Council of Europe Convention on the Manipulation of Sports Competitions

Debate between Lord German and Baroness Coffey

Tuesday 15th September 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, like the noble Baroness, I declare my interest: I am a full member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. I am not a member of the committee that has been dealing with these matters, although I may have voted at some stage on associated matters in the parliamentary assembly.

All the contributions that we have heard today have been incredibly powerful and have amplified the need to make sure that this convention is ratified. I pay my tribute to our chair of the International Agreements Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, who has shown a dogged belief in making sure that this Parliament —both Houses—have a proper way to scrutinise international treaties. I am sure that he will continue to fight that corner on behalf of our Parliament to make sure that, when international treaties such as this come before us, we are properly able to investigate, to look in detail and to draw evidence as necessary to make them work.

In that respect, we are very grateful to the Government for giving us extra time to look at this one, but we are being very careful at the moment because we do not ask every time—otherwise it can lead a change to the way that the law is in front of us. CRaG is useful but it is not yet totally suitable given how these investigations should take place.

I will try to refer to a number of contributions. A number of noble Lords asked why there has been a delay. Paragraph 30 of our report says that the Explanatory Memorandum, which comes with this application, explains that ratification of the convention has been delayed due to “competing priorities”, including Covid-19 and

“the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union”.

This is the Council of Europe, not the European Union. It has nothing to do with the European Union. Perhaps the Minister can explain why that came in the evidence provided to us from the DCMS because, quite clearly, that confusion between the Council of Europe and the European Union is not going to help us in the future. I will reach the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, on Council of Europe activity at the very end of what I am about to say.

As we know, this is to be welcomed, because it is the first international binding agreement on this very important international or transnational issue—whatever you want to call it. The consequence of manipulation is very complicated indeed. One of the advantages that we will have now, of course, is that we are a member of the follow-up committee body called the Group of Copenhagen—the GoC in the parlance. We will have membership of that instead of just being associated with it and not being able to take anything forward. It is worth taking a look at the Council of Europe’s definition of “manipulation”, because many noble Lords have used examples of what it might or cannot mean.

Very briefly, the core elements of manipulation are: first, that it should be an intentional arrangement, act or remission; secondly, that whether it is or is not successful, it is an attempt to improperly alter the result or the course of a sports competition; thirdly, that it is to remove all or part of the unpredictable nature of sports competitions; fourthly, that it is to obtain an undue advantage for oneself or for others; fifthly, that the intention of manipulation is there even if the intention is unsuccessful and fails to obtain the undue advantage; and, lastly and importantly, that the undue advantage always has a financial dimension, either directly or as a consequence of the sports competition manipulation. Exploitation of betting markets is just one of the many ways of obtaining an undue financial advantage.

We are therefore dealing here with a multiple manipulation consequences issue. It is not straightforward, but it has a context. That context was explained at the beginning by my noble friend Lord Addington, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, and many others. It affects what we might call the integrity of and investment in the industry. I just specify that all the documentation from the Council of Europe has one word on the front to explain what it is about: “trust”. The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, talked about the reduction in trust if this happens. Trust is the password by which it happens.

Another thing, which the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, mentioned, is that we are now talking about minor areas of sport as well. She called it the minor league—well, as a supporter, in small amounts of cash, of the Newport County second division football team, I must say that I am very conscious that, as a member of the supporters’ club, my £5 or £10 a month may be going astray. Also, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, was right that this is about dealing with syndicates. This is a multinational operation. Often, the person being asked to manipulate directly could be in one country, the person seeking and asking that person to manipulate could be in another country, and the person seeking to benefit financially from it could be in yet another country. This is manipulation on a grand scale, and we therefore need to tackle the syndicates.

On the binding nature of member states taking action, the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, thankfully raised a question about the reservation; I had difficulty in stating what the ambition was in this reservation of the UK Government. Thankfully, he has asked all the right questions. I look forward to every single answer to the questions from the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, so that I may understand the consequence of the reservation, particularly in respect of the matter he raised about France’s expectation, which would be quite different and perhaps more suitable. I wait for judgments to be heard around the Floor.

The most important thing is that we are going to have an opportunity to work with a body that has some considerable powers—the follow-up committee—which can formulate proposals to further enhance the establishment, operation and development of national platforms. It has a role in the framing of domestic criminal offences where each party, each country,

“shall ensure that its domestic laws enable to criminally sanction manipulation of sports competitions when it involves either coercive, corrupt or fraudulent practices, as defined by its domestic law”.

So it will have a broad picture of what is happening in order to ensure—in a useful precedent for what should happen—that domestic laws live up to the intentions that are in a convention of this sort. That is very important.

Further to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, about doping, I know from the work that is being done by the follow-up body on the convention that it does not regard doping and manipulation as separate items. They are very closely linked indeed. That combination is talked about in Article 13 of the follow-up committee’s rules—they have to look at all the conventions and all the issues related to these matters, which are in the public domain for Council of Europe members. The signatories, as the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, said, are much greater than just simply those on the European continent.

I am not trying to denigrate what the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, was saying, but it seems to me that it is not an either/or as to who must act in these situations. It is not either Governments, collectively or on their own, or international sporting bodies—it is both. There is a role for both to be playing here. What we are dealing with is perhaps sending the right signals to international governing bodies of sport but at the same time trying to ensure that we have bedded down some very important points in relation to the actions that are possible with those who have signed and ratified this convention.

I conclude with a remark that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, addressed to the noble Lord who is speaking on behalf of the Official Opposition. I do not know what the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, might say about these matters, but I remind him that this is a convention of the Council of Europe. If we were to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, we would no longer be a member of the Council of Europe.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

Not true.

[Lord German (LD)]

It is absolutely the truth, and I am going to quote, because I committed this to memory. The Secretary-General, on behalf of the Committee of Ministers, has said on more than one occasion—and maybe the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, was not there at each one—something straightforward: he said that membership of the Council of Europe is incompatible with leaving the European Convention on Human Rights. I think that is worrying for those of us who believe that these international agreements are very important to us all. We in this country have signed over 200; some we have ratified and some we have just signed. It is a huge body of activity that we want to join and be part of. Leaving the Council of Europe would mean that we would lose our right to have all these extra powers that we are going to get from being part of the group of people who are taking forward this convention. Therefore, I support the clear position that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, is taking, but I think it is very important for this Grand Committee to know the consequence of all this.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Debate between Lord German and Baroness Coffey

Committee stage
Thursday 10th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

The European Court of Human Rights is not recognised as a traditional court of jurists as one would recognise, for instance, the US Supreme Court. Many of the people representing their countries are from NGOs who have vested interests in different areas. It is not comparable to our own Supreme Court, the US Supreme Court and many others. I stand to be corrected.

This is the debate we had during the discussions and deliberations on the safety of Rwanda Act. The erroneous notion that international law is sovereign over the UK Parliament, and that we cannot pass laws contrary to international treaties such as the ECHR, is pernicious and hugely undermines the faith and trust the electorate have in our governance. Such a notion was explicitly refuted in a Supreme Court ruling in 2021.

Real demonstrable damage is being done by such mischaracterisation and errors. The excellent report for the Centre for Policy Studies authored by my noble friend Lord Lilley, recently published, highlights that the proportion of asylum claims granted first time jumped from 25% in 2010 to 67% in 2023. We have to ask ourselves why that is the case. Why are we so out of step with so many other countries such as France, Italy, Spain and Germany? Some 42,000 asylum seekers are awaiting appeal outcomes, with 40% citing human rights grounds.

This Government have instead doubled down on lawfare, on the rule of lawyers and not the rule of law. Today the newspapers report that our Attorney-General has apparently appointed himself as Deputy Prime Minister with an effective veto over all government policy and a “snitch clause”, encouraging civil servants to dob in Ministers who fall foul of the Attorney-General’s zealous, unbalanced and damaging interpretation of international law. This extends to vetoing potential domestic legislation. It will not end well.

To finish, this Government had a great opportunity to consolidate and build on the work we had done in government, and we would have cheered them on and wished them well. It is a matter of great regret for the future of our country, for people who are looking to government to protect the safety and security of our borders, that they were not able to do that.

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friends in opposing this clause. While I will try to avoid repeating what my noble friends have already said, to take a starting point, I did speak in the debate at the other end on this because it was important that, as has already been somewhat alluded to, this turned out to be quite a significant deterrent.

I appreciate that the Minister may disagree with my interpretation, but he will remember that when this started happening and became law, people started moving to Ireland, to Dublin. People left this country because they were concerned about being caught up in the process of being sent to Rwanda. People could see it with their own eyes. In 2022 the number of crossings meant that 45,000 people came to our shores through small boats, then it started to fall when the Prime Minister at the time announced that. Once there was legal wrangling, all of a sudden the number of people coming across on illegal crossings started to rise again. The numbers cannot be refuted.

I appreciate that this was in the Labour Party’s Change manifesto for government, which estimated that it would save £75 million a year by scrapping this policy. It also anticipated that it would save, I think, a few hundred million pounds more by ending hotels. That has not happened either.

Nevertheless, in the first half of this year, we have seen 20,000 people coming to these shores. That is a significant uplift and, with no deterrent, there seems to be no change in the trend. I hope that what the Prime Minister has announced while we have been debating this amendment will be successful. I will not repeat the questions from my noble friend Lord Harper.

It is critical to come back to aspects of the constitutional arrangement, which is why we ended up where we were. We had had the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, then the Illegal Migration Act 2023. I am not going to debate that, because we will come on to it later in Committee. The High Court having ruled in favour of the then Government, the Court of Appeal and then five members of the Supreme Court spoke unanimously. I think it was perfectly valid for the UK Government, who were responsible for international relations, to try to correct how Rwanda had been maligned by those five judges. Yes, that was also considering representations made by lawyers and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, but nevertheless, as I think I referred to previously, Rwanda is a prominent member of the Commonwealth. It is a nation that joined the Commonwealth because of values. The Commonwealth does not let just anybody in. Also, Rwanda had just recently held the presidency of the Commonwealth. That in itself is no mean feat. So it was perfectly valid of the Government. As we know, if judges come up with a decision that Parliament does not like, the recourse is for Parliament to then put in place a new law. That is why I was more than happy to support that legislation at the time.

I respect that this is a manifesto commitment, but it feels very tokenistic. As my noble friend Lord Horam pointed out, the scheme in Australia involved a number of factors, not only the offshoring and processing but the turn away policy—how the Australian navy worked with boats—but nevertheless it was clear that the Government were not going to accept illegal criminal activity. We all know that the smugglers do not care whether people live or die as they push them out into the very dangerous channel. This is just one line in a campaign, and I think the Government will come to regret not having something effective in this regard. As I say, we will come on to the Illegal Migration Act later.

I encourage the Government to think carefully about what happened and to recognise that every time they undermine the deterrent, unfortunately, the number of people handing over thousands of pounds to smugglers will just increase. I am sure nobody in this Committee wants to see that.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, we on these Benches support this clause in the Bill and support the Government’s action. The rest of it was very irresponsible. Getting rid of that project, which was announced in this Chamber by the Labour Party leader at that time, was the right thing to do. It also means that we can have better standing with our international colleagues, as we have had already with the UNHCR and with the French President, who was quoted as saying that this was a way of getting a better relationship with France.