Sporting Events Bill [HL]
House of Lords · Lords Chamber · 22 Jun 2026 · 241 speeches · Official Report
Committee (1st Day)
Northern Ireland, Scottish and Welsh legislative consent sought. Relevant document: 1st Report from the Delegated Powers Committee .
Clause 1: Sporting events framework
Amendment 1
Moved by
1: Clause 1, page 1, line 10, at end insert- “(ca) Schedule (Industrial action provisions) (“the industrial action provisions”),”Member’s explanatory statement This amendment inserts industrial action provisions, which would ban strikes by certain workers, including transport workers, when the sporting events framework is applied to a sporting event.
My Lords, it is a pleasure to open this first group of amendments in our debates in Committee on the Bill, not least because I was unable to speak at Second Reading. I was physically present but mentally less so, as I had just arrived back on a red-eye flight from the United States-in part, visiting Miami-which was preparing for a major sporting event of its own. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Markham, who spoke for these Benches at Second Reading. I am grateful to the Minister too for the discussions we have had about the Bill, including when I was overseas. It is a pleasure to welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Grainger, to her place. She has joined your Lordships’ House since Second Reading. We look forward to her maiden speech in due course and to her adding her expertise to our scrutiny of sporting measures and much more. I draw your Lordships’ attention to my register of interests, particularly the hospitality I have received attending sporting events over the past year. In moving Amendment 1, I will also speak to Amendments 7, 54 and 57, which are also in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Markham. Taken together, these amendments seek to establish provisions relating to industrial action as a core part of the sporting events framework that the Bill ushers in, with the intent of preventing strikes taking place during a sporting event to which the framework conditions have been applied. Amendment 1 is, very simply, an enabling amendment that would introduce...
My Lords, the premise behind this Bill is that we need to help the organisers of the really big events put on a really good show and ensure that the country itself sweeps away those showstoppers. It recognises that putting on these events requires a national effort. My amendment seeks to ensure that the organisers can be assured of an adequate supply of labour and human capital to make the games, or relevant tournament, a success in the few weeks every decade that the circus rolls into town. I am reminded that sport is a game of chance. That is why we like it. The uncertainty makes it so alluring. Your favourite does not always win and often there is an upset. That is the whole point. Especially in tournament play, a team’s life can be measured in terms of hours, in the case of a stage 1 knock-out, or weeks if they make it all the way to the final. There are no guarantees in this game. Back in 2012, one of the key resources for the Olympics was labour. There were 70,000 Games makers. The Minister for Sport at the time, Hugh Robertson, said: “The 70,000 Games Makers made such a big contribution to London 2012 and the country as a whole. They helped showcase a modern, diverse and fun Britain and warmly welcomed visitors from all over the world”. Quite. It was not just the unpaid volunteers and their 8 million hours of effort that made the Games so memorable. On top of that was an army of others who contributed to that success-paid employees involved in broadcasting, catering,...
The problem is that mobilising that sort of work is now illegal. The Employment Rights Act ensures that that sort of work cannot be offered to people without a guarantee of the number of hours they will be engaged for. That is incompatible with games of chance and luck. Of course, the Government expect the organisers or other contractors to underwrite the guarantee for those people-the people selling beer, merchandise and ice cream. But as we know, there is not only the uncertainty of the game; the British weather can get in the way, even if results go as expected. Who would sign up to such an open-ended liability?
The Government say they want to clear away all the uncertainty and risks about the tournament coming to town. But let us be clear: the Employment Rights Act’s provisions add significant costs and financial and regulatory risks and undermine the ability to flex the tournament as weather and results progress between the opening and closing ceremonies.
My amendment is intended to be helpful. These events happen so infrequently. They are obviously temporary. We know the hours cannot be guaranteed in advance because that is the way of sport, and a core component of event delivery is people. I want as many people as possible to take part to support the delivery of tournaments, putting their shoulders to the wheel and basking in the reflected glory of success-not least so that, for the paying fans, the experience is everything they want, come to expect and have paid for.
My amendment is strictly reserved to events in the scope of the Bill. There is no compulsion to designate any event, although I note that other noble Lords want to expand the scope of the Bill. To summarise, I am being helpful and realistic. I am replacing chance with certainty for organisers, participants and the fans. I am offering the opportunity for people to serve and reducing the risks of hosting and organising.
Either the Government want to host these nation-building games or they do not. Without labour market flexibility for these temporary events, it cannot happen unless the organisers assume a level of risk that exists nowhere else in the world. That, of course, is a big disincentive to come to the United Kingdom. The truth is that we do not need this Bill. After all, we have built, in the words of the Financial Times , the world’s most admired annual league and a true national asset, the Premier League, without the provisions of this Bill. If the Government want to take it forward and we designate these events, let us give them every chance of success, not hobble them with rules and regulations that will spoil the enjoyment and pleasure of going to the game.
My Lords, to intervene for the first time in Committee on this group of amendments is rather an odd one. I had not looked at it when we started out. I also feel that, if you are bringing a games into a country, you are going into an existing framework of laws and rights. If you bring something into a structure and you are going to bid for it, you should take into account whether you can deal with industrial relations. We have done it a couple of times. As to the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, I suggest that you know when you will be working at a games or a championship because you have a schedule of events. It is not a randomised thing. You might have extra time in a championship in one of the big team games, but it is a finite amount of time. We do not play until sudden death. With weather like this and rugby union at the moment, it probably would be death if we played too long. These amendments are a good probe to get a feel of what is happening, but if you are taking on a project you are taking it on with the risk of industrial relations. Trade unions will flex their muscles, but do they have a right to flex their muscles? Do we have a right to say no? I suggest that there is a real question here. Although it is a valid question to ask, I suspect the answer is that you have to take a few knocks when you are doing this and accept a few uncertainties to get it. If you cannot take some action or make something that will accommodate this, you really are not fit...
I thank the noble Lords, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, Lord Markham and Lord Fuller, for these amendments, and the noble Lord, Lord Addington, for speaking to this group. I also join the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, in welcoming the noble Baroness, Lady Grainger, to your Lordships’ House; I look forward to future conversations with her on this Bill and other related matters. The amendments from the noble Lords, Lord Parkinson and Lord Markham, would have the combined effect of introducing a framework to prevent transport and local authority workers engaging in industrial action during specified periods linked to sporting events. This would include creating offences relating to participation in, and the organisation or inducement of, such action. In their manifesto, the Government committed to repeal the minimum service level legislation and other restrictions on the right to strike, and we did this in the Employment Rights Act 2025-so, as the noble Lord, Lord Addington, made clear, we have existing laws relating to industrial action. These amendments seek to reintroduce significant restrictions on the ability of workers to take industrial action. As the period of disruption between 2022 and 2024 demonstrated, bureaucratic hurdles only make it harder for unions to engage in the bargaining and negotiation that settles disputes. Instead of banning strike action, the Government want to bring in a new era of industrial relations that is built on collaboration and co-operation...
I am grateful to the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Addington, for their comments. As the noble Lord said, there is an element of risk here, but, as we know, this is a proven risk. In 2012, 2022 and earlier this year, we saw the deliberate targeting of major sporting events by trade unions to exert some political pressure, and I was sorry not to hear criticism from the other two Benches about their doing so. We agree that trade unions have the right to make their protest, but I would hope that noble Lords reflect that targeting games such as these, which try to rise above politics-at a geopolitical level as well-should not be targeted in the way that we have seen in the past. The risk balance has shifted a bit because of some of the changes the Minister outlined. The changes brought in by the Employment Rights Act 2025 do cause problems, which your Lordships’ House scrutinised well and highlighted as that legislation went through. I see that the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, is in his place; he made very strong points from the Cross Benches about some of the perverse effects that Act of Parliament may have. However, even if one accepts the argument the Government were making there, sporting events of this nature are very different. These are temporary, one-off events where people are able to work, as my noble friend Lord Fuller said, in a life-changing way for an event that comes and goes, for which the employment is not there any more. If we do not make...
Amendment 1 withdrawn.
Amendment 2
Moved by
2: Clause 1, page 1, line 12, at end insert- “(f) Schedule (Sports rights provisions) (“the sports rights provisions”).”
My Lords, in addition to moving Amendment 2, I will speak to the 11 other amendments in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Addington. I declare my interests as the chair of Peers for Gambling Reform and of Action on Gambling. Together, my 12 amendments cover just two issues. The first is illegal gambling relating to events covered by the Bill, and the second is ensuring that venues hosting events covered by the Bill are free of gambling advertising, marketing and sponsorship. The Minister has been taking a very keen and welcome interest in tackling the gambling black market. My first group of amendments, relating to sports data, is, in fact, going to help her, because data is the new gold in sport. While still dwarfed by TV rights, the use and sale of data is increasing dramatically. It is currently estimated to be worth $5 billion globally-an estimate that is expected to increase threefold by 2031. This data is used in a number of remarkably different ways-from sports teams wanting to understand their players’ performances to event organisers providing fans with knowledge to help them create and choose their fantasy football team, for instance. Crucially, however, it is also used by betting companies to help them manage their risk but also to provide their customers with in-game gambling options using real-time data-data that can, because of latency issues, arrive sooner than from a TV feed. This becomes increasingly important with the rise of gambling on the...
My first group of amendments would add to the Bill reference to the licence agreements between betting companies and the relevant event organisers concerning the supply of event data for gambling purposes. Crucially, it would make it unlawful to offer betting products without such a licence. It would also ensure that event organisers that do not wish their data to be used for betting markets can prevent that, and it would improve the integrity of the event. The majority of legal gambling companies that enter licences through authorised means would clearly welcome such a move. I certainly hope that the Minister will also welcome it, as it supports the overall aim of the Bill and helps tackle the gambling black market.
On my second set of amendments in this group, at Second Reading I rehearsed my concern about the ubiquitous link between sports and gambling-a concern that children see as normal the enjoyment of sport being closely linked to gambling on outcomes of sporting events. I shall not repeat those arguments now, nor detail the huge research base showing that harm caused by gambling advertising is ubiquitous, certainly in sport. Suffice it to say, major international sports events organisers are increasingly looking at what to do about it. Many have already taken action. The IOC has always maintained strict, clean venue policies that prohibit all sports betting and gambling sponsorship associations within the Olympic and Paralympic Games. For the current World Cup, FIFA is also enforcing clean venue policies, and bodies that organise Wimbledon and the Masters are among others that do the same. Many individual sporting event bodies that have not yet adopted this approach nevertheless agree that when it comes to decisions on such matters, it will be down to the host country to decide.
The second set of amendments in this group proposes the adoption of a similar clean venue policy in the Bill, so that no gambling advertising is allowed in the restricted advertising zones of the events covered by the Bill. As well as several international sports events bodies, many other countries already have more stringent requirements than we do where sport and gambling advertising intersect. I believe we should be following suit, as proposed by this second set of amendments. I hope the Minister agrees so that, when we host major international sporting events, venues will be free of gambling advertising, marketing and sponsorship. If she does not, I hope she will at least look at my Amendment 37, which would require that consideration be given to the impacts of age-restricted or harmful advertising when enacting the Bill’s advertising provisions.
Together, my amendments would provide greater protection of sports rights data, measures to tackle gambling black markets and an opportunity to catch up with many other sporting bodies and countries with measures to reduce gambling harm. I beg to move.
My Lords, if no one else wants to follow the noble Lord, I will add my support to the case that he is making. Like him, I raised this at Second Reading, and I agree with every word he has said, so I do not want my noble friend the Minister to think that this a one-man show of someone who has specific views on gambling. We have to be aware of the significant pressure felt by those who get caught up in gambling. Predictive events and things of this kind are difficult to keep on top of, and it is hard to know what the next challenge might be. The amendments proposed by the noble Lord have a deal of validity, whether or not they are exactly what we should be doing, and I hope that the Minister can respond constructively to a genuine concern.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle
My Lords, I wanted to allow some time to raise and discuss the important issue of gambling advertising-I was hoping for more discussion of it. I note that I support Amendments 37, 41 and 44. The noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, has already made the case on gambling very strongly, and it was something I raised at Second Reading, so I will speak chiefly to my Amendments 42, 45, 49 and 52, which are about fossil fuel advertising. They seek to ensure that sporting events covered by the Bill are free from advertising and sponsorship by fossil fuel companies. We could hardly have picked a better day to be debating these amendments, given the heatwave that the UK is currently facing. One significant impact of that heatwave will be on many sporting events. Many people’s intention to do all sorts of physical activity will be, for very good reason, curtailed in the coming week. In the Bill, we are talking about highly valued, important events, and they should not be used as platforms to boost the reputation of damaging industries whose products are driving the events that we are currently experiencing. Sponsorship is not philanthropy. Companies invest in sport because they know their association with trusted institutions improves their public image and strengthens their social licence. With this Bill, we have the opportunity to ensure that the biggest events in this country that we host do not become a vehicle for greenwashing. We note that young people are a significant part of the...
My Lords, in relation to these proposed amendments, I have sympathy with a number of points, particularly as they relate to gaming. The noble Lord, Lord Foster, made very clear the logic behind what he is asking for in these amendments. Unfortunately, on the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, while I am extremely sympathetic to the issue of climate change, and I will not buy all sorts of things in plastic or plastic bottles and the like, I worry because we are talking about adding things to an ever-extending list; every time we get to a major sporting event, we will look at whether we should add on other things that operate in other countries. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, just spoke about an established principle, and I think that is a far better route by which we should operate in terms of these international sporting events. In other words, our established principles of advertising as they operate in this country should be the principles by which the major sporting events should operate. We cannot spend our time trying to run ahead of policies we have, whether in relation to age-related matters or food and drink-related products. I have spoken critically on a number of occasions in this Chamber about Coca-Cola and its sponsorship of major sporting events. However, it is a very difficult road we will go down if we start adding on one thing after another-
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle
To make it clear, when I was talking about an established principle, I was talking about the fact that we have restricted advertising of these products-particularly to children. Therefore, it is a question of how far that restriction goes; it is not about doing something new.
I thank the noble Baroness for her clarification; I was not absolutely clear on whether she was talking about the established principles or extending the limits in some form or another. I want to make an observation on a comment the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, made on the last group of amendments. I think I heard him refer to sporting events as ones of “chance” on two occasions. There are a fair number of medallists in this Chamber today who may think, “Well, it wasn’t chance that got me a gold, silver or bronze medal”. Equally, when I refereed rugby, it was very rarely viewed as chance that one team or the other won-though there was the odd chance that the referee might have made an error at the time.
I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, that I did not mean chance as in random, because I accept that in sport the harder you work, the luckier you get.
My Lords, my noble friend is a doughty warrior when it comes to showing us the harms of gambling-and not only the harms but some of the gambling which is, let us face it, a threat to the integrity of sport if it is not regulated very carefully. Nothing destroys a sporting event like not having faith that the outcome is a fair one. Let us remember that. In the digital world the harms done to individuals by gambling reach further. This is something we cannot forget when we talk about this. I am pretty sure the Minister will not have done. Indeed, if her officials tried, I should imagine they would not last very long. We have to try to get to a situation where we have some understanding of what is happening here, and the difference that makes to the events themselves, even if we are looking only the sporting value. The use of data in sport is a fascinating story unto itself, but gathering that data and using it is something that we are only just starting. Most of us are discovering a world that is developing, and then this comes up and we say, “Really? That is how you have done it?” Indeed, those with heavy training schedules, especially in the recent past, undoubtedly had a great deal of data controlling what they ate, how long they were out, and what they were doing. I can dimly remember somebody talking about it, and us ignoring it, but there we are-the world moves on. I hope that when the Minister responds to these amendments, she gives us a full view of what the Government...
My Lords, this boils down to a question of balance and proportion. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Foster, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for their amendments and for sparking this debate. I know they are sincere and consistent in raising concerns about each of the areas that they have highlighted through their amendments, but I think some of the remedies they are suggesting are disproportionate and too strict. Not everyone feels the way that the noble Lord and the noble Baroness do about gambling, for instance. Indeed, many people find, without having any gambling problems, that it enhances their enjoyment of sporting events. Many people in this country gamble without developing gambling harms, and it is right that we have protections in place to maintain that. As the Gambling Commission found with its recent advertising campaign advising people on the dangers of a workplace sweepstake-which came across as a bit po-faced to many sports fans-that question of balance always has to be carefully looked at and struck, while maintaining the protections for more vulnerable people. I veer more towards what my noble friend Lord Hayward outlined: looking for established principles, rather than a list that we would continue to add to as times and tastes change. I suppose this is one of the problems with a framework Bill, where we are trying to anticipate social mores and debates that might come. Previously, in generations past, we have been able to have these...
I thank the noble Lords, Lord Foster of Bath and Lord Addington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for tabling these amendments. I also thank the noble Lords who spoke to them. Amendments 2, 5, 6, 61, 65 and 67, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Foster of Bath and Lord Addington, seek to regulate sports rights provisions. Sporting bodies are free to enter into their own sponsorship and broadcast arrangements. In recent years, through these arrangements, the gambling sector has made a significant financial contribution to sports including football, rugby, horseracing and snooker. Of course, I recognise the strength of feeling in this area, which my noble friend Lady Taylor of Bolton spoke to and clearly shares. However, I hope noble Lords can appreciate the Government’s desire to balance the sport sector’s commercial freedom with our ongoing efforts to reduce both gambling harm and the shift towards illegal gambling highlighted by the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson. I agree with him that any action we take in this area should be proportionate. We take the relationship between gambling and sport very seriously, particularly given its potential impact on children, young people and the vulnerable. I will come on to soft drinks later but, in response to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Addington, on what this Government are doing on gambling harm, since 2024 we have made a number of significant reforms to gambling regulation with a view to tackling gambling...
As I said, event organisers are free to make their own sponsorship decisions. This could include having a gambling company sponsor their event, or indeed deciding not to, as the noble Lord, Lord Foster, made clear is already the case in relation to some major sporting events. The advertising offence in the Bill is designed to protect the commercial rights of event organisers and their sponsors. Most importantly, this will help minimise the call on the public purse. There are a number of measures in place to ensure, in our view, that gambling advertising, wherever it appears, is socially responsible.
Amendments 42, 43, 45, 46, 49, 50, 52, and 53, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, seek to prevent advertising for less-healthy food and drink and fossil fuels being displayed in a restricted advertising zone. I recognise the spirit of these amendments and the underlying ambition to help improve public health outcomes. That is why the Government are already taking action to tackle childhood obesity and reduce children’s exposure to the advertising of less-healthy food.
We want to raise the healthiest generation of children ever. From January this year, the Government have implemented UK-wide restrictions on the advertising of less-healthy food and drink products on TV before 9 pm and paid-for advertising of these products online at any time. Adverts for less-healthy food and drink products during the broadcast of sporting events would be in scope of these restrictions, where relevant. Similarly, we have strong rules relating to the outdoor advertising of foods high in fat, salt and sugar. These rules apply to adverts within restricted zones at sporting events, just as they do to adverts in the rest of the country.
With regard to the advertising by fossil fuel companies, we recognise that combating climate change is a major challenge. That is why this Government are committed to tackling climate change and have restored the UK as an international leader on climate change. Making Britain a clean energy superpower is one of the Government’s five missions: to deliver clean power by 2030 and accelerate to net zero across the economy. However, we do not currently have any plans to restrict fossil fuel advertising. We recognise the strength of feeling the noble Baroness has in this area and, while the Government cannot support these amendments, we remain committed to achieving our goals in these areas through other means.
On the basis of the points I have made, covering a number of important areas, and recognising again that the Bill is tightly framed to develop a framework aimed at securing and delivering major sporting events, I ask that the noble Lord withdraws his amendment.
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, for her support for my remarks. I neither accuse her nor imply anything about who her support will be for the next leader of her party. I merely point out that almost everything she said is word for word what Mr Andy Burnham, now MP, said only two weeks ago. I am also grateful to others who have spoken. I refer to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, subsequently by the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, and then picked up by the Minister, that we should be basing our decisions on principles: I entirely agree with that remark. But it seems to me there is one principle that we have accepted in this country for a very long time: that public health issues need to be dealt with at public level. The Government have accepted issues around unhealthy food, to put it like that, as a public health issue. They have also accepted, as the Minister has said from the Dispatch Box on a number of occasions, that gambling has to be treated as a public health issue. Therefore, I genuinely believe that we have got a principle that all noble Lords on all sides could get behind in relation to these amendments. I genuinely accept that the Minister is keen to keep the Bill as narrow as possible, but she pointed out in her remarks that the Bill is about protecting the rights of the event organisers-her very words. I therefore do not understand why we are placing measures in the Bill to...
Amendment 2 withdrawn.
Amendment 2A
Moved by
2A: Clause 1, page 1, line 12, at end insert- “(f) Schedule (Delivery authority provisions) (“the delivery authority provisions”).”
My Lords, I start by declaring that, further to the comments made by my noble friend Lord Hayward, if I was ever to win anything significant, it would definitely be by a massive stroke of luck. The Government’s clearly stated intention for the Bill is to create an event-agnostic framework that can be applied to certain future sporting events without requiring new primary legislation. The Government have been very open in their belief that the Bill will cover all those possible scenarios. Our amendments seek to probe to see whether this is the case. The amendments are made in the spirit of helpfulness, as I know are the other amendments made by my noble friends and the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter. By way of an example, say we wish to bid for one of the major and very large events, such as the Olympics or the World Cup. The delivery of those events requires significant cross-sector effort, bringing together national governing and representative bodies for the sports, such as the British Olympic Association or the Football Association; local government, including the host cities; and central government departments. We might need to construct new stadia or event spaces, purchase land and improve public transport links, for example. Hosting such an event would potentially require the creation of a specific body to co-ordinate and oversee the event’s organisation. This is the approach that we are all very familiar with and something that we had to do with the London Olympic...
Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury
My Lords, my amendment covers a slightly different area. It seeks to ensure that cultural events affiliated with a sporting event are part of the Bill’s scope. We on these Benches support the Bill’s aim to create a legislative framework. However, past experience has shown that cultural events such as the Cultural Olympiad were hard to include and very much seen as an afterthought. Those of us who witnessed and participated in the events in 2012 will argue that they were far from that; they were integral and magnificent-the opening and closing ceremonies, and the cultural coming together across the UK. The Bill’s current wording refers to events “sporting or otherwise” and “held in connection with the sporting event”. This is a probing amendment that seeks assurance from the Minister that this is the case and asks her to consider making the reference to cultural events more explicit.
My Lords, Amendments 3 and 4 are in my name. I am grateful for the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. Although it is a pro bono position, I declare my interest as a board member of the London Marathon Foundation. The purpose of these amendments is very simple. They seek to give the appropriate national authorities, rather than just the Secretary of State, the power to apply the unauthorised association provisions and all the transport provisions that are included in this Bill. Appropriate national authorities, as defined in the Bill, are the Secretary of State or the devolved Administrations. These amendments would widen the scope to designate the five parts of the sporting events framework set out. Their aim is simply to future-proof the Bill so that powers can be conferred by the appropriate authority if there is a reasonable case to do so. For example, if greater powers were devolved in relation to transport provision then the legislation would enable devolved authorities to apply these powers without needing to change primary legislation again. There simply is nothing more behind them than that. These amendments are part of a package of amendments that I have tabled or signed that seek to extend the scope of the Bill to include major, regular, UK-based events and to ensure greater flexibility in the potential use of the framework provisions. I will explain in more detail my arguments for doing this when we discuss group 6.
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord on starting with a question that should be asked. When we have done the big games in the past, there were infrastructure measures that had to happen, but they do not seem to be in the Bill. So how do they fit in? It is that simple. I probably should have had my name down somewhere-my fault, sorry. But it is one of the things that we really must get out about how the Bill is going to work. Is it something we tag on to this, or is it something we expect to be smaller secondary legislation, or is it part of the whole that we are doing here? As I said, we have always had to discuss this before-well, we have done it twice here; the other times, it was Scottish legislation. If we need a proper planning structure to build stuff, how is that fitting in? It does not seem to be that obvious. If the Government have a scheme coming, let us hear about it, because it is one of the things that has been of great benefit. In Birmingham, we learnt how to do it quickly; in London we learned how to do it well with lots of planning. Where do those two structures fit into what is going on here? It is a very reasonable series of questions that have been asked, and I hope the Minister has a very reasonable set of answers. Most people who are taking part in this wish the project well. There is a lot of nodding going on here, so if we have got that going on, let us find out how that happens. If there are further questions, let us find out what inspires them,...
My Lords, I apologise. I did not get in to speak before the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and I did not want to interrupt.
I apologise also.
I remind the Chamber of my interests. I am chair of Sport Wales, and I am also part of the Laureus World Sports Academy, which is a group of ex-athletes who come together to raise money to put back into sport. I have my name on Amendments 3 and 4 but support others in this group. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Evans of Bowes Park, I think the Bill is too tightly defined. If we are going to bid for major games in the future, it would be useful to have in this Bill everything that we might possibly need. We have huge experience from various national bodies and organisations in this country-I have previously been a board member of the London Marathon, so I have seen that-and it would make sense to use the expertise that they have. The noble Lord, Lord Markham, talked about transport. One of the massive successes of the 2012 Games was the transport. It was an incredible experience for disabled people. A huge number of staff were available at various train stations and interchanges. The planning for that started years ahead of the Games, thanks in no small part to the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, and the work he did when he was commissioner at TfL. These are the things that we have to get right. The world of bidding is going to change. If we get the Bill right, it sends a strong message to the international community that we take bidding for major games really seriously and it is something that we want to do. I joined your Lordships’ Chamber in 2010 when we were considering the then...
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my friend the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. As it is the first time I have spoken in Committee, I declare my technology interests as adviser to the Crown Estate, Endava plc and Simmons and Simmons LLP, and as non-executive director at Avalanche BVI Inc and the Avalanche Foundation. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, it seems that I am too slow to compete with the noble Lord, Lord Addington, who never moved that quick on a rugby field. Nevertheless, he still has some pace when it comes to putting down amendments. Before I speak to my Amendments 90, 92 and 93 in this group, I commend the remarks of other noble Lords. If this Bill’s purpose is to have a situation where we are well set when we come to bids for mega events such as the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the FIFA men’s and women’s World Cup, and so on, we need to ensure that the Bill includes everything that we can know at this stage. If we take a principles-based approach throughout, that gives us the best opportunity. As my noble friend Lord Parkinson pointed out in the form of my noble friend Lord Markham, we know now that gaps exist because we understand from 2006 the need to put in place an ODA, as it was then. As my noble friend Lord Markham said, these amendments may not be word-for-word perfect, but the principle behind them is sound. We are either doing this Bill to have everything that we know at this stage covered to put us in that pole position to host...
I thank the noble Lords, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, Lord Markham and Lord Holmes of Richmond, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Evans of Bowes Park, Lady Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury and Lady Grey-Thompson, for these amendments. Amendments 2A, 6A, 58A, 58B and 61A, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Parkinson and Lord Markham, would allow for the establishment of a delivery authority to prepare for and manage the delivery of a sporting event. As the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said, this is question that is worth asking. I am grateful for the opportunity to reply, and I hope I can give the noble Lord some reassurance on this point. Although we recognise the intent of these amendments, we do not believe they are necessary. The nature and scope of delivery models for major sporting events are determined based on what is appropriate and proportionate to the needs and requirements of each specific event, including funding and the set-up of governance to support oversight. Establishing a delivery authority is one way to do this. Indeed, it is a method that the UK has relied on before, including, as a number of noble Lords noted, for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. However, setting up a delivery authority with the proposed powers has typically been the exception, not the rule, when it comes to delivering the major sporting events that are likely to fall within the scope of the Bill. Similarly, it is rarely necessary for delivery models to be established on a statutory...
I hope I can reassure the noble Baroness that the provisions in the Bill as drafted already enable all the scenarios she lists, including the Cultural Olympiad, to be captured where appropriate. The framework is flexible enough to capture all qualifying stages of any sporting event. Clause 24 expressly states that sporting events include the opening and closing ceremonies. In addition, Clause 2 sets out that the framework may be applied to connected events and makes clear that these can be sporting or non-sporting events, such as cultural events, so long as they are held in connection with the main event to which the regulations have been applied. While I recognise the intention behind the amendment and share the view that wider cultural and associated activity can be an important part of a major sporting event, I do not think this amendment is required.
I turn now to the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond. Amendment 90 would exclude activities undertaken by registered charities to further their charitable purposes from the application of any provision in the Bill. The exclusion would not apply to activity undertaken for commercial purposes in certain circumstances. It would also enable the Secretary of State to define in regulations activity that may fall within the definition of charitable purposes, impose conditions on the availability of the exclusion and require charities to notify enforcement authorities of their reliance on the exclusion.
Although I understand the intention, in our view it would not be appropriate to include such a blanket exception as this could undermine the Bill’s objectives. For example, an event may have an official charity partner that requires priority over fundraising or the auctioning of event tickets, or that has otherwise negotiated exclusive rights that need to be protected. As the noble Lord has sought to achieve with this amendment, we will also need to ensure that any exceptions provided in the Bill for charities do not create a loophole in the framework provisions, for example by enabling advertising for commercial purposes through the backdoor.
However, we will always consider the impact of the Bill’s provisions on charities. This means providing exceptions to charities on a case-by-case basis to ensure they are proportionate, workable and event-specific. I assure your Lordships’ Committee that the Government’s application of provisions in the Bill will never seek to restrict the ability of charities to advertise the vital, life-saving services they provide. An exception will always be provided in regulations for promoting this type of activity, including crisis and mental health support services. I would be very happy to meet the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, to discuss this and other aspects of the Bill further.
Amendment 92, also tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, would introduce a duty to produce a social value impact assessment that must be laid in Parliament before the Bill’s framework can be applied to any sporting event. This Government fully agree that our major sporting events should be expected to deliver real benefits to communities across the UK. That 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, for the framework to be applied.
I appreciate that the noble Lord wants to understand how we are ensuring this, so let me assure him of the processes we already have in place to assess the potential impact of a sporting event even before we bid for it, as well as to ensure a positive legacy long after the event concludes. I am very aware that the noble Lord has been actively involved in some of these discussions so will be aware of a number of the ways in which we do this already.
The Gold Framework underpins how the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and UK Sport support the bidding for and staging of major and mega sporting events in the UK. It explicitly outlines that, when seeking investment from the Government, event organisers must have meaningful plans in place to generate positive social impact even before the event has started. The framework requires consideration of many of the areas the noble Lord suggests, from accessibility to legacy. It also recognises that engaging local communities is essential to understand impact and maximise the benefits of a major sporting event. This is especially important where potential impacts may not be immediately apparent, as is often the case. Furthermore, exploring and developing the potential of sporting events to maximise their positive legacies is often an ongoing, iterative process that the timeline set out within this amendment would not allow for.
Finally, I acknowledge the noble Lord’s concerns on scrutiny and reassure your Lordships’ Committee that Parliament already has an important role. The Bill is clear that the first time any regulations are made in relation to an event, they will be subject to the affirmative procedure, ensuring that Parliament is able to scrutinise the application of the framework provisions to that event.
On the noble Lord’s Amendment 93, concerning post-quantum cryptography standards for digital communications, I have to admit that I had to have explained to me what it is and what the amendment meant. If sporting events generally are slightly outside my expertise, this is way outside my expertise; I am going to be honest with noble Lords about that.
As the noble Lord highlighted at Second Reading, this is a technology-neutral Bill. It is also a narrowly scoped Bill to help us successfully deliver major sporting events, with a focus on protecting commercial rights. Where there is a requirement to communicate a decision such as a ticketing authorisation in writing, it is not for the Bill to describe exactly how this should be done, nor, if carried out digitally, the technical standards that must be met from a cyber security perspective. We want to ensure that the framework is sufficiently future-proof, but we do not consider a regulation-making power of this nature to be appropriate or necessary in the context of this Bill.
The National Cyber Security Centre has published timelines for migration to post-quantum cryptography, setting out key milestones and activities to complete the migration of high-priority systems, services and products to post-quantum cryptography by 2031, and then almost all systems, services and products by 2035. Prescribing post-quantum cryptography standards under a narrowly scoped Bill would create a piecemeal sector by sector approach. These standards are still maturing internationally, and we need to retain flexibility to align with developing standards and emerging international consensus. I would be grateful and delighted, however, to discuss this further with the noble Lord. For the reasons I have set out, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Markham, will withdraw his amendment.
I am grateful for the contributions of all noble Lords and thank the Minister for her comments. I welcome the general support from noble Lords. I hope the Minister can see that this is all brought with the constructive view of making sure that this framework legislation can be comprehensive enough to work. I must admit that I remain to be convinced. The points raised by my noble friends Lady Evans and Lord Holmes, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, are quite serious and need to be covered. At the same time, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, for widening it to include cultural events, which was done very successfully in the Commonwealth Games by Andy Street. It is definitely worth while trying to bring that into this. I would like to challenge the Minister further, if I may. She said it was not required because it is possible that these delivery bodies will not be required and there are only two examples where they were. However, her very admission of the fact there have been two occasions where they have been required surely makes the point. Why would we not want to put it into enabling legislation? Why would we not have it in place so that it is possible? It is no problem; if you do not need it, you do not need it, so you ignore those bits. However, if we are in the circumstance, which has happened twice before, where you need a delivery body, all of a sudden you need primary legislation. That begs the question: what is the point of having this...
Amendment 2A withdrawn.
Clause 1 agreed.
Clause 2: Application of framework to major sporting events
Amendments 3 to 7 not moved.
Amendment 8
Moved by
8: Clause 2, page 2, line 10, at end insert- “(2A) Before making regulations under this section, the appropriate national authority must take all necessary steps to comply with any relevant host contract.”Member’s explanatory statement This amendment seeks to ensure that the appropriate national authority will comply with a host city contract or a host nation contract before making regulations applying the sporting events framework.
My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, a former chairman of the British Olympic Association from 2005 through 2012, and, throughout those seven years, a member of the International Olympic Committee, which had oversight of the Games. I was very sorry not to be present at Second Reading. I was not a Member of your Lordships’ House at the time, but I am delighted and honoured to be back in a different capacity. I read the Second Reading debate with interest, as well as the Bill and the Explanatory Notes. Let me say from the outset that I share with the Government the view that every possible assistance should be offered to bring major international sporting events to the United Kingdom, and this Bill can and will send a signal that we are keen to encourage international sporting events to come to the United Kingdom. However, this Bill is event-agnostic. It is seeking to provide a common legislative framework to assist that process, but it is very unclear which events are covered by that process: an issue that I know my noble friend Lady Evans of Bowes Park will address in future amendments. I support the comments made by my noble friends during the debate on the earlier group of amendments and I contend that there will be a need for primary legislation. Because there will definitely be a need for primary legislation, should we ever bid for the Olympic and Paralympic Games to come to the United...
It is even more important, in that context, to recognise that we have no idea what would then be in the Olympic contract: the contract that is absolutely critical and drawn up by the IOC, not by the Government, with the host city to host the Games. After all, we have hosted the Games three times. We hosted the Games in 1908 and it was another 40 years before we hosted it again. We hosted them after the Second World War because very few countries were in a position to host the Games in the circumstances that were apparent in the world at that time. Then it was another 64 years before we hosted the Games again. It is very rare for one city to host the Games three times. In fact, if we look around the world, we see that the only country that has concertinaed that timetable is Australia, and that was because of the quite unique and outstanding contribution of John Coates, the IOC member who has brought the Games back to Australia again-as I will come to in a moment-in the Gold Coast.
My Amendment 8 really was intended, to begin with, to state:
“Before making regulations under this section, the appropriate national authority must take all necessary steps to comply with any relevant host contract including, but not limited to, passing any primary legislation as is necessary to ensure compliance with the relevant host contract”.
Sadly, I could not persuade the Public Bill Office to table that, on the grounds of exclusive cognisance-and they were absolutely right to point that out, by the way. The point I was making was that it was absolutely necessary also to recognise that we would need primary legislation.
Let me look at a number of cities that have won the right to host the Olympic Games and what they did. In Paris, for 2024, it required national legislation, interestingly enough, for AI mass surveillance, which was a controversial security law that created a legal framework to deploy AI-driven video surveillance algorithms. This technology scanned crowds in public spaces to automatically detect suspicious events or security threats. That was a very detailed provision, and I would argue that, if that was the case in your Lordships’ House or, indeed, in Parliament, there would need to be a very considered debate about it for much longer than was possible in an hour’s debate on a statutory instrument.
They also had significant labour law exemptions: another law that they introduced. Interestingly enough, they have a sports law in place. This was additional and very specific to the need to host the Olympic Games. They had hypersensitive trademarking alterations to the French sports code to grant the IOC absolute ownership of all Olympic properties. These were debated at length; they needed parliamentary time and that was regarded as important for the IOC to grant the right to Paris to host those Games.
When it came to Japan in Tokyo 2020, they passed an Act on special measures concerning the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo, along with secondary legislation. I do not doubt for one minute that secondary legislation will also be necessary. They had an Act on human rights reforms under pressure to align with the Olympic Charter’s non-discrimination principles. The Japanese Diet passed the first-ever national law to protect LGBT individuals from unfair discrimination.
We know what happened in London. There was significant legislation brought forward and debated at significant length. That was after a major debate in your Lordships’ House before we bid for the Olympic Games, which was regarded by the International Olympic Committee as absolutely critical to the political support in both Houses for the Games bid. They monitored very carefully the legislation that went through both Houses under the excellent leadership of Tessa Jowell to produce the primary legislation that was specific and necessary for the hosting of the Games, including a whole range of issues from intellectual property protection to security and policing, venue regulations, and tax exemptions, which are not covered by one of the five categories that will come forward. Indeed, on the whole question of the funding of the Games, we hoped they would cost £2 billion to £3 billion when we first discussed the subject. It ended up, if you count all the security requirements, and the dedication of our outstanding security services, at north of £10 billion. The idea that that would not be debated in detail through a finance measure in both Houses is simply unrealistic.
It only needs to be looked at in the context of the Olympic Games; we could also look at FIFA legislation requirements if we had time. However, what I want to discuss is what might possibly be the most important one, which is the fact that in the Gold Coast, they have-we have heard from the Government-the Australian Bill in place. Then they had to produce, after the generalised Bill, similar to the one we have, specific Bills for parliamentary consideration in order to host the Games. They had to have a Brisbane Olympic and Paralympic Games Arrangements Act 2021. This was the foundational legislation for the 2032 Games. They had to have a planning and development streaming legislation that temporarily overrode overlapping local and state planning controls and they had a major sports facilities amendment Bill. This was all primary legislation over and above an enabling Bill, very similar to the one we that we are debating this evening, that was required for them to satisfy the International Olympic Committee’s requirements under the host city contract. We have no idea what will be in the host city contract if we win in, say, 2036 or 2040 or 2044. We have no idea what AI will look like at that stage. In fact, it will be regarded as a very historical debate that we are having this evening in the context of what legislation might need to be put in place at that stage.
There are a whole range of issues, not least the ones we discussed earlier this evening, around who the major sponsors are. The sponsorship arrangements of the Games are decided by the top sponsors, who are accepted by the IOC as top sponsors around the world, and we cannot impact those top sponsors. If we, as the Government of the day, decided that we did not like those top sponsors, they would say, “Fine, thank you very much indeed, there are plenty of other cities bidding to host the Games”.
My point is that, on this critical amendment-and, indeed, on the set of amendments that were introduced by my noble friend Lord Markham-yes, this is a Bill that sends the right signals: it is a good idea. But it is motherhood and apple pie. It sends all the right signals to the world of sport that we are keen to host these events, but it is not realistic when it comes to the need for primary legislation, which will absolutely be demanded by parliamentarians, even if we do not think it will at this stage.
Finally, I have suggested that we remove the words “must be likely to” leave a sports legacy. If the Government feel that they need to qualify leaving a sports legacy from holding a major international event, we have a serious problem. It is not “must be likely to”: it will leave a sports legacy. If it does not leave a sports legacy, we should not be supporting it. The same is true in the context of the social benefit, which comes under my Amendment 20.
With those introductory remarks to Amendments 8, 13, 18, 20 and 21, I say that I genuinely support the Government in wanting to bring international sporting events to the United Kingdom. However, I am, I hope, realistic in persuading the Committee that this cannot be done simply by statutory instruments that have minimum debate and no opportunity to be amended, and simply go through on a yes/no basis. We will need primary legislation, and the International Olympic Committee and FIFA will welcome the fact that we have primary legislation, because it will show that parliamentarians from all sides of the House in both Chambers are in support of that bid. I beg to move.
My Lords, I strongly support the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan. I think in the excitement of thinking we might have another Olympics and Paralympics, it is easy to forget the huge amount of work in-the reality of-bidding for these Games. For me, 2012 was the best eight weeks of my life, but it is easy to forget that the process of even getting to bidding was a massive risk. A lot of people put their careers on the line in saying that we should bid. Most of the way through bidding for 2012, we were told that there was no point in bothering because it was Paris’s turn; amazingly, we were able to turn that on its head. When you go to Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, it is easy to forget that legacy at that point was not defined as we look at it now. If a handout amendment is actually a real thing, I think one of the successes of Olympic Park was in looking at it as a mayoral development corporation-I had an amendment to the Localism Bill-and about having the foresight to see what was required and what the park would look like 10, 20 or 50 years beyond the Games. That is why we need to be quite bold with some of the things that we are doing in this Bill. We are way beyond sport for sport’s sake. Certainly, Amendment 20, where the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, would change “is likely to bring” to “will bring”, is really important, because we can do so much through the power of sport. Back in 2000 Nelson Mandela said: “Sport has the power to change the world”-...
It is a pleasure to follow my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and to support all the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Moynihan. It is such a pleasure to have him back in your Lordships’ House. The boat is now being steered again. He made so many points that were completely on point. It is worth reiterating that there is only one city on the planet which has hosted the Olympic Games three times in the modern era, from 1896, and that is London. Another city will equal us in two years’ time, and that is similarly impressive. There will be a need to consider future bids, be they in London or in other parts of the United Kingdom. The points that my noble friend makes are exactly right. The scale of the funding, never mind all the other issues he raised, will be of parliamentary interest, to say the least. He cites some excellent examples from other parts of the world, and he is right to celebrate the sporting ambassador who has stridden across the world for decades: John Coates, who has done so much for sport, not just for Australian sport but for world sport. My noble friend’s points to that end were very well made.
Finally, my noble friend’s comments on AI are particularly pertinent, because the Bill is silent when it comes to AI and emerging technologies. This is at least interesting, because the Government have said they have no interest in bringing forward a cross-sector, cross-economy, cross-society AI Bill. One would imagine that if you wanted to have clarity, consistency and a coherent approach to such an impactful constellation of technologies-already impacting right now-you would want to have a Bill so that, if you came across AI in health, education or sport, you would have a recognisable, consistent and coherent experience.
The Government have decided that they want to take a domain-by-domain specific approach, as they call it. Well, we are in the domain of sport, yet there is nothing in this Bill on AI, which we will come to in future groups of amendments in my name. It is not just AI; all these emerging technologies will have such a profound impact on every element of the organisation, the fan, the spectator, the media partner, and the athlete experience in the run-up to and at competition or Games time. My noble friend was right to raise this, and I would be interested in the Minister’s response on a Bill which seeks to be future-proofed, to set us in great shape to bid for these mega world sporting events. Yet on the positive, enabling and empowering role that all these technologies can play, the Bill is silent at this stage.
I managed to avoid false starting the two Paralympians this time. We are back to asking whether the Bill is wide enough to enable itself to do what it has to do within the known requirements of hosting an Olympic Games. It probably looks about right for a championship that is using existing infrastructure. Even if the Olympics or the Commonwealth Games want us to use that where we can, you may well have to construct something new and possibly something temporary. All these elements have been in both of those things and at very different scales. But if this is going to be something new, in the case of the Olympics particularly, it seems to change what it wants over time, because it is an evolving thing. The London Olympics changed the expectation of how much change and benefit you could bring. It actually has been a solid thing, and that was based on many, many hours in Committee-I know because I was there-when the Government of the day said, “Let’s get this right, or at least get a framework, or at least ask, even, as a training exercise, what it would look like”. I think half the time the Government did not expect to have to implement it, but that is merely the observation of somebody who sat there through Committee. So there will have to be something new, and where in the current thinking does it fit in, if we have to do that? I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, enjoyed his little sabbatical, but it is better to have him back. I say that as one who dodged that. But...
My Lords, what an honour it is to follow such distinguished experts in this field: my noble friend Lord Moynihan-like other noble Lords, I am delighted to have him back-my noble friend Lord Holmes and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. It is yet another example, if ever we need it, of how lucky we are to have such a range of expertise in this Chamber. The points in this debate are very similar to many of the points made on the last groupings. As the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said, while we want this framework agreement to work, is it possible to make it wide enough to cater for all the eventualities that we are talking about? As my noble friend Lord Moynihan mentioned, there is new technology coming along. They were mentioning AI in the Paris bid-think how much it has moved on from then. There are new rights that need to be taken on board, whether LGBT rights as it was last time or some new rights going forward. There are new funding arrangements that are very likely to be put in place. I struggle to see how we can set this all up in an all-encompassing framework Bill, and I think I speak for all noble Lords when I say that an hour’s debate on some sort of secondary legislation will not be able to cut it in these instances. I do not believe I can add very much to the expertise that we have heard already but, as others have said, this must leave a sports legacy, so I am thoroughly behind the points that have been made. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s points,...
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, for tabling these amendments. I am grateful to him for taking an interest in the Bill, and it is genuinely good to see the noble Lord back and elevated to the Opposition Front Bench, albeit in another department. How could the noble Lord go to another department? The contributions of the noble Lords, Lord Moynihan and Lord Holmes, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, have been noted by a number of speakers today. We are privileged to have the expertise of the noble Lords and the noble Baroness, who have taken part in the process and been part of that work to define the vision required to win bids. I hope I can give all noble Lords reassurance that legacy matters to this Government and, as a former London Assembly member, I am clear on the physical legacy that this city received from the 2012 Games. On the question from the noble Lord, Lord Addington, as to whether it is wide enough as a framework, we believe that it is and I will go through the amendments in turn. I hope I can give noble Lords some reassurance. Amendments 8 and 13 seek to ensure that the appropriate national authority will comply with a host city contract or a host nation contract before regulations applying the sporting events framework can be made. There are numerous agreements and contracts to which this could apply and, in our view, it would not be appropriate or necessary to make the time that regulations would be made and brought into force contingent on...
My Lords, I thank everybody who has participated in the debate, particularly my noble friends in sport, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and the noble Lord, Lord Holmes. I did not live up to their expectations; I was first of the losers, getting only a silver medal at the Olympic Games while they had many gold medals to their names-albeit that I got a silver medal by 0.6 of a second behind the East German eight, who subsequently sued for the damage that the drugs they took during that event had done to them. But that did not prevent them retaining their gold medal. To be honest, all sports men and women know that it is the event on the day and the memory of that event that matter most.
The noble Lord, Lord Addington-who, if I may say so, is a close friend in sport-lived through the Committee stage of the legislation and original debate in this House on hosting the games in London in 2012. He rightly said that in many respects this legislation focuses on major championships, but it does not address the needs of hosting either the FIFA World Cup or the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The host city contract is not, if I might be so bold to say to the Minister, a matter for the local authorities; it is written by the International Olympic Committee and is then discussed and signed by the British Olympic Association-the independent organisation-and the local organising committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
It would help if the Minister could simply recognise somewhere in the Bill, which is a framework agreement we are all in support of, that there will be sport-specific primary legislation required for the hosting of the Olympic and Paralympic Games and the FIFA World Cup. The Government need to recognise the truism that there is no exception to the rule in the modern era-and this will get worse as Governments continue to politicise sport. If we recognise this and regard the amendments as a supportive framework covering a number of important issues to send a signal to the world that we want to host international sporting events, I do not think there will be any difficulty. Should the Government continue to resist the amendments, I think we will be returning to them on Report. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Amendment 8 withdrawn.
Amendment 9
Moved by
9: Clause 2, page 2, line 18, at end insert- “(5A) Regulations made by an appropriate national authority under this section may not have effect for a period that is longer than the specified period.(5B) In subsection (5A), the “specified period” means a period of time that must-(a) begin no earlier than the beginning of the period of 21 days ending immediately before the day on which the sporting event begins, and(b) end no later than the end of the period of 5 days beginning with the day after the day on which the sporting event ends.”Member's explanatory statement This amendment would establish a maximum period in which the sporting events framework can be implemented in relation to a particular event.
My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 9 and in doing so, I also speak to Amendments 10, 11 and 12, which stand in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Markham. These four amendments address two related but distinct concerns about the regulation-making powers conferred by Clause 2 of the Bill: first, how long those regulations can remain in force in relation to any particular sporting event; and, secondly, the parliamentary scrutiny to which all such regulations should be subject. Clause 2 allows an appropriate national authority to make regulations to implement the sporting events framework for a particular event. What it does not do is place any limit on the period for which those regulations may be in effect. We believe that is a clear omission. The framework is designed to apply to specific and time-limited events, so it would be strange and, we submit, improper if regulations made for a particular event remained on the statute book indefinitely or for a period bearing no relation to the duration of the event. Amendment 9 seeks to address this issue by applying the same temporal limit that Parliament has already judged appropriate in comparable legislation. The approach we have taken mirrors precisely the time periods used in the Birmingham Commonwealth Games Act 2020 and the UEFA European Championship (Scotland) Act 2020. That is a pre-event period beginning no earlier than 21 days before the event starts, and a post-event tail of no more than 5 days after it ends....
My Lords, once again, if it comes to sporting events, I have a bit of reminiscing to do. I can remember a very good little row we had on the Birmingham Commonwealth Games Bill about changing local taxation; it was a bedroom tax that some people saw as a way of solving local government finance problems in Birmingham. It was then pointed out that there were only two weeks allowed for this process. I think it would have been quite a high surcharge that would have benefited the hoteliers of Wolverhampton and Coventry if it had been brought in. If we get an idea about timescale, it becomes very important that it is adequately placed, and that is in the tradition of what we have done. Making sure that that continues to apply means we are taking a new piece of legislation and applying it to a tradition of what we have done in legislation: there are shorter periods needed for things, and these are exceptional circumstances. If we are going to do that, we are fine. Not allowing these things to become permanent is a fair point here, because they are very unusual things. Indeed, the entire premise of the Bill is that we are doing stuff for extraordinary circumstances. I hope that the Government will give a reply that reassures the noble Lord that his amendment is not necessary, but I think it probably was worth while to give us the idea of the aim of it. These are short-term measures.
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, for introducing this group of amendments, seconded by the noble Lord, Lord Markham. I express my gratitude to all noble Lords taking part today, and say to the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, that I would have been very distraught if such an avid Leeds United supporter had been lost to the Chamber-to be continued, I am sure. These amendments-which I think are probing, especially Amendments 9 and 10-relate to the maximum period that the framework provisions in the Bill can be applied to a sports event. Amendment 10 would limit to 50 days the maximum period that any regulations applying the framework provisions in the Bill could be in effect. Amendment 9 limits provisions in the Bill to being in effect no more than 21 days before an event begins and five days after an event concludes. We do not consider, as the noble Lord probably predicted, such a blanket approach to be workable in the context of an event-neutral Bill. Application of the provisions must be considered on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the requirements of each event. These will inevitably have varying geographical and temporal application. The advertising and trading offences are heavily localised and will apply only to places which are used for, or in connection with, a sporting event, and the surrounding areas. The timing of these provisions will correspond with how and when venues are used during the competition period. None the less, where it is...
Amendments 11 and 12 would require that all regulations in relation to a sporting event to which the framework provisions in this Bill can be applied be subject to the affirmative procedure. I reassure noble Lords that we have two aims here. The first is to ensure that regulations can be bought forward that enable the effective and safe operational delivery of events. This may, at times and due to unavoidable operational requirements, require regulations to be laid in a short timeframe. The second aim, in line with the spirit of the amendment sought by noble Lords, is to ensure Parliament has sufficient opportunity to debate matters of substance or interest. Under the Bill, the first time the framework provisions are applied to a specific event, Parliament will be able to have a full debate on their suitability, as they will be subject to the affirmative procedure, as we have discussed. Further, as your Lordships will have heard my noble friend the Minister say at Second Reading, we have fixed as much policy as possible on the face of the Bill.
Regulations are intended to overlay event-specific, operational detail to ensure that the offences set out in the Bill are enforceable, workable and proportionate in the context of a particular event. The framework should also be agile: we must be able to respond efficiently and proportionately to accommodate changing operational requirements, such as scheduling changes or unforeseen changes to the use of venues. In these aims, I feel we are generally in alignment.
I want also to pick up on the points made about the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee and make it explicitly clear that we are carefully considering its recommendations. We are committed to working constructively with noble Lords across the Chamber to ensure we strike the right balance in the level of scrutiny applied. For these reasons, I hope the noble Lord will take reassurance from these comments and withdraw his amendment.
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her response, particularly the reassurances she has given and the explanation about ticketing powers, transport restrictions and so on. As she rightly said, these are probing amendments, but they are probing with a purpose. The Bill seeks to take some quite sweeping powers, in some cases restricting people’s liberties, the operation of commercial businesses and much more. We want to make sure that where those powers are taken, they are not on the statute book for longer than they need to be. As the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said, these are exceptional measures for extraordinary circumstances. That is important to get right, so we will take another look at the Bill in light of what the Minister has said and make sure we are satisfied that that is the case. We think we are being generous with a 50-day limit; if the Olympic and Paralympic Games can take place within that window, it is hard to envisage a major sporting event that might need longer. We will take that away and look at it further. On Amendments 11 and 12 and the point about secondary legislation, I am grateful for what the Minister said about the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. I look forward to hearing what the Government say in detail, ahead of Report, on its concerns about the Bill here. I am not sure I quite agree that Parliament will have the opportunity for a full debate; at the moment, secondary legislation is limited to an hour, and we have...
Amendment 9 withdrawn.
Amendments 10 to 13 not moved.
Clause 2 agreed.
Clause 3: Framework conditions
Amendment 14
Moved by
14: Clause 3, page 2, line 35, leave out “three” and insert “two” Member’s explanatory statement This probing amendment, and others in the name of Lord Addington, seek to challenge the Government’s exclusion of certain sporting events, specifically those events which are regularly held in the UK, but may benefit from the provisions in this Bill.
My Lords, we have a series of amendments here seeking to challenge the Government’s exclusion of certain sporting events at home from some of the benefits of this Bill. There are some good things here. We saw that they were beneficial-the traffic arrangements and other special things-but why not extend them to events happening only within the country, such as Wimbledon, if we want to make those changes, or to things that happen regularly? Six Nations rugby is an example where we are coping, but we would need new frameworks and structures for anything that would expand it. We also have half an eye on what happens with big cultural events. We are taking short-term measures for short-term functions which could be expanded and could help. That is the essence of these amendments-trying to push a good idea a little further. The Government have got a good idea here. Let us do something more with it. Let us make sure that every big sporting event-and every cultural event, why not?-has access to the governmental changes that could help it be run better. I could expand on this for a long time, but I would end up repeating myself. It is a good idea. Let us make sure it touches more of the world. I beg to move.
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 17, 19 and 22 to 25 in my name, on which I am again grateful for the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and support Amendments 14 and 16 from the noble Lord, Lord Addington, to which I have added my name. These amendments share a simple purpose: to correct what I believe is a significant gap in the Bill. They seek to widen the definition of events to which the framework provisions may apply so that major, regular, UK-based sporting events-those woven into the fabric of our national life-are not excluded from their potential benefits. That is the problem before us. As drafted, the Bill risks overlooking the very events that define Britain as a global sporting nation and deliver exactly what Ministers say they want this legislation to achieve: economic growth, international prestige and community pride. As I set out at Second Reading, Wimbledon, the Open, the London Marathon and the British Grand Prix are among the most recognisable sporting events in the world, and they are ours. Yet, as things stand, they fall outside the Bill’s scope and the greater protections that it is looking to afford. This is not just surprising; it is a missed opportunity. I am grateful to many of the major sports organisers across the sector, from cricket to golf and motor racing to tennis and running, that have engaged with me and other noble Lords on this issue and provided clear and compelling arguments as to why regular, established, UK-based...
My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 19 and 22 to 25 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Evans of Bowes Park, to which I have attached my name, and I thank the Minister for sparing time to discuss these. I said when we met that there are a number of sports organisations that are feeling a bit unloved at the moment. These are events that have a global reach and help cement our standing on the world stage. The noble Baroness, Lady Evans, mentioned the London Marathon. I think I competed in 17 of them-it is quite hard to remember when you get to that many. I know I did one more than my husband. I also commentate on the wheelchair race for the BBC. The marathon is not just the race itself. Anyone who walks up the Embankment at 6.30 pm on the Sunday will see people valiantly keeping going, to try to make it to the finish line. On Westminster Bridge the next morning, you also see the hundreds of people who have competed standing there with their medals, wanting to take a photo in front of Big Ben. Beyond that, the impact is quite significant. It puts London on the map as a city, and it brings a huge amount of tourism. People stay in London for days afterwards, thanks to the many good deals that the marathon has negotiated with various restaurants and different companies around the city. We need to think about this in a slightly different way. That is positive chemistry and association that you cannot buy. It is because people feel amazingly good about putting themselves...
My Lords, I echo the comments of my colleagues across the Chamber in relation to this set of amendments, although I tend to disagree-or will clarify-in relation to one of the amendments. This is an enabling Bill. Surely, therefore, it should provide the opportunity, as the noble Lord, Lord Addington, has said, for major sporting events which wish to make use of the Bill-whether it is the RFU, the LTA or whoever-to be able to come forward and say to a Government, “We wish to use this Bill for the following reasons”. Surely that is the objective of this legislation. The point has been made a number of times already that sporting frameworks change, and we cannot guarantee that the Olympic Games, European Championships, et cetera, will be the same in 15 or 20 years’ time, or whenever it may happen to be. Structures of international competition change. If ever there was an example of one-and I am surprised that the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, did not refer to it-it is the announcement in the last few days that the London Marathon is going to move from one day to two, with the objective of having 100,000 participants. It is about the level of attraction from around the world. Most people look at the London Marathon and say, “Oh, it’s just the London Marathon”. It is not; it is part of an international body of marathons, a set group of them. If there are 100,000 participants next year, we are going to have many hundreds of thousands of visitors. There are transport and all...
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Hayward. Were I to imagine myself-as I never would-on the Bishops’ Bench, in approaching this set of amendments I would be very much reminded of the parable of the prodigal son. The Bill rightly sets out a whole raft of provisions for mega sporting events that come to the United Kingdom on occasion. Events already listed by my noble friend Lady Evans, such as Wimbledon, the British Grand Prix, and so on, do their thing year in, year out, staging world-class events which are far greater than sporting celebrations and competitions, with economic, social and cultural benefit which goes far beyond, for example, Wimbledon, SW19. In asserting the principles in the Bill that have to be in place when it comes to international bids, it seems odd that at least some of these provisions would not be available to those extraordinarily impactful sporting events that are the very fabric not only of our sporting nation but of our culture. I ask the Minister to consider, if not implementing these amendments, the essence behind them and to how it could be threaded into the Bill. Further to my noble friend Lord Hayward’s comments on frameworks, why would the Government not want that to be available to the sporting events that wish to avail themselves of some parts of it? Ambush marketing is ambush marketing, whether it is targeted at the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games or the Wimbledon Championships every year.
My Lords, my noble friend Lady Evans and I have a lot in common-we both support Norwich City Football Club, and we show our allegiance to it-but I disagree with her in her amendments. I did not contribute to the last debate, but it is safe to say that it confirmed what I think we all know: that, while this may be an enabling Bill, if we actually capture one of these global events, we will need to have specific legislation anyway. If that is the case, we will not be doing any more than virtue signalling in the Bill. The conclusion that all the noble Lords have made is that the Bill is incomplete and half-full. I will not say that it is half-baked, but there is plenty more work to be done on it. However, if the Bill is incomplete, I do not think that it is the right thing at all to extend it in scope to other events, because the mission creep brings politics into sport. Of course, it is very difficult to keep it there, but it brings politics into sport by law. It will prevent somebody who is interested in public discourse from having an opinion and gives them leverage over the event. It will sanitise so much of the activity that goes on around the game. It will make unlawful things that are part and parcel of what we do-certain trade, advertisements and things such as that; it stops innovation-for Wimbledon, the rugby union, the rugby league, the Grand Prix, the Open, the Test match, Premier League and, if we listen to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, cultural events such as...
I thank my noble friend for giving way, but just for clarification, the noble Lord, Lord Addington, my noble friend Lady Evans, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and I made absolutely clear that it is not a case of the Bill encompassing these competitions; it is the sporting authorities asking that they might make use of some of the facilities of the Bill.
We are ending up in a mission creep by introducing new offences for individuals-we will talk about ticketing later on. I realise I have a minority view, but I want to express it, and I should do. There is a misdirection with all these amendments that by putting them on a list, the Government can keep them here. I just do not think that is a reasonable assertion. The organising bodies, such as the British Automobile Racing Club, the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club at Wimbledon have to work hard, need to live off their wits and need to want to keep these events here. By putting them on a list and bringing them within scope, it will potentially upset the events that we know and love by bringing them into the political space. I just think that that is the wrong thing to do.
My Lords, maybe I can set my noble friend Lord Fuller’s mind to rest. Along with colleagues in the shadow DCMS team, I have spoken to a number of the major sporting bodies, which are keen, as some of our noble friends said, to avail themselves of some of the opportunities of the Bill if the scope could be broadened to allow them to do so. That is the key test: where they wish to do so. My noble friends are right, as we have been throughout the Bill, to talk about some of the restrictions and burdens that come with it, but it is very clear that there is an appetite in the sporting world beyond the one-off events-such as the Olympic, Paralympic or Commonwealth Games, which we host from time to time-for some of our major sporting events that happen on a more regular basis to be included in the framework and for us not to be playing second fiddle. At Second Reading, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, challenged us to be a bit bolder in the Bill, and this has been a very good group of amendments and debate that have encouraged us to do that. We heard a huge number of examples of the major sporting events, which bring delight to people across this country and across the world on a regular basis. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and particularly my noble friend Lady Evans of Bowes Park, for bringing their amendments, with the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, to see if we can be bolder and give those advantages to many other sporting...
I anticipate that the Minister may say that it is quite difficult to broaden this without being specific. I have one thought, having listened to this debate and been very supportive of what has been said. If, for example, the R&A for the Open golf wanted to avail itself of the benefits of the sporting events framework that we are putting into legislation, would it not be possible to distinguish between the international federations that recognise these events as international events on their calendars? Take Wimbledon, the marathon or golf’s Open Championship. All are recognised by the relevant international federations and placed on their calendars. If we are looking for a way to put this into legislation, it might be worth considering defining it along those lines, overtly avoiding the problem that everybody might be able to apply for their own event. That would rule out, for example, the Boat Race. I can see significant problems with the transport provisions of the Bill if they were applied to the Boat Race and the whole west of London on Boat Race day. I give that as an example and a helpful contribution that I hope the Minister can take away and consider.
I thank my noble friend, who has rowed in the Boat Race, for his constructive and very good challenge. We are looking for a way of broadening the Bill in a rational way. He is right to draw the distinction with events that are internationally renowned. As my noble friend Lady Evans says, these are the ones that define our well-earned sporting reputation for being able to host such major events on the global stage. Whether it is done through that or another metric, this is well worth looking at in greater detail as we head to Report. My noble friend Lord Fuller asked where this all ends, but the question really is: where does this begin? We are promised a major events strategy from DCMS. I understand that the Government have taken the legislative slot that is available and proceeded with the Bill now. They are right to do so, but it is a shame that we did not have that strategy in advance of this Bill. It would have informed some of the debates here and answered some of the questions that noble Lords have raised on cultural events, music events and ticketing provisions that apply there as well. Perhaps the Minister can say a bit more about when we might see that major events strategy, how it is designed to feed into this framework and the thinking that has gone on in her department in drawing up this Bill in advance of that strategy. It is slightly unfortunate that we are discussing it this way around because of the legislative time available. I thank noble Lords for their...
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury, Lady Evans of Bowes Park and Lady Grey-Thompson, for these amendments and for their time to discuss an important topic. Regarding the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, I genuinely appreciate the spirit in which he and others have tabled these amendments. The noble Baroness, Lady Evans, gave a remarkable list of recurring events that we have in this country and highlighted the value-including the economic value-of events such as Silverstone. I assure your Lordships’ Committee that the Government are committed to supporting our domestic sports sector and the UK’s sporting calendar, building on the strong partnerships and existing frameworks already in place. This work will be underpinned by the UK-wide major events strategy, which-in response to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson-my department intends to publish within the next 12 months. This will set out our priorities for major events taking place across the UK, covering major events in all sectors-cultural, sporting and business. I hope that the process of undertaking this strategy makes some of those sporting organisations that the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, says feel unloved now feel that this puts them front and centre of our minds and priorities at DCMS. The time-limited provisions in the Bill are designed to attract specific one-off events that require the Government to make...
I would also like to reassure noble Lords that I genuinely accept that the suggestions they are making are to make sure that the Bill is future-proofed. I appreciate the spirit in which these amendments have been laid in this group, but, with the assurances and reassurances that I have provided, I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment and that other noble Baronesses and noble Lords will not press theirs.
My Lords, it just goes to show that, if you are speaking on a lot of amendments, you should try to get your mind on the right one. I thank everybody who has taken part. This has actually been a very good debate in terms of the policy going forward, with possibly one exception, but I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, is getting to know his colleagues very well. We have established a consensus that there are a lot of good things proposed in the Bill, such as the idea you must preserve certain things because they are a good unto themselves economically, culturally and socially. I wish I had tried to match the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, with a list of events, because hers was pretty impressive-I have a few in there as well. There are some very good ideas here, although possibly not the whole list. Certain things about traffic on a regular basis probably going through might be extremely useful. An event structure, if it comes up and if we eventually get round to it-and who knows what is coming in the next 12 months-might be an interesting thing to bring in. As the noble Baroness said, people are not saying this is a bad Bill. They are saying it is a good Bill and asking, “Can we actually take some of its benefits and push them out to somewhere else?” The traffic issue is one that really catches my mind, getting people to and from events, and if you have traffic controls, making sure that there is something in place before the big events happen. This is probably happening in...
Amendment 14 withdrawn.
Amendment 15
Moved by
15: Clause 3, page 2, line 35, leave out “three” and insert “four” Member’s explanatory statement This probing amendment, and others in the name of Baroness Bonham-Carter, adds a condition for Sporting Events to be covered by this Bill, to make the sporting event free to air.
Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury
In moving Amendment 15 I shall speak also to Amendments 26 and 79. We on these Benches think that we should consider events that are in scope of this Bill as part of the free-to-air listed events regime for audiences in the UK, so that those who wish to follow a sporting event but cannot obtain a ticket due to cost or availability can still follow the event without incurring extra costs and potentially having to pay for a subscription; and, secondly and really importantly, because it will encourage and expand the audience for such events. Watching a sport you do not know can spark interest and participation. There are more chances that this will happen if the event is not behind a paywall. The Minister mentioned the Lionesses. Thanks to the BBC championing and broadcasting women’s football free to air, enabling the public to watch the Lionesses’ triumphant journey in both European and world tournaments, there are new audiences in stadiums, as well as on screens; and, most importantly, it has inspired women and girls to take up the sport. Similarly, there is the legacy of Channel 4 and the Paralympics, and I refer to what the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, said earlier about encouraging and enabling disabled kids to get involved in sport. It is in the power of the DCMS to review listed events-the “crown jewels”, as they are known. The amendment I am proposing would create an opportunity to revise the list, and this follows a concerning trend where fans’ rights to enjoy...
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle
My Lords, I rise with great pleasure to follow the Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, who is very much the leader of your Lordships’ House in this space. I am here having signed Amendments 15 and 26 to show cross-party support, so I will be brief. As the noble Baroness set out, we have seen a gradual erosion of people’s access. We often discuss access to the right to participate in sport, but there is also the access to being part of the whole sporting experience and to view major events live. Free-to-air broadcast is what keeps major sporting events genuinely public, rather than turning them into elite viewing that is available only to those who can afford subscription television or other sources. If access depends on payment, watching sport becomes unevenly distributed, with lower-income households at a clear disadvantage. In practice, that particularly excludes, or risks excluding, many children and young people from the shared experience of watching major sporting events with their peers and their communities. Free-to-air coverage ensures that money is not a barrier to participation in what is a common cultural space, where sport is experienced collectively rather than privately. That broad access is something that gives sport extra public value, and that is why it is important to protect it as something that belongs to everyone, not just those who can pay.
My Lords, I disagree with the proposed amendments for a number of different reasons; first, because the terminology “free to air” is a complete misdescription. You have to pay £180 for your TV licence. It therefore is not free-that is, for the 88% of the population who choose to pay for their TV licence. The number of people who choose not to pay for a TV licence has been rising for many years. I say 88% because the latest figures published say that 12.5% of all viewers do not pay for a television licence. Secondly, there is the question of competition. The essence of sport is competition. It is a very odd state of affairs whereby one says that broadcasters can compete but, by the way, we will restrict the competition in certain fields. We were debating in the previous set of amendments the question of assisting people who face disadvantages in society. Again, it is a very odd state of affairs whereby one broadcaster might be willing to pay much larger sums to broadcast a particular event, and in that process guarantee substantial funds to the underrepresented groups, but they are not allowed to because the event concerned is a crown jewel. So not only do you lose out because the broadcasting may be inferior; the funding might be inferior as well. Thirdly, my concern is that the crown jewels were a product of a different technological era. Sport is now broadcast on a whole range of different platforms, and none of us in this Chamber knows what the platforms are going to be...
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 26. The noble Lord, Lord Hayward, makes an interesting reference to free-to-air. As well as not knowing what platforms are going to be available, we do not know even what events there are going to be. The Olympics and Paralympics are going to change radically in the next few cycles, not least because of the impact of global warming. In quite good timing, there was an article this morning online on the Broadcast Sport website which talked about the changing world of events. Rights holders have more choices about where to go to put their events on, and they can ask for more money. It has been estimated that FIFA is going to make about £3 billion from organising the World Cup. Where is that money going to go? If you look at something closer to home such as Wimbledon, it puts a considerable amount of money back into the grass roots, which is incredible. How people watch is going to change as well. The same article on Broadcast Sport was saying that even if you are watching a live event, you are probably checking your phone at least 10 times during that event to see what else is going on and what other comments are being made. We should be looking at how we make available these major sporting events. A number of people are disappointed that the Commonwealth Games is not going to be readily available, certainly on BBC TV. Everything that Team Wales does is going to be shown on S4C. There will be two hours’ live coverage a day, which is...
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. Broadcasting is such a critical part of the sporting experience. For most people broadcast is the sporting experience. When Andy Murray was performing so fabulously on Centre Court at Wimbledon, I believe there were 15,000 seats available, yet millions could enjoy and experience that extraordinary event from the edge of their sofa. This is another area where the Bill is unfortunately silent when it comes to innovation. I believe there are solutions which can offer new paths forward to enable spectators to enjoy their favourite sport and these events through various media. I will give two examples. I declare a previous interest in that I was deputy chair of Channel 4 Television at the time. When Emma Raducanu went all the way through to the final and won the US Open, we were able to do a deal at 24 hours’ notice with Amazon, which was the rights holder at the time, to have the US Open on Channel 4 free to air. But it is not free to air, as my noble friend Lord Hayward points out. It is a domestic UK broadcaster which was not a rights holder, but because of thinking differently, getting into discussions and a broader relationship with Amazon, it was able to secure those rights without in any sense cannibalising the rights that Amazon had paid for. A similar deal was done with England men’s cricket when it was in India that winter. I give just those two examples because they illustrate that...
My Lords, very briefly, after so many events going on, free-to-air means not hidden behind a paywall. It is something you do not have to make a very big payment to. Okay, there is the licence fee. To the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, I say, “Yes, touché. Well done, good point”. But the fact of the matter is that if you do not have to specifically pay to see them, people can get to these great sporting events and, as the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, has just pointed out, you create a national memory of them, something which you can refer back to. It is the water-cooler moment that does not go away. It is a point of bonding which you do not get anywhere else. I hope that when the Minister responds she will give us some idea about how we are going to carry on with this, because it is a changing world. The first time I discussed this, we knew it was going to be on X number of channels, and Sky was only just starting to come into it. But we have been able to watch, at least in the form of highlights. What is the defence? It is a big deal. We must make sure, for these huge events, especially when national teams or the big games come up, that we respond across the board so that people can come down. I hope the Minister can say something reassuring on this because, let us face it, it is one of the reasons why it is worth bidding in the first place. It is now beyond those who go and buy tickets and has been for a long time.
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Hayward issued a useful corrective. Just as there is no such thing as government money but only taxpayers’ money, there is no such thing as free-to-air broadcasting; we pay for it through some means or another. It is a timely reminder in a year when we look again at the BBC’s royal charter and the licence fee model, which pays not just for the BBC but is required for viewing any of our public service broadcasters. We are in many senses overdue a debate about the listed events regime by which we try to pick those crown jewels of sporting events. We would have had one during the passage of what became the Media Act 2024, but because that was taken in wash-up, we did not have the debate that perhaps was needed then. I hope that as we look at the royal charter for the BBC, we can look at this in some detail. Maybe the Minister can say a bit about that either now or at subsequent stages on the Bill. This was looked at at Second Reading by my noble friend Lady Davies of Devonport, who spoke powerfully about the fact that if public money-taxpayers’ money-is spent on hosting major sporting events, we want as many of those taxpayers as possible to be able to see, benefit and be inspired by them. The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, was right about the importance of visibility and prominence, particularly of the Paralympic Games, which has done so much to change people’s perceptions of those with disabilities and brought so many broadcasters and...
I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury and Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, and the noble Lord, Lord Addington, for their amendments. Amendments 15 and 26 seek to add a further condition to the Bill’s framework, requiring any qualifying sporting event to make live coverage free of charge to the UK public. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, about the importance of having, for example, the Lionesses on the BBC and the Channel 4 coverage of the Paralympics. I and the Government recognise the intent behind these amendments and are committed to ensuring that major sporting events are as accessible as possible to people across the UK, including where broadcasting is concerned. Indeed, during the debate on the football regulator, one of the discussions we had was about what made a spectator and what made a fan. For most people, it is not watching it live but instead watching it largely on television. However, unfortunately, these amendments are not ones that the Government can support. The central issue is that they would make the application of this framework dependent on broadcasting arrangements having already been secured on free-to-air-I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, which was repeated by the noble Lords, Lord Holmes and Lord Parkinson, that it is not free-to-air but rather it is free-to-air once you have paid your licence fee or an equivalent free-access basis. Decisions relating to the broadcast coverage of sporting...
Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury
I thank everyone for taking part in this debate-except possibly the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, who is making me have to think of a different way of saying “free to air”. I am, of course, disappointed but actually not surprised by the Minister’s response. She has given me valuable time but I hope we can explore this further. To pick up on what the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, said, the crown jewels debate got cut off at the knees. We have charter renewal coming up. I totally respect what everyone says about the future and things changing every day, but we need to discuss this because it is important that we share these things. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, that the paywall is the paywall and means that things become niche rather than shared; that is the thing we are really trying to overcome here. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment 15 withdrawn.
Amendments 16 to 26 not moved.
Clause 3 agreed.
Clause 4 agreed.
Clause 5: Ticket touting regulations
Debate on whether Clause 5 should stand part of the Bill.
My Lords, it may seem surprising that I oppose Clause 5 standing part of this Bill, given the fact that I have argued many times in your Lordships’ House for taking tough action against the abuse of the secondary market in ticketing. The reason I do is that I think this is in the wrong Bill. Going back to 19 November, just last year, the Government announced that they would introduce new rules to prohibit tickets for concerts, theatre, comedy, sports and other live events being resold for more than their original cost. They made a significant policy announcement that the British Government would introduce new rules to ban ticket touting. They then said they would introduce a Bill in this Session. They did not. They introduced a draft Bill that would make it illegal to resell a ticket at more than its original cost, cap service fees, make it illegal to resell more tickets than you are entitled to buy, place obligations on resale platforms, and empower the Competition and Markets Authority to impose tough fines. Whether we get the legislative timetable for that is yet to be seen. In this Bill, for potentially three or four events in the next 10 years, there is very tough action, which I support in principle but it should apply to all sports, cultural, arts and music events, and it should be in primary legislation, as promised by the Government. It is simply inconsistent to put some extremely tough and onerous measures-which I fully support-in this Bill for three or four major...
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 31. I wish to associate myself with the words of my noble friend Lord Moynihan. This is an unnecessary provision in the wrong Bill. At Second Reading, I posed the question: what is so bad about somebody who has bought a ticket to the match but suddenly finds they cannot go and offers it for sale to friends on Facebook that justifies a 50 grand fine? You have a spare ticket. Perhaps mum has fallen over at home so you cannot go. Perhaps the girlfriend you had planned to go with is now seeing somebody else. Perhaps you have gone down with some sort of food poisoning or perhaps even gramps, who you had planned to sit next to, has died. It happens. In all those circumstances, there are draconian penalties for moving on that ticket. The ticketing activities are enumerated in Schedule 1: selling an event ticket, offering for sale an event ticket, exposing for sale an event ticket or advertising that the ticket is available for purchase. The £50,000 fine is a level of punishment that outweighs the typical criminal penalties for shoplifting, burglary and serious breaches of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act. I am not sure there is an equivalence between passing on a ticket and negligently permitting an employee to fall to his death from height. How have we found ourselves in a situation where the state ranks the desire to cut your losses as worse than all these crimes? It is two-tier justice. Why are we compounding the sadness of the girl...
My amendment would exempt those with six tickets or fewer in a single transaction for a single event who then seek to move them on for whatever reason. It would absolve them from committing an offence. Buying six tickets is not an industrial-scale activity. It strikes the right balance between individual freedoms and the reality of the world, where things change all about us-especially if you need to buy these tickets so many months in advance.
Rather than ban resales except back to the organisers-as has just been mentioned, we can see with FIFA’s World Cup what happens when you do that; FIFA has questions to answer, but this Bill would prevent those questions being asked by law-we should regulate the secondary market. An integral part is to provide the assurance that the ticket being offered is not a fake. This is a market problem that has been solved. If somebody wants to sell on a ticket, the potential purchaser can ask the seller via a website or API for certain details-say a combination of the seat number and serial number. The organiser responds as to whether it is an authentic combination or not. In the jargon, it is called interoperability.
Rather than the monopoly preferred by the organisers, who would want a monopoly, two individuals who meet on Facebook or peer-to-peer platforms such as StubHub-which provide much-needed liquidity to all manner of ticketed events-could be assured between themselves and we could streamline a regulated process. Let us regulate rather than ban the secondary market, while placing the onus on the organisers to enforce identity checks at the outset to stop the bots.
I know the Minister does not like this, but let us examine her stated alternative preference. It is to allow the purchaser to surrender the tickets back to the organiser for monopoly resale to someone else. Where are the safeguards to prevent that organiser selling them on at more than the original face value and acting as a state-sponsored ticket tout?
I asked the organiser of an event in scope, and he explained that you should be able to surrender your ticket back to the organisers for resale as little as 30 minutes before the game. That is lunacy. All it does is encourage hopefuls to hang around the turnstiles and then be disappointed with 10 minutes to go when suddenly there are no tickets to buy. It is the perfect recipe to charge the entrance-exactly the behaviour that we want to prevent but which this cack-handed legislation will aid and abet.
All this Bill does is give FIFA, the Olympics, UEFA and, if we accept some of the amendments from my noble friend Lady Evans, other less illustrious event organisers a state-sponsored monopoly to do what they want on tickets at the expense of the fan and the family member who is unable to go to the game. Why are the peer-to-peer sites such as StubHub or your Facebook friends to be banned instead of being encouraged to participate in a regulated market-based authentication process? Why can the Government not get their story straight about how the mechanics of ticket surrender might work? How would we prevent state-sponsored monopolies and other unintended consequences, such as charging the turnstiles? Why are we criminalising the little guy while providing statutory air cover for the organisers to repeat the World Cup ticket fiasco with empty stadiums and disappointed fans?
This Government are not learning or explaining how this will work. Once again, they are on the side of big business, not the fan or the single family member who has to move on that ticket because his girlfriend is not his girlfriend any more.
My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 28A. The Bill usefully sets out that regulations in relation to ticket touting will be brought in for sporting events. But a number of organisations, including UK Music, are understandably asking the Government to completely fulfil their manifesto commitment. In this sense, I am coming to the issue from a similar place to the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, although I disagree with his remedy. It is right that we should do this because we need to end exploitative ticket touting across all types of events. The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, and I have been on the same side on this for many years. Like many on these Benches, I am delighted at the progress that has been made on ticket touting for sports events, but I am puzzled about the wait for legislation covering music and other events. What makes it more puzzling is that music and sports events often take place in the same venues. This week, my wife will go to listen to Harry Styles; a few weeks ago, I could have gone to the same Wembley venue to watch the cup final. So I am sure that the Minister will understand why there is a measure of disappointment, particularly among music fans, event organisers and performers, none of whom derive any benefit from the current situation. According to YouGov research commissioned by O2, online ticket touts are costing UK music fans at least £145 million a year. For some time, UK Music has been calling for legislation that includes a resale price cap to...
My Lords, it is pleasure to follow my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, and to take part in this group. I am physically and actually right behind my noble friend Lord Moynihan on these issues: it is a good provision, but it is the wrong position. It offers a solution that is fine for those critically important but few events that it will cover, but, for the vast majority, it is a tantalisingly close yet elusive solution across the rest of sport, music, culture, et cetera. “World in Motion”, 1990; “Football’s Coming Home”, Euro 96: music and sport have always been inextricably linked, yet the Bill has not only missed the opportunity to bind these together with effective ticket touting provisions, it has also unfortunately set out a solution for the very few-which, understandably, is extraordinarily frustrating for the many. The provision is also unfortunate because it is very analogue and does not seem to speak to ticketing, touting and abuse as they are today-never mind how they will be in five, 10, 15 or 20 years’ time, when thinking about an Olympic Games and Paralympic Games bid in the 2040s. I will speak to Amendments 27, 89, and all the amendments in my name in this group. I will start with Amendment 89, which proposes an accessible ticketing duty on all these events. For this, I use “accessible” in the broadest sense of the word. This goes to discussions that we have had in earlier groups around ensuring that we get the right principles threaded into this...
If only to take away the uncertainty for all those organisations involved with digital assets and token representations of tickets, I believe that there should be clarity on the face of the Bill as to the nature, acceptability, use and function of digital tokens as ticket representations. Just imagine the role that that could play in terms of driving out touting: you would have a real-time digital record of the whole thing and the history of that token. Touting would be impossible without it being clearly visible, thus creating the opportunity to do something about it and to do something about it through smart contract technology, not even necessarily involving human intervention to catch that moment.
Finally, I think we need AI monitoring across this whole area. We have come a long way since the days when your man in the sheepskin jacket approached with a bunch of tickets for whatever sport or music event he might be trying to pile on to you. So much of this is an online experience-or an online exclusion, because the tickets disappear before even the fastest human hand can get anywhere near them. All this activity is entirely able to be captured in real time by effective AI monitoring systems, setting the technology to solve for the technologies; and yet the Bill says nothing as to this opportunity. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
My Lords, I tried to add my name to Amendment 27, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, but I was slightly too late for the printing of the Marshalled List. I think there is something important in this amendment in terms of thinking about who is able to have access to major games. If you look at the 2012 programme, there was a massive commitment right from the start to no free tickets-the sponsors paid for them. It was not just the joy on the children’s faces when they got to go and experience the events, but it was something that they will remember for the rest of their lives. It was also tied into the school programmes that were being run at the same time. As I have said before, 2012 was also the only time that I have ever been able to go and watch a sporting event where I was able to sit with more than one member of my family. With the ticketing, if someone could not sit in a high stand or needed to be at the end of a row, they also thought about how they linked that up to accessible toilets; those are all really important things. I think Wembley Stadium is the only place I have ever visited that actually understood some of those issues as well. I think there are 147 accessible toilets at Wembley Stadium, which other venues should definitely aspire to. Other things that you could do include “Pay your age”, which 2012 did really well. As a spectator who is a disabled person-the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, mentioned smarter ticketing-you are constantly having to explain...
My Lords, I have four amendments in this group, but the main thing about the amendments on ticket touting is that everybody agrees that something should be done. There is one principal disagreement going on here. The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, is basically saying, “Do not do it here; do it properly somewhere else” and lots of the rest of us are saying, “No, do it here, get it done and carry it on”. The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, agreed with that. From my Benches, we tried to get an amendment down that included this and we did not actually hit the target; we were told that we were out of scope of the Bill, so I salute his drafting-I take it that it is his; if it is not, he can just take the compliment. However, when we go through this, we have got a lot of other issues here, such as disability accessibility. I do not know how many dozen times I have discussed that, and we still do not have it right. I hope the Minister will be able to say something reassuring about an ongoing process for that. Just to refer back to my amendments, I said to myself, “Oh yes, that was it-National Trading Standards, yes, good idea, I thought I had an original point there, but the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, used it in his first sentence”. We have something here that says, “It isn’t working. Can we know what will be done?” The small series of options that we have in this Bill is actually managing to annoy people, oddly, because they are not big enough and they are not going far enough, and we do not...
I thank my noble friend Lord Moynihan for introducing this group and thank noble Lords for their contributions. This whole debate shows that it is a complicated area and begs the question whether this is the right Bill for it to be in. At the very least, we need another Bill very quickly to cover all the complications that it brought up and apply it to music and cultural events as well as those brought up here. The point about FIFA was a very good example, with the US World Cup. It shows how difficult it is to try to create a catch-all Bill when we know how fast the environment is moving, and that FIFA might change its rules, as it has done for this World Cup-let alone when you come to some of the technological advances that my noble friend Lord Holmes brings up, and trying to cater for those today in a Bill when we know just how quickly AI and other technological advances are going. My own amendments are modest in nature, in terms of trying to enable the charitable resale of tickets. At the same time, I think that they introduce an interesting conundrum. If we are saying that we are very happy for a charity auction to get a good price-and generally we want it to get as good a price as possible-we are saying that we do not mind profiteering in principle as long as it is for a good cause. Again, that brings some interesting complications into this matter. On our amendments around a genuine resale market, as our amendment tries to show and as that of my noble friend Lord...
I thank the noble Lords, Lord Holmes of Richmond, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, Lord Markham and Lord Addington, and my noble friends Lord Bassam of Brighton, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Lady Keeley for their amendments. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, for giving notice of his intention to oppose the question that Clause 5 stand part of the Bill. I count myself as among those who were slightly surprised at this, but I appreciate having heard the noble Lord that this is because of his consistent opposition to the many ills associated with the secondary ticket market. However, I do not accept that it is not appropriate for these measures to be in the Bill-but I shall go on to that later. Amendments 27 and 89 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, would require the Secretary of State to introduce an accessible ticketing quota in regulations, and that related information must be included in a register held by authorised ticket sellers. We are determined that when the UK hosts major events, we lead by example in ensuring they are inclusive and accessible to the widest possible audience. That is why we have worked with UEFA on its approach for Euro 2028, which seeks to put fans first with transparent and accessible ticketing principles. It was interesting to hear the examples given by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, on accessible ticketing. Noble Lords may be aware of another example, which is in my speaking notes, of UEFA’s track record in this regard...
Amendment 29, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Parkinson and Lord Markham, would introduce a defence to the ticket touting offence mirroring that included under the Birmingham Commonwealth Games Act 2020. The difference is that the offence in that Act did not criminalise the resale of tickets where carried out at face value and not in the course of business. That meant that a person advertising a ticket on behalf of someone else had to determine whether or not the ticket was being sold above face value to avoid being found guilty of the offence. This consideration is redundant under this Bill, which applies to all activity that is carried out in a public place, including on an online platform.
Amendments 30 and 32, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, seek to further define what is meant by an “unauthorised ticketing activity”. The majority of activity this amendment seeks to regulate is already prohibited under the offence. The definition of touting in the Bill is intentionally broad. It includes where a person carries out an unauthorised ticketing activity in a public place, in the course of business, or with a view to any person making a profit. Major sporting event owners require strict controls over the resale of tickets. That is why the ticket touting offence in the Bill permits public resale only where it has been authorised by the event owner or organiser. In reality, we expect that major sporting event owners will put in place an official resale platform for such tickets. The amendments also introduce provisions on surge pricing. Businesses are already required by law to give fans clear and accurate price information before purchase, free from undue pressure or other manipulative tactics that could influence their decision.
Amendment 31, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, seeks to exempt anyone buying six or fewer tickets for an event in a single transaction. This amendment would create a significant loophole in the ticket touting offence. A person could buy six tickets at a time and resell without limitation, potentially making significant profits from events funded in part by the taxpayer. These events should be affordable and accessible to all. Enabling people to buy up significant numbers of tickets with the intention to sell these at a significantly increased value would undermine this objective. The Bill does not ban the transfer or sale of legitimately purchased tickets to friends or family. It may, however, in my view, be the so-called jilted girlfriend who gets to go.
Amendment 33, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay and Lord Markham, would require any person authorised to carry out ticketing activities to establish a mechanism through which tickets can be transferred or sold to another person. The Bill does not, as I have already stated, prohibit the private transfer of tickets between friends and family where this is carried out at face value, and we expect event organisers to put in place mechanisms to facilitate this. We expect, and would seek assurances up front, that an official resale platform would be made available so that people can legally resell tickets.
Amendments 34 and 35, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, seek to create a power to specify in regulations technical standards for distributed ledger ticketing records. We share the noble Lord’s objective to ensure that the sale and distribution of electronic tickets for major sporting events are safe and secure. Indeed, that is why we are putting in place a criminal offence for the unauthorised sale and resale of tickets. However, it is up to event organisers to decide what systems and processes they put in place for their ticketing operations, and to ensure that these meet any relevant legal requirements and technical standards.
The noble Lord’s Amendment 64 would require guidance published on ticketing to include provisions related to AI-assisted enforcement and evidential standards for enforcement in the digital environment. We recognise that companies are continually investing in technology to ensure that tickets reach genuine fans. In particular, we fully support advances in technological solutions that disrupt criminal activity online. However, it is not for the Government to prescribe technical standards for the use of technology in a piecemeal way.
Amendment 36, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, would enable the maximum level of financial penalty imposed directly for breach of the ticket touting offence to be no more than 10% of the person’s annual global turnover. Enforcement authorities, including local weights and measures authorities in Great Britain, can impose a financial penalty as an alternative to prosecution and have discretion to determine the level of financial penalty up to £20,000. This enables local authorities to impose penalties without having to go through the courts.
The Bill also enables local weights and measures authorities and the Competition and Markets Authority to use the enforcement powers under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. This already allows the Competition and Markets Authority to directly levy fines of up to 10% of global turnover where the collective interests of consumers have been harmed.
Amendment 62, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, would remove the ability of the Competition and Markets Authority to enforce a ticket touting offence in the Bill and would instead confer enforcement powers on National Trading Standards. The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, also made this point. I am not aware of any examples of National Trading Standards being provided with powers to directly enforce offences beyond those available to local trading standards authorities, which receive funding for priority projects from National Trading Standards. In fact, I think the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, made a point about power going to the Competition and Markets Authority, not National Trading Standards.
As I hope I have already made clear, local trading standards authorities are empowered under this Bill to take decisive action without having to rely on the Competition and Markets Authority or the courts. This complements the Competition and Markets Authority’s enhanced enforcement powers under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act, which focuses on interventions with high-impact results, such as changing market behaviour or deterring those who might otherwise breach the law.
To answer the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, on whether Clause 5 should stand part of the Bill, we believe that Clause 5 is integral to the framework provisions within this Bill, and to delivering the requirements of major sporting event owners in relation to ticketing. The clause is designed to ensure that the period over which the ticketing provisions apply can be tailored to the requirements of different events. It does not prescribe a maximum period that the ticket touting offence can apply, as this will vary between events to ensure that the period for which the offence is enforced is proportionate to the particular sporting event. The clause also requires regulations to specify the part or parts of the United Kingdom to which the provisions apply.
I appreciated the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, making it really clear that his opposition to the measures in the Bill was related to a desire for wider ticketing reforms. In response, I say that I think we are in agreement that this Bill is not an appropriate vehicle for wider ticketing reforms. The noble Lord is right that the time limit provisions in the Bill apply only to major sporting events that meet the necessary conditions and are specifically designed to enable public resale only where it has been authorised by the event owner. However, any delay to this Bill by including significant additional provisions outside the current scope puts at risk our ability to deliver commitments made to UEFA for Euro 2028. Pre-legislative scrutiny of the wider secondary ticketing reforms will ensure we take into account the views of experts in the live events sector, helping to deliver legislation that is enforceable, effective and future-proof.
On the point made by the noble Lord related to StubHub, I was not aware of the comments, but I have a brief response from the department. It says that the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, raised a departmental meeting with StubHub and the department met with stakeholders from all areas of the live events sector, including StubHub and Viagogo in order to understand the full ticketing landscape. However, the department is clear that these meetings did not impact the decision to publish the Bill in draft in this Session, and it is committed to doing that.
Before I conclude, I am keen to touch on the Government’s wider position of the touting of tickets, which has been mentioned by a number of noble Lords. As noble Lords are aware, we have committed to bring forward a resale price cap, including a cap on the level of service fee that can be charged and limits on the number of tickets individuals can resell. We are fully committed to introducing these measures. Work to prepare this legislation is happening at pace, but we need to get it right; that is why we intend to publish the Bill in draft in this Session.
Recognising the interest in these matters, I commit to hosting an all-Peers session on this matter in the coming weeks, with relevant officials, so noble Lords can get clarity on where we are and where we are planning to go. I will endeavour to do this before the Summer Recess. In the meantime, I respectfully ask all noble Lords not to press their amendments and to be content for this clause to stand part of the Bill.
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her quite extensive, albeit rapid-fire response. Many of us will read it in greater detail and come back with any questions after we have had that opportunity. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, that, while we might have disagreed on my recommendation that we oppose Clause 5 becoming part of the Bill, he at least recognises that it is effectively a probing amendment. The reason I put it down in those terms was that there were many good amendments that were already tabled on this subject. I wanted to highlight a really important point: by simply placing it on the face of this Bill, given the Government’s commitments, we lacked consistency across the country.
That is my point exactly, and that is why this is an important debate to have had this evening. I congratulate the noble Lord on his observations and comments.
I am grateful for that intervention: I echo everything he said: everything he said, in terms of detail, is to be supported. The second point is this: we have to be incredibly careful, in discussing this subject, about the autonomy of world sport. We are looking at major sporting events and we are seeking to encourage UEFA, FIFA or the IOC to award the right to host those events in this country. We are not telling UEFA, the IOC or FIFA what to do; that is not the way world sport works. I hear in the response from the Minister, “We expect them to do this”, “We expect them to do that” and “We expect them to do otherwise”. We can expect as much as we want: it is UEFA, or the event organiser, that decides. What I was pleased to hear, in that context, was that this is clearly drafted with the agreement of UEFA for the Euros 2028, in the same way that there was unique legislation introduced for London 2012 to reflect what the IOC wanted. That is why the contribution from my noble friend Lord Holmes was so valid. The IOC listened carefully to what LOCOG-the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games-had discussed in great detail. They had discussed the need to criminalise the secondary market from selling tickets, to criminalise touting, so they could totally control the ticketing operation for London 2012, which they did highly successfully, not least because it allowed them to make tickets available to schools as my noble friend Lord Holmes said. They looked...
I would not normally intervene. However, I was clear that we are going to introduce a draft Bill and will introduce legislation in due course, so I feel the noble Lord is going slightly beyond my response. I am happy to sit down and talk to any noble Lord about the ticket touting measures coming up, but I cannot accept that we are not taking it seriously, as the noble Lord suggests.
That is an extremely important and welcome intervention, but the Minister said “in due course”. Can she commit that that means during this Parliament?
I cannot commit to a timescale, but I have offered to have a meeting where we can discuss that in further detail.
To fail to commit for the whole of this Parliament, when we have years to run, is disappointing, given the strength of the comments made by the Prime Minister and other Ministers in recent months. It is vital that the Government indicate by the time we get to Report whether they will legislate during this Parliament. The public have longed to get legislation on to the statute book to protect people from being ripped off and turning up at many concerts, having paid a lot of money to bring their kids down from wherever they live, to find out that they have a forged ticket. That must be stopped. We must have tough legislation. That is why I share with the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, the need to legislate on this and why we were so pleased that the Government were willing to come forward with legislation that Parliament could consider. To know that this might not happen in the current Parliament would be deeply disappointing.
My noble friend emphasises the importance of tackling touts in a broad piece of legislation that does not cover just these events. Could he also emphasise, as my noble friend Lord Fuller raised, ensuring the obligation of those selling the tickets to maximise the controls to avoid touting?
I absolutely endorse that comment. As my noble friend, who has sat with me on this subject many times over the past five years, will know, ever since the Waterson report and many others, I have sought to table and introduce legislation-sometimes successfully-to give far greater clarity and visibility on tickets and to make sure that when people sell tickets, they follow the conditions that the organiser of the event has brought forward. If the organiser has set the condition that it should not be sold on the secondary market, it should not be. We have needed legislation to be introduced in order to achieve that. I am absolutely tough on this subject, as the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, knows. I have the privilege of co-chairing the All-Party Group on Ticket Abuse. We have to take action on this. I really hope that, following the Minister’s response, she will be able to go away and consider before Report an absolute commitment that this Government will honour their word and introduce legislation not during this Session but during this Parliament.
Clause 5 agreed.
Clause 6: Persons granting ticketing authorisations
Amendment 27 not moved.
Clause 6 agreed.
Clause 7: Exceptions to the ticket touting offence
Amendment 28 not moved.
Clause 7 agreed.
Amendment 28A not moved.
Schedule 1: Ticket touting provisions
Amendments 29 to 36 not moved.
Schedule 1 agreed.
Clause 8: Advertising regulations
Amendment 37 not moved.
Clause 8 agreed.
Clause 9: Persons granting advertising authorisations
Amendment 38
Moved by
38: Clause 9, page 6, line 22, at end insert- “(5) Where the regulations designate a person to grant advertising authorisations in relation to a sporting event, the regulations must require that person, in determining whether to grant an authorisation, to have regard to-(a) the impact of any proposed exclusive authorisation on small and medium-sized enterprises trading in or near the restricted advertising zone,(b) the desirability of ensuring that local and small businesses have a reasonable opportunity to benefit from the sporting event,(c) whether any proposed exclusive arrangement is proportionate to the legitimate commercial interests of the event organiser, and(d) whether there has been reasonable and proportionate communication with small and medium-sized enterprises trading in or near the restricted advertising zones, of any exclusive authorisations.”Member’s explanatory statement This amendment would ensure that, in the case of exclusive advertising rights for a certain sporting event, small and medium-sized companies are not unfairly harmed.
My Lords, this is really a probing amendment to try to get at some of the hardy perennials, shall we say, when dealing with Bills that take on big sporting events. That is, when you have a big sporting event, you have a big advertising structure and restrictions being imposed on the local traders, which the local traders think are not fair. It sometimes gets slightly absurd. I cannot help but remember-but I am trying to forget-the Olympic kebab van that operated in the East End of London and which was restricted by the Olympic Games. It became a case of why they did not know and why there was not some smaller operation to lessen the impact on their business. In the rest of the group, we have amendments dealing charitable situations. The situation here is about how we are going to make it a little easier for small and medium-sized businesses to operate properly within these structures. What are the duties on those organising the big events to let them know what is going to happen and mitigate any harms to them? This amendment is a way of trying to find out the Government’s thinking on this, because it is one of those things that comes back and niggles again and again when you have a big event. I hope we can at least find out what the Government’s thinking is about how we are going to make sure that we make life a little bit easier for these small units, which should be beneficiaries, so that they actually get some benefit from this. That is all I am trying to do here. I beg...
My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in the debate on this group of amendments. I will speak to the two amendments in my name. The first, Amendment 39, is incredibly straightforward and simply seeks to exclude charities from the restricted advertisement zone, as set out in the Bill. It replicates the wording from the London 2012 Act of 2006. I am very interested in the Minister’s response to that wording. My second amendment in this group, Amendment 63, seeks a retrospective on the enforcement action to assure it from an equality and inclusion perspective. It simply sets out equality enforcement assessments so that the data is there and can be reviewed, s actions can be taken where there are disparities, and there can be learnings in real time for that event and for other events that will be hosted across the country. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
My Lords, I wonder whether I could briefly help out the noble Lord, Lord Addington. There was also a case in 2012 when a lady decided to do knitting patterns of the mascots and made a Games maker. It is incredibly important that the rights and brand of these major events are protected. I think I am right in saying that they issued her a warning for knitting one and trying to sell it at her local church. They then recognised the importance of stepping back from that, because they became hugely popular, were a lot of fun and did not impact anybody. However, a line has to be drawn between what we are seeing quite a lot with FIFA in terms of ambush marketing versus somebody just doing something that is quite nice. There is some merit in these amendments to make sure that local businesses are protected and are able to carry out their day-to-day work without threat of legal action.
My Lords, I will speak briefly to my Amendment 56 in the group. The Bill unashamedly tries to snare and capture the large global events that can make a national impact in our country, but national impact and national scale also have local effects. One of the purposes of hosting these big events is to transform the local economies, drive investments and spread love and enjoyment in the local communities that act as hosts. It is naive to think that this is front and centre of the organisers’ minds. The promoters of the global events line up their sponsors, sports rights and big global brands, and there are pallet loads of merchandise to shift. We know that money follows sport, and the Bill makes sport all about the money by law. I am concerned about the powers to designate zones around stadiums or other undefined places-which might be fan zones, I suppose-where local trading will be made illegal. At Second Reading, I gave the example-and it was on “Yesterday in Parliament” actually, which I was very pleased about; that was my first time-I gave the example of the 10-minute walk from Twickenham station to the Allianz Stadium down Whitton Road, where every type of food is available, from licensed food vans to stalls set up in front gardens, where the enterprising home owners have demolished their garden walls. There is not just food; there are old boys selling tat, and there is the little guy with his roadside kebab van and the youth club, with its pop-up gazebo, frying chicken...
My Lords, I follow my noble friend Lord Fuller in his expression of concern about the impact on small businesses. Sadly, many noble Lords will know me as a statistician who spends all his time looking at opinion polls and numbers in one direction or another and then commenting on them. I have spent inadequate time looking at the impact assessment, to which no reference has been made yet in these debates. Despite my apparent facility for statistics, all I can say about the impact assessment is that my head hurts. I found it incredibly difficult to comprehend page after page of low-impact, central-impact and high-impact estimates. I will comment on one section. I could comment on others, but I address my comments overall. I find it very difficult to understand the impact that each of the different events would have in terms of positives and negatives, because they are aggregated in a very odd way. Page 41 of the impact assessment refers to the impact on street traders. It says: “The low estimate reflects that 50% of traders will be able to continue to trade due to potential mitigations”. Therefore, 50% of the traders will not be able to continue trading-and that is the low estimate. It goes on to say: “The central estimate reflects the likelihood that 75% of traders in the affected area will be unable to trade while the provisions are in place. The high estimate serves as an upper bound where all traders operating in areas where prohibitions apply are unable to trade”. We are...
My noble friend has painted a picture and enumerated it with examples of sports stadiums. Under the Bill, there is to be a zone cast around the stadium where trading will be banned. But there are other provisions that have other events; for example, fan zones. Has my noble friend considered that fan zones could be in town centres? Town centres could be sterilised from trading. Has he considered that the net may be cast much further than just street traders, to other organisations too?
I thank my noble friend for that intervention and for identifying other areas. I tried to make it clear that I had taken only one element of one page of an impact assessment. It was on page 41. The impact assessment is over 90 pages long, with central, low and high estimates in all sorts of different categorisations There is no overall assessment of cost potential for any small or large business or the impact on the economy. There is lots of explanation that tells us how wonderful it is going to be week in, week out, because of the benefits of sport. That is right-we have all recognised that-but there is an indistinct identification of the potential costs to some small and very small businesses, and we really should recognise the potential implications for all concerned.
My Lords, in many senses, we have outperformed a World Cup football squad tonight, because we have hit the target ahead of schedule for this first day in Committee, and we have done it without a hydration break. Let me begin with the two amendments I have tabled in this group. It is an important group on which to end our debate, because it deals with the significant impact of the Bill on the restrictions on commercial interests, small as well as big, a point that my noble friends have rightly accentuated. My Amendment 40 seeks to create an exemption for charities from the advertising offences in the Bill, applying only where a charity is advertising wholly or partly for the purpose of promoting itself or a specified list of charitable services. I hope the Minister will be attracted to it. It is word for word taken from the provisions in the Birmingham Commonwealth Games (Advertising and Trading) Regulations 2021. If it was suitable then, why not for the new framework that we are seeking to set out? Amendment 55 similarly relates to charitable exemptions. Paragraph 1(2)(d) of Schedule 3 to the Bill states that a “Trading activity” includes “appealing for money or other property (whether for charitable or other purposes), with the exception of begging”. That means that the offence of trading in a restricted trading zone applies to charitable fundraising but not to people who are begging. I wonder if the noble Baroness can explain why it has been drawn up in that way. Surely we...
I thank the noble Lords, Lord Addington, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, Lord Markham, Lord Fuller and Lord Holmes of Richmond, for their amendments. Amendment 38, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, would require a designated person to have regard to additional factors related to small and medium or local enterprises when determining whether to grant an advertising authorisation. We share the noble Lord’s intention to ensure that such businesses are not unfairly impacted and that they are able to benefit from the sporting event where appropriate. In the interest of proportionality, we intend to minimise the impacts of the advertising provisions on existing businesses by introducing exceptions to the offences in regulations. These exceptions would be based on existing advertising controls to allow usual advertising on business premises. Businesses within a restricted zone wishing to display advertising that is not subject to an exception may be able to seek authorisation to do so-for example, from the event organiser or local authority. Where an authorisations process is in place and the proposed activity does not undermine commercial sponsors, businesses with an existing licence to advertise should be given precedence. Before making regulations, the Secretary of State or devolved authority must consult with the relevant authority and any other persons. This could include local businesses. Guidance setting out the advertising restrictions that will be in place must also...
Equally, well-established businesses may use such an exception to circumvent the restrictions on advertising and trading, leveraging the opportunity to raise funding for their charity partners while at the same time providing them with significant amounts of brand exposure. That being said, we agree that we should support charitable fundraising where appropriate. Charities that are seeking to raise money for themselves may be able to apply for authorisation to undertake fundraising activity in a restricted trading zone, and priority should be given to charities already operating in areas affected by the restrictions.
Amendment 56, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, would provide an exception to the trading offence for activity carried out in accordance with a trading licence. I recognise the need to protect those traders operating in locations that may be affected by the restrictions. These provisions ensure the safe and effective flow of spectators around event locations while protecting commercial rights. This means considering the impact of existing traders on spectator management.
We will seek to minimise the impact on existing businesses that trade from a fixed location, including street traders licensed by the local authority operating in an assigned pitch. Such traders would be able to apply for authorisation to continue trading and, where feasible, these traders should be prioritised. If this is not possible, we expect event organisers to work with local authorities to consider whether alternative trading arrangements can be put in place. Further exceptions to the trading offence may be brought forward in regulations on a case-by-case basis.
In relation to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, I would be very happy to discuss the impact assessment process further. I know that the noble Lord is one of those who reads all these documents and it would be useful to have that discussion as we progress. That is not to say that I assume that other noble Lords do not read those documents-I have just realised that I might have implied that.
Amendment 63, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, would require enforcement authorities to publish an equalities report, with details on what this encompasses set out, within six months of an event concluding. I want to provide reassurance that we expect punitive measures to be used only as a last resort. As with previous events, this Government will work with event organisers and enforcement authorities to ensure that enforcement activity prioritises intentional and persistent breaches of the law. This will include ensuring that appropriate training is in place for enforcement officers.
Only public authorities can be designated enforcers under the Bill. As the noble Lord will know, all public authorities are subject to the public sector equality duty in exercising their functions. For major sporting events, we expect enforcement authorities to gather and share intelligence about breaches and associated enforcement activity to support ongoing proportionate implementation of the framework provisions.
I welcome the opportunity to discuss these important areas and am very happy to meet any noble Lord who wishes to do so as we progress. But I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.
My Lords, it is nice to end on something like agreement. I thank the Minister for her reply. It seems to me that we are accepting that there is a potential problem here and just about finding a solution. I must admit that the impact assessment is the sort of document I look at, cower, then drop. So, I will possibly take the sage-like advice of the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, and buy him a beer to get a good interpretation of it next time. There has been a problem here. I see that the Government are trying to move towards dealing with it. But it is also a case of trying to make sure that those people who are going to be affected by it know, so that they can start to take mitigating measures themselves. I am not absolutely sure whether the Minister covered that well enough in her reply. Okay, this is the start of a process, not the end, but I think that we should have a look at this, because it is an irritant: it is a bit of grit that is not producing pearls. We should try to get rid of it and do the best we can. We have enough information and experience now to be able to do something better than what we have at the moment. Let us have a look and see how we can get round to it. I look forward to having further discussions with the Minister on this in future because I think we can make something better than we have at the moment. With that caveat, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Amendment 38 withdrawn.
Clause 9 agreed.
Clause 10: Exceptions to the advertising offence
Amendment 39 not moved.
Clause 10 agreed.
Amendment 40 not moved.
Schedule 2: Advertising provisions
Amendments 41 to 53 not moved.
Schedule 2 agreed.
Clauses 11 to 13 agreed.
Amendment 54 not moved.
Schedule 3: Trading provisions
Amendments 55 and 56 not moved.
Schedule 3 agreed.
Amendment 57 not moved.
Clauses 14 to 16 agreed.
House resumed.
House adjourned at 9.07 pm.