Schools: Sport
Debate between Lord Addington and Lord Higgins(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Higgins
Thank you. I was going to give way. I declare an interest as patron of Herne Hill Harriers. Does my noble friend agree that far too many people give up sport when they leave school and that it would both encourage the general standard of sport in schools and encourage people to continue sport after school if more schoolchildren joined outside sports clubs before they left school? Will he see whether the department can do something to encourage this?
London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (Advertising and Trading) (England) Regulations 2011
Debate between Lord Addington and Lord Higgins
Lord Addington
My Lords, I have very few words to say on this order. First, it seems to be in line with what we were expecting. Anybody who has been involved in this knows that a great part of the Olympic movement has been the defence of the brand to allow sufficient funds to be raised to enable everything to go ahead. This was always going to inconvenience people to a degree. The question here is whether the Government and the entire Olympic movement have done enough to ensure that that minimal level of interference with ordinary life has been achieved. I suspect that they have taken some very good steps towards it.
When it comes to ambush marketing, everybody raised a smile at the thought of the last World Cup when all the, shall we say, very presentable young ladies in orange skirts were seen dancing around. The fact of the matter is, however, that the way these events are financed is by making sure that sponsors get in and get a reason to carry on sponsoring them, which is the most important factor. I thus suggest that the Government should be intelligently vigorous in enforcing this, because if they are not—and this is the important factor—future events will be threatened. This will be part of one of the legacy issues: do sponsors of major sporting events have sufficient backing to make sure that they get enough bang for their bucks to come back next time? I hope my noble friend will be able to assure us that this will be looked at in the overall review at the end of the Games process to make sure that sponsors are looked after in an intelligent way that does not stop all life during the Games.
Lord Higgins
My Lords, I understand that the point raised by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee on this order—namely, that it would not be appropriate to have an order approved by negative resolution unless the Minister had given an assurance that it was necessary to proceed in this way for reasons of urgency—has already been met in the legislation which we have amended. I think that is a satisfactory situation.
I apologise, since I entirely share the enthusiasm of other noble Lords for the entire success of the Games, for raising just one point which I had not previously noticed. It relates to Regulations 6 and 7 of the order on page 4. Regulation 6 is concerned with the control of advertising activity, and we all understand the reasons for that, as has just been mentioned by my noble friend when discussing the whole question of sponsorship. However, I am concerned about Regulation 7(1), which says:
“Regulation 6 does not apply to advertising activity intended to—
(a) demonstrate support for or opposition to the views or actions of any person or body of persons,
(b) publicise a belief, cause or campaign, or
(c) mark or commemorate an event”.
It is really sub-paragraphs (a) and (b) which give me some cause for concern, given the recent protests which we have had outside St Paul’s. I am not at all clear why we want to make this exception in Regulation 7. On the contrary, I would have thought there was some case for strengthening the proposals for that. Indeed, we may want to make absolutely sure that provision is made to prevent demonstrations. As was pointed out in previous remarks, in the course of the Games it may be very easy to get enormous publicity for a particular cause, whatever it may be. Therefore, I would be grateful if my noble friend could tell us to what extent this has been considered and whether there is some argument in favour of strengthening or amending the order; or in favour of producing an alternative that makes it absolutely clear that demonstrations of the sort that I have described are prevented from getting advertising as a result of taking place, perhaps to the considerable disruption of those wishing to watch the Games, which we hope will be a great success.
London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (Amendment) Bill
Debate between Lord Addington and Lord Higgins
Lord Higgins
My Lords, it may be convenient if I speak first to the amendment that has just been proposed by the noble Lord, which seeks to remove Section 31(1)(b) from the original Act. His amendment would leave the clause simply reading that the person commits an offence if he sells an Olympic ticket,
“in a public place or in the course of business”.
That would create a dangerous situation, for the reasons that I mentioned in the previous debate, namely that unless we are successful—as my noble friend Lord Coe said a little while ago—in setting up a situation on site that enables people to dispose of tickets that they cannot use, it may be that perfectly reasonable people seeking to sell their ticket in any public place, not necessarily outside the stadium, would commit an offence. As I suggested earlier, instead of sub-paragraph (b), which the noble Lord has suggested we omit, we should say “or above face value”.
Turning to my main point, I do not presume to say that my amendment is in any way perfect, but I put it down originally because no one else had put down an amendment that would enable us to debate the issue that a number of noble Lords said at Second Reading gave them cause for concern. I will come to the specifics in a moment, but I regret to say that I agree with the noble Lord who has just spoken. The statement in the extremely helpful letter written by the noble Lord, Lord Coe, in his Olympics role, states that the,
“Terms and Conditions are standard practice at major events. They are NOT out of line with what the public would expect”.
Certainly, a quick—even a slow—survey of your Lordships’ House asking, “Do you expect the purchaser of the ticket will either have to be present or be available on the telephone to allow someone to use the ticket, which that individual has purchased on behalf of, let us say, his children?” would show that this is not the general view. I do not believe this is what the public expect, because a large number of the public do not go to football matches and so are not familiar with what the practice might be there.
One has to face the fact that the public do not expect this to be the situation, but it may be that they can be informed of it in appropriate ways having purchased the ticket. As I understand it, if that information is not actually going to appear on the ticket, it is proposed that a fairly lengthy document would be sent to the ticket-holder explaining these things. Certainly, it would need to say very clearly, in big letters in red type, that the ticket can be used by someone whom you bought it for only if you yourself are present. I leave to one side the question of what happens if the person who bought the ticket is dead—that will raise a difficult issue—but none the less it may be extremely difficult for the individual to be present or even to be on the telephone.
I have put down an amendment whose effect would be to make the situation more flexible. The amendment states:
“To prevent ticket touting, tickets should record the name of the person purchasing the ticket—
I understand that it is proposed that that will be done—
“and indicate that ticket holders may be admitted even though they are not accompanied by the person purchasing the ticket”.
The organisers may well feel that that drives a cart and horses through the whole thing, but they are not proposing to apply these provisions in a draconian way. On the contrary, they are proposing to adopt a flexible attitude. People need to be clear whether the person who bought the ticket has to be present when they wish to use the ticket on a particular occasion. We need to clarify whether we are going to stick to the thing rigorously or whether we are not going to stick to it rigorously but make it clear that ticket-holders ought to be able to establish that they are related to the person who purchased the ticket.
As I said, my amendment is certainly not perfect and comes up with a solution that may be thought to be too favourable to ticket touts, but we need to clarify. We all recognise that there has been an enormous and extremely difficult exercise on ticketing. At the same time, we do not want to create a situation where, because of the provision stating that a ticket-holder must be accompanied by the purchaser, we have large queues of people trying to telephone the person who bought the ticket to say, “Please will you confirm to the ticket office that I am related to you?”, or whatever it may be. That is a genuine problem, and I do not say that I have the answer yet. We need to give more thought to this.
Lord Addington
There are three amendments in this group, and my amendment is the last of them—and may well be the least of them—but we have all identified this problem and have all come up with different solutions. I would describe the amendments as two great hearty swings and one slight jab, which is mine. I framed my amendment after receiving a very helpful letter, and I hope it is in the spirit of that letter. We have already had some of the answers from the noble Lord, Lord Coe, in the previous debate, and I hope that he and my noble friend Lady Garden will clarify this. What I have tried to do is to say that there will be a limitation on the transfer, but there must be some freedom to transfer. I do not pretend that this will be perfect, but I hope that it was in the spirit so that we can get some idea about what we can and cannot do.
If a ticket has been purchased, it is quite normal to transfer it at most other sporting events. If you have bought a ticket at face value, you are not transferring it outside but are making sure the seat is filled. I think we all agree that we want the seats filled. I came at this by saying that there may be greater tension and a danger of encouraging touting, but there should still be a way out of it. There is also the point at which LOCOG will be quite right to say, “You can’t come in at the last minute because of the pressures on this occasion”. I tried to get that mix and suggest that. As these amendments are to probe and, I hope, clarify, I hope that this amendment will be taken in that light. I look forward to the answer.