Sporting Events Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Doyle and Lord Markham

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

Yes, I am moving Amendment 83 and speaking to Amendment 86 from my noble friend Lady Sater.

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

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

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

[Lord Doyle (Non-Afl)]

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

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

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