thank the noble Lord for giving way. I mention local government because they are part of that grass-roots nexus for local people. They are the ones to whom our local grass-roots organisations will turn in order to try to get that extra money, that extra funding, so that they can run a boxing club, for example, or facilitate other groups. They are at the core. These are the volunteers, to whom the noble Lord referred, with a lifelong commitment to helping young people. This is why we need to remember how important local government is to ensure that we can funnel those extra funds, and ensure that they reach the right people, the right groups and the underprivileged young people who really want to take part in those sports.

In addition, local authorities are closer to what local young people want to do and see. That is why, for example, you will see skateboarding parks, because that is now an Olympic sport, and BMXing is another great, accessible Olympic sport. That is why it is important to remember local government, because it reaches the people in local areas who give their lives to make sure that they are engaging and encouraging young people to take part in these sports that the noble Lord is referring to.

Lord Addington (LD)I do not disagree with any of that. I would just say that it is not a core activity, so it tends to become a secondary choice and there is pressure on local government. If you come through and give a boost, local government might be able to deliver. Local governments provide pitches for some sports, whereas they do not get involved with other sports. It is about culture, and it is a very varied picture. It can be important: many people play football on local government pitches, but rugby union and cricket clubs tend to own their own grounds or have long-term leases. There is a cultural mix that goes down there. So, local government is important, but we need to go down to the grass-roots club that, for example, runs four teams. As I once suggested to one of our governing bodies, you must remember to write to local government and tell it what you want; that will improve the relationship. There is a struggle there, but we are getting off the topic.

I think we should have another look at this, because we are still not making sure that we engage with those people on the ground. I hope that the Government will, shall we say, have a little bit more robustness in their answer. The Minister can only read out what is in front of her, but we are going down here to get the Government to give us a better answer on this one. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Beith) (LD)Before the noble Lord can withdraw his amendment, we need to give the noble Baroness the opportunity to indicate what she wants to do with her amendment to his amendment.

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 70 (to Amendment 69) withdrawn.

Amendment 69 withdrawn.

Amendments 71 to 75 not moved.

Clause 25 agreed.

Amendments 76 to 82 not moved.

Amendment 83

Moved by

83: After Clause 25, insert the following new Clause— “Limitation of football banning ordersAfter section 14J of the Football Spectators Act 1989 (offences) insert—“14K Banning orders: protection of freedom of expressionIn relation to sporting events to which the Sporting Events Act 2026 applies, or banning orders that result from offences under the Sporting Events Act 2026, nothing in this Act shall be read, or given effect, in a way which prohibits or restricts expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse that do not incite violence or disorder.””Member’s explanatory statement This amendment is intended to ensure that behaviour at sporting events which is fleeting, non-violent and part of the charged, emotional atmosphere of live sport does not lead to the imposition of football banning orders.

Lord Markham (Con)Noble Lords will notice that I am not my noble friend Lord Young of Acton, who, unfortunately, cannot be here this evening. Unfortunately, my noble friend Lady Davies is also not able to be here. But I would be grateful if the Minister is able to reply to their amendments.

It is my pleasure to introduce this last groupthe last lap of the race, which, while not a 100-metre sprint and definitely not a marathon, I think we would all agree has been a well-honed and fast-paced middle-distance 1,500-metre race. It has been a blue-ribbon debate on making sure that we get the best opportunities to bid for the Olympics and the World Cup.

I will move and speak to Amendment 86, on behalf of my noble friend Lady Sater. I know this is an area of great concern. Grass-roots sports participation has been a running theme through all this. Unfortunately, the CQC’s proposed regulations to make all medics at events CQC registered, at a cost of £1,000 and a lengthy registration process, are in danger of destroying a lot of grass-roots sports. We will freely admit—

The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Beith) (LD)Just to be clear, the noble Lord is moving Amendment 83. Amendment 86 is in this group, and the noble Lord is free to speak to it, but he is moving Amendment 83.

Lord Markham (Con)Yes, I am moving Amendment 83 and speaking to Amendment 86 from my noble friend Lady Sater.

As I was saying, there is real concern about the impact of the CQC regulations on these grass-roots sports. If my noble friend Lady Sater was here, she would freely admit that this has been somewhat shoehorned into this debate, but I know that the Minister will understand that, as she participated in the debate on the secondary legislation from the Department of Health and Social Care. There is a real concern that, if volunteers have to spend all this money, they simply will not turn up to events. They will not do them, and that will mean that we will lose a lot of youth football events, rugby tournaments, point-to-point racing and athletics. You name it—we will probably lose it in all this.

We have talked many times about the importance of creating a sporting legacy; that means making sure that these grass-roots events can run. That is why this amendment would require that, within one month of the Bill’s passage, the Secretary of State makes a statement on the impact of these proposals. Clearly, we are not expecting the Secretary of State to do this. This is a probing amendment, but one very much designed to keep this at the top of the agenda. Again, I know that the Minister absolutely understands that, because she participated in the earlier debate, but I am afraid that we—I am looking at the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson—have been fairly disappointed about the CQC’s response to date, and I know that that is true of many of the sports organisations. This amendment is therefore designed to make sure that this is kept at the top of the agenda, because, if you speak to lots of sporting bodies, there is a concern that we are going to lose a lot of grass-roots events through the CQC’s actions.

I look forward to the Minister’s response. While I have not been able to speak to the amendments from my noble friends Lord Young and Lady Davies, and while they are not able to do so either, I am sure that they will be grateful if the Minister could include those amendments in her reply.

Lord Doyle (Non-Afl)My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 83. I appreciate that the noble Lord, Lord Markham, is not responsible for its content, but since he moved it, I feel obliged to put my objections to it, in the debate that we are having on this group, on record. I object not just to the specifics; this amendment goes against a core value of sport and the sporting events that we have been discussing very positively over the last couple of days of Committee: the power of sport to bring people together. It cannot be right, therefore, that the language of Amendment 83 states that it is only concerned with insults and abuse that “incite violence or disorder”. Surely that is not the bar that we want to set or the culture that we want sport to promote. After all, in recent years we have seen significant progress on the status of, and pay in, both women’s and disability sport. We have seen initiatives such as Kick It Out in football do great work to tackle discrimination in all forms. We now have a situation where there are more than 50 LGBT supporters’ groups within football through the Pride in Football network.

I mention football because, as in all sports, there is much more to do. However, the noble Lord, Lord Young of Acton—I am sorry that he is not here to hear me say this—quoted some homophobic language on Second Reading that he thought we should all be relaxed about and not be concerned by, in the way that authorities are, or the way in which banning orders are a necessary tool within sport.

I simply urge the noble Lord to reflect on the real-world impact of chants from the stands or language down the pub. Why is it that in football, which was the example he cited, in the men’s game we have no out gay players and yet in the women’s game we do? Hosting events surely is about coming together, showcasing not just the best of sport but the best of us as a country, where nobody is intimidated out of taking part and all our citizens can enjoy watching it.

20:00:00

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.

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.

Lord Markham (Con)I thank the noble Lords for their contribution to this debate. As I believe I get almost the last word of the whole Committee stage, I thank everyone. We have had some expert contributions over the two days. We have had Olympic medallists, Games organisers, local government leaders and some keen, if not very able, sports participants: me, the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and others.

We have heard it all. We have heard about Olympic sausages, we have heard about gizmos and we have had the gold medal performance, to say the least, of the Minister agreeing with my noble friend Lord Hayward on a few matters. But there has been a large degree of consensus in this whole debate and a lot of passion and enthusiasm, which has been great to see—particularly in the Leeds contribution. It was honestly really heartwarming to see all our enthusiasm in the Chamber for wanting to make sure that Britain is the winner in all this and in sports events. That is absolutely the spirit of all this.

On the specific CQC point, I know the Minister gets it and hears our concern about the real impact this has. We know that these are well-intentioned CQC changes, but they could have a lot of unintended consequences for grass-roots events. So we would be grateful if, as she said, she can keep us informed and keep this at the top of the agenda. With that, I beg to leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 83 withdrawn.

Amendments 84 to 96 not moved.

Clauses 26 to 30 agreed.

House resumed.

Bill reported without amendment.