Policing and Crime Bill

Debate between Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen and Lord Moynihan

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 7th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

My Lords, it is a great honour to be in the presence of two such world-renowned athletes. Their Lordships look so well that it has certainly given me great inspiration to go back to the gym as soon as possible.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Moynihan for again raising the important issue of tackling doping in sport. As the House will be aware, the Government are reviewing the issue of criminalisation. The review is now in its final stages and we hope we will soon be in a position to publish. In finalising the report, we will naturally want to take into account the views expressed by noble Lords in this debate.

Anti-doping is a technical area and it is important to stress here that undertaking a review requires a comprehensive evidence base before considering any possible legislative options. The Government are very much alive to the issues and are actively examining what more can be done to enhance our national approach to doping, including the possibility of criminal sanctions, to uphold the highest standards of integrity in sport. We recognise that the desire to dope can be driven financially, and financial penalties are likely to be as damaging to those who cheat as a ban. Until now the Government’s view has been that, rather than through legislation, this should be a matter for sports bodies to sanction. The central question for the current review, however, is whether this approach still holds good.

It is important to underline that serious doping is already covered under existing domestic criminal legislation. Under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and the Medicines Act 1968, the trafficking and supply of many doping substances is a criminal offence, carrying a penalty of up to 14 years’ imprisonment. Tough sanctions are also already in place via the 2015 World Anti-Doping Code. The code includes automatic four-year bans for drug cheats and support staff who are found guilty of doping. Such a ban forms a significant part of an athlete’s relatively short career, and it would also mean they would miss an Olympic Games cycle.

The Sports Minister, Tracey Crouch, is member of the foundation board of the World Anti-Doping Agency and attended its November meeting, where there was acknowledgement from foundation board members that the current code would be subject to further revision in the near future. There was also a call to revisit the discussion around athletes convicted of doping offences being banned from the Olympic Games.

The Government remain committed to tackling doping in sport and we will continue to work with UK Anti-Doping and our sport stakeholders to ensure that our athletes can compete in a clean sport environment. If the evidence is clear that stronger sanctions are needed, we will take action. There is a process in train—indeed, nearing completion—to ascertain whether the evidence points in the direction advocated by my noble friend. I therefore respectfully suggest to him that until we have completed the review, it would be premature to legislate on this matter in the manner proposed in this amendment. My noble friend has suggested that the Government instead pursue a different course by taking a power to implement the review’s findings through regulations. This is a tempting offer, but I still believe that would be putting the cart before the horse, and the House and the Delegated Powers Committee would rightly chastise the Government for legislating on an important area of public policy through a wide-ranging delegated power.

I recognise that my noble friend has been pursuing this issue for a great many years. I think he suggested that the leadership of WADA is conflicted and that independence is needed. At the most recent meeting of the World Anti-Doping Agency governing foundation board, approval was given for a review of WADA’s governance. Furthermore, there will also be a review on non-compliance sanctions. As a regulator, WADA needs teeth, and we are supportive of such an approach. I understand my noble friend’s frustration; none the less I hope he will bear with us for a little while longer. The Minister for Sport, Tracey Crouch, would be very pleased to meet my noble friend next week. In the meantime, I hope he will agree to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Moynihan]

I am grateful to all noble Lords who took part in this debate. I hope it is not too mischievous to point out that over the last 30 years—I think it is about 30 years since I was Minister for Sport and had the first review of this matter—we have had a whole range of reviews. I welcome that Tracey Crouch announced a further review nearly a year ago, but it is unfortunate that the timing of its publication may be a matter of a couple of days after Third Reading of the Bill and thus preclude the opportunity for us to consider it and reflect it in the legislation.

I will very briefly respond to questions or comments that were made in the debate. In response to the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, I accept that improvements could be made to the wording of the amendment. I had hoped that my noble friend the Minister would have accepted that we were heading in the right direction, and taken it away with me and the likes of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, to improve the wording before we got to the next stage, but sadly that was not to be this evening.

I stand second to none in recognising that over many decades the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, has not only been a pioneer but led the campaign to criminalise the worst excesses of doping, and his speech bore testimony to that. He said some very kind things, along with a slightly naughty reference to the benefit that I had from not taking growth hormones—diuretics would have been more appropriate for me, to keep my weight down in the coxswain seat. However, he is wrong on one point: very sadly I did not return from Moscow with a gold medal, but with a silver medal. I have subsequently learned that many of the athletes competing in that regatta were not only on drugs but subsequently sued the German Government for the damage to their health. They won and retained their gold medals. Such is the policy pursued by the International Olympic Committee on 20th-century gold medallists.

I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Addington, who was concerned about the wider application, said. Again, that could have been covered in an improvement to the amendment, but I recognise the point that he made. However, the amendment did not find favour with the Government at this stage and we may not have that opportunity.

I hold out hope that many of the points that the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, made will continue to reflect the position of his party. He has personally given a lot of support on this and shown interest in it during the passage of the Bill, and I am very grateful to him, as I am to the noble Lords on the Front Bench opposite, both of whom have been regularly in touch with me on the subject. It is a pity that the Government have focused on the review as the cornerstone of the reason why we should not be moving ahead now. I genuinely believe we have an outstanding set of Ministers in the DCMS. Karen Bradley and Tracey Crouch in particular have done a lot of very good work in this direction, and I do not think I would be speaking out of turn to say that I have heard them on a number of occasions at least put forward the benefits of considering the criminalisation of doping in sport. I hope therefore that the Government will be open-minded in their review on returning to this subject. There is a momentum, both internationally and nationally, towards legislation on this subject, and that momentum needs to continue. Thanks to the noble Lords who participated in a series of debates, it is continuing in the right direction in your Lordships’ House.

In closing my remarks, I very much hope that that the Minister will convey to her colleagues what she has said about the importance of the review and that they will seriously take it on board. In addition, I hope that an early opportunity will be found for your Lordships’ House to consider the findings of that review and to discuss this in more detail, including the possibility of finding an opportunity to legislate—if that is the wish of your Lordships—at a future stage. However, I recognise that we need to look at the review, take it into account and wait on its publication. With something of a heavy heart, after campaigning for this for some 30 years, ever since the first summit in Copenhagen, when I was Minister in 1987, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Policing and Crime Bill

Debate between Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen and Lord Moynihan

Committee: 4th sitting (Hansard - part two): House of Lords
Wednesday 9th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Moynihan for raising the important issue of tackling doping in sport.

This has been a difficult year for sport and those fighting doping—namely, the World Anti-Doping Agency, the International Olympic Committee and the International Paralympic Committee. We must recognise that these are global issues that cannot be solved by legislative action in any one country, although we must play our part. We are not complacent and continue to do all we can to protect the integrity of sport in this country, particularly where there is strong evidence that calls for government intervention.

As my noble friend mentioned, the Sunday Times allegations against UK Anti-Doping were disappointing to read. UK Anti-Doping immediately launched an independent investigation, the outcome of which recommended a number of actions to be implemented, all of which have been accepted by that organisation. Such action reflects the tough stance that the Government and UK Anti-Doping take on doping in the fight to provide a level playing field for our athletes to compete on.

My noble friend raises a valid point in saying that those athletes who dope are defrauding our clean athletes. We recognise that the desire to dope can be driven financially, and financial penalties are likely to be as damaging to those who cheat as a ban would be. However, the Government believe that rather than tackling this through legislation, it should be a matter for sports bodies. We recognise that a sanction in this regard could well act as a strong deterrent to doping cheats who represent the UK or compete in our events.

The UK Government and UK Anti-Doping have a reputation for taking a tough, measured stance on doping. To maintain that, we need to ensure that there is a strong evidence base before any consideration or commitment is given to taking forward any possible legislative options. In order to have that evidence base, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is currently conducting a cross-government review of the existing anti-doping legislative framework and assessing whether stronger criminal sanctions are required. The relevant government departments and agencies, such as the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice, the National Crime Agency and the Serious Fraud Office, are contributing to the review. We expect the outcome of the review to be published before the end of the year.

In conclusion, I ask my noble friend to be patient for a little longer. The Government are very much alive to the issues he raised and are actively examining what more needs to be done. In fact, the Minister for Sport and Tourism, during a debate on 6 July on doping and the Olympics, said:

“The review is currently under way and, should it become clear that stronger criminal sanctions are needed, we will not hesitate to act”.—[Official Report, Commons, 6/7/16; col. 365WH.]

I hope, therefore, that my noble friend will be happy to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Moynihan]

My Lords, I thank all those who have participated in the debate and shall comment briefly on the questions and points that have been raised.

First, the interpretation by the noble Lord, Lord Harris, of the reach of the amendment is correct and is set out in proposed new subsection (1). There is a real problem in the perception, for example among athletes and in the world of rugby, that the time to bulk out is when they are at university age or college age so that they can move on to the professional ranks. There are serious issues of doping in sport at that age, and I believe very strongly that when this is passed, as I hope it will be at some stage in the parliamentary process, it will be a very strong deterrent to those young people not to take performance-enhancing drugs.

The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, in a strong and comprehensive speech, focused on Rio. I would reflect on this one point about testing at the Olympic Games. If you test positive at the Olympic Games, you come into the category of the dopey dopers, because the chances are that if you are on drugs at that point, you will get caught. If you want to knowingly cheat fellow athletes out of selection, you take drugs now—in the winter months—and go to countries of the world were testing is non-existent and where you can be pretty sure you can spend four or six weeks enhancing your performance doing six circuits a day as opposed to a normal person’s three, and then retain the benefit of that muscle bank as you move into the summer season, having lost any trace of the drugs in your system. Indeed, you can take a range of drugs that act as a curtain in front of a play, reducing the chance that you will be caught as you move into the season. The huge amount of money that the World Anti-Doping Agency put into testing at the Olympic Games is effectively to catch the dopey dopers, not those who spend a lot of time and effort to enhance their performance during the winter months, and thus cheat fellow athletes out of selection.

I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, for her overgenerous words. She was an outstanding member of the advisory board that helped to design and implement the work that the British Olympic Association did to ensure the success of London 2012—so she is being overmodest in saying that her knowledge of the world of sport is not as great as she might like. It is outstandingly good.

I am also grateful to the Minister. I absolutely agree with her starting point that the World Anti-Doping Agency needs to work in tandem with individual countries, working closely together to put in place an effective legislative framework to deal with this issue. However, it is not correct to say that leaving it completely to the World Anti-Doping Agency and to the sporting bodies will solve this problem. It patently is not solving the problem, which is the reason why so many countries are now legislating. Although they need to legislate in harmony, reflecting their own national interest, they have to legislate together, which is exactly what they are doing. In framing the legislation today, I have taken the example of the Germans, the Italians and the Dutch, who have focused on the fact that it is not just the athlete but the entourage who need to be criminalised. The deterrent effect in those countries of putting legislation on to the statute books has already been very effective.

Finally, on the end-of-year review, I said at the outset that I have been working on this since the Copenhagen declaration exactly 30 years ago, since when there have been so many reviews that it would take me a while to go through them all on Google. However, I always welcome further research and reflections from the Government. I note that they talk about the end of the year, which seems to be very close to our consideration of this legislation on Report. I therefore urge the Minister to see whether the review can be completed in time for Report so that we can take it into consideration. Even if it cannot, I would very much hope that, on Report, we can reflect on what my noble friend the Minister has said, as well as on the speeches made today from both sides of the House. We can then see whether we should send a legislative framework down to the Commons, so that in the new year, which is the likely date, Members can take into account the review to which the Minister alluded and, if necessary, amend the legislation at that point. We can consider any further amendments.

I believe there is widespread support for this provision both inside and outside the House and across parties. I very much hope this work will continue between now and Report, with further consideration on Report. In the light of that, and with my thanks to the Minister for her speech, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.