Birmingham Commonwealth Games Bill [HL]

Lord Coe Excerpts

Tuesday 9th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Hornsey (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly in support of the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan. I am pleased to say that I support them all but particularly Amendment 17, to which I will refer shortly. First, I declare an interest as co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Sport, Modern Slavery and Human Rights. I am very pleased that the noble Lord is the vice-chair of that group; I have found it a real pleasure to work with and learn so much from him, because of his range of perspectives on these issues. I am just a humble watcher of sports, which I hugely enjoy.

Yesterday afternoon, we had a session of that group with a number of sports bodies, including individuals from different Premier League clubs and so on. It seems that there is a kind of momentum for recognising much more the place of sport in these frameworks that we are addressing, around particularly issues of social value but also the human rights framework. This very interesting movement seems to be happening within various sports bodies and organisations. In the evening, we were fortunate that the Minister for Sport, Mims Davies, could come along. She talked a little about social value, in particular in relation to the Birmingham Games. I think we would all see that these issues regarding accessibility, the environment and so on are clearly of paramount importance if everybody is to feel included and a part of this forthcoming mega sporting event.

We want to be able to delight in that event. What we do not want is to be sat watching and wondering what bad practices have gone on in its supply chains, how many athletes have been exploited or how many local people have been displaced and so forth. We want to enjoy them for what they are—a magnificent spectacle—so we want to know that all goods and services, and all people connected to the Games, have not been scarred by modern slavery or consequential environmental degradation.

The notion of the challenge and burden associated with a charter such as this is interesting, because the same kind of comments were made when Section 54 of the Modern Slavery Act was introduced. There was a feeling that it would somehow be too much of a burden on business to report all the time on what their supply chains were, yet so many businesses have said that it has been a real game-changer for them and has produced all kinds of very interesting and important debates, theories and practices in relation to modern slavery and transparency in supply chains.

From what I have seen and heard, the charter consolidates a range of practices, regulations and legislation that we are all working towards anyway. It puts them in one place and makes it very explicit. This makes it a good opportunity for public bodies in relation to the Modern Slavery Act, in which I have a particular interest. As some noble Lords will be aware, public bodies are not included in Section 54 of that Act so are not compelled to write a statement about transparency in their supply chains. This is a good opportunity to produce robust, rigorous modern slavery statements from all the public bodies concerned; to make sure that they are refreshing and addressing the issues that come about through supply chain abuses.

Amendment 17 represents an excellent opportunity for the UK and the Commonwealth sporting family to lead the way in ensuring that countries and cities which bid for these mega sporting events understand and commit to their obligations to celebrate and support the human rights of all concerned, as well as to provide extraordinary sporting spectacles. If people say that this is too much of a burden to put on to organisations, we have to think of the opposite: that we do not care and will let people’s human rights be abused. I do not think any noble Lord would want to be in that camp. I hope that the Government, through the Minister, will be able to support the amendment: it is the way forward.

[Lord Coe (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, for tabling Amendment 5, which elevates the crucial importance of legacy. I am sure that no noble Lord, on either side of the House, would argue with that concept. We share the sentiment that no Games should ever leave a city or community without leaving an indelible footprint on its infrastructure, society, education or economy. I will make one observation to counsel caution, which buttresses the remarks I made at Second Reading. The primary responsibility of the organising committee is to deliver a fabulous Games. The prerequisite for a legacy platform has to be the successful delivery—operationally and otherwise —of those Games. On that occasion I also remarked that if the Games themselves were a damp squib there would be little or no appetite to further the legacy ambitions.

The noble Lord has a proper menu of legacy issues which needs to be addressed. I speak on behalf of the trade union of current and former organising committee chairs who tend to become a slightly persecuted minority over this process. I want to make sure that we are not placing too onerous or burdensome a set of responsibilities on the organising committee itself. The noble Lord pointed out, quite rightly, that there needs to be a proper balance of those legacy responsibilities between local authorities, and their agencies, and the Commonwealth Games Federation. To further the prospect of other bids, it is not in the interest of any federation to walk out of a city without having been quite demanding about what is left behind. I approve of the framework, but the organising committee has the herculean responsibility of getting the operational integration across the line to create an inordinately complex sporting construct in the space of 10 or 12 days. I therefore caution against asking it to focus too heavily on the legacy burden. That has to be shared properly with the local authorities and housing agencies that have that responsibility. Yes, an organising committee can and should, in the way it constructs a Games, always be concerned to maximise legacy and to do things in a way that allows that post-Games legacy consideration to be delivered optimally. Within my general support for the amendment, I want to make sure that we are entirely clear about the very specific responsibility of the organising committee.

[Lord Campbell of Pittenweem]

My Lords, I may be hypersensitive, but I inferred from something that the noble Baroness said that she might have understood me to suggest that I was in some way opposed to the principles that the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, set out. I am of course not opposed to those: there is no more enthusiastic supporter of the obligation of human rights in the Chamber than myself, I venture to suggest. All I was at pains to do was to point out, as I think has already been agreed, that these are rather demanding obligations and I am anxious to ensure that there are the necessary resources to ensure that they will be met.

Birmingham Commonwealth Games Bill [HL]

Lord Coe Excerpts

Tuesday 25th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coe (Con)]

My Lords, I guess it is quintessentially the human condition to permanently ponder the passage of time, probably more so as the years roll by. It seems barely credible that it is now 14 years since London snuck across the line in Singapore and secured the right to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games of 2012. Only eight days after that momentous decision I witnessed First Reading of the Olympic Bill in the other place. Rather like today’s Commonwealth Games Bill, it created the crucial framework, foundations, provisions and protections that provided for their seamless delivery. A modern multisports event or Games demands project management of inordinate complexity. No city or its agencies is ever so tested under normal circumstances. So today’s Bill is not a “nice to have” or à la carte menu: it enshrines the essential safeguards needed to underpin the success of the event. If it is not successful, be under no illusion that it will severely dent local, national and international reputations in the aftermath. If I may digress momentarily, we seem to be doing that quite well enough of late without further fragilities.

A successful Games is the prerequisite platform for securing a lasting economic, social and cultural legacy once the athletes have left town. If the Games are a damp squib, there will be little or no appetite to leverage from the sporting celebration. As the Minister observed, the Commonwealth Games were not originally destined for Britain’s second city: Durban was the original host. Two and a half years after winning that right, it concluded that it could not deliver the project, so Birmingham has the additional challenge of a curtailed timeline, which makes the need for bipartisan support across Parliament even more critical. This approach served us well in London and is a crucial ingredient: I am delighted that there are so many noble Lords in the Chamber today who contributed to that bipartisan approach.

The provisions of the Bill, as in that for London, bring forward a small number of temporary measures to ensure the successful delivery of Birmingham 2022. They are necessary and proportionate. For instance, no sporting event of such scale can be delivered without commercial partners. Those businesses that commit sizeable discretionary spend and risk their brand reputation need to know that neither will be put at risk by rogue advertising, rogue trading or ambush marketing. The Bill will also ensure that spectators are not ripped off by ticket touts and that there are adequate transport arrangements to fulfil the needs of the athletes—the most important client group in the delivery of any Games—and of course the fans, many of whom will have come from overseas. This particular provision allows for the Secretary of State to prepare a transport plan that can be delivered locally and with relevant consultation before implementation Games time.

Measures such as these are essential in themselves, but not a prerequisite for a successful Games. You need to support and produce a conducive atmosphere for their delivery. My experience in London is clear. The most demanding stakeholder any organising committee has is not the Secretary of State or the mayor, the federation president or the member federations and associations. No, its most demanding stakeholder is, as it should be, the people for whom these Games are being delivered and in whose neighbourhoods they are being located. They will ask demanding questions, often far more penetrating and perceptive than those of the media and with far greater proprietorial interest: an emotional connection, if you like. That needs to be tapped into.

My humble advice to the Birmingham Organising Committee, again from the London years, is that it should be as assiduous about articulating why these Games will be such a powerful vehicle for change as it is on how they will come together. If they are seen by local people as only a discussion about ducting, tunnelling and construction timelines, they will at best zero out and at worst chip away from the sidelines. They need to see vision, purpose and shared values. They need to know how, through sport, the Games can change the lives of their children and grandchildren. This needs to be communicated liberally and often.

They themselves can become life changers by offering to volunteer. As we know from London, our Games makers, as they were known, made the difference between a good and a great Games. Their sheer competence and friendliness set the tone and style in London and other cities throughout the UK. Many of them continue to this day to volunteer for myriad events and good causes. I am sure that many will want to offer Birmingham that generosity of spirit.

For the organising committee—here I speak from seared experience—the herculean hard work of getting the Games across the line can sometimes feel a little life-shortening. Not long after London won the bid, I invited Sandy Hollway, the former chief executive of the Sydney Games, to share his insights with our newly formed organising committee when we took our first tentative steps. Hollway captured the challenge in five immutable phases. The first was the euphoria of winning a tough global battle. The second was blind panic at the realisation of the scale of the undertaking—and that is just the organising committee. Then came the “persecution of the innocent” phase; every calamity that befalls the nation will be blamed on the Games. Then you head into the Games before yours—in our case, Beijing—and, if the athletes underperform, the media concludes not only that they are costing too much but that you do not have any athletes capable of stealing the show at your own party in four years’ time. That tends to be the low point in the delivery cycle. Then the volunteers and sponsors come on board, and the plans for the torch relay—or baton relay for the Commonwealth Games—and Cultural Olympiad that touch cities and hamlets alike are unveiled. Slowly but surely, the public begin to get behind the Games. The Games are then successful, as they will be in Birmingham.

After his scene setter, I thanked him. He then said, “No, there’s a final phase. It’s the one that always comes once the Games have left town”. I asked him to expand. “The final phase”, he explained, was the “glorification of the uninvolved”. I am sure that in Birmingham, in a little over three years’ time, the people of that great sporting city will want to do more than sit out the dance. I know they will want to be truly involved. That is why today’s Bill is so important.