Rugby World Cup 2015

Debate between Lord Grocott and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Wednesday 11th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, as the noble Lord well knows, we have the Gold Event Series, launched in November 2012. We invest £50 million of lottery money in bidding for future events, and have had some success. Clearly, the news that we have had this week is a deplorable state of affairs; the WADA report has shocked us all. It is completely right that we should build on the record of the Olympics in having strong anti-doping policies.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, my noble friend makes a very strong point. We had the £20 million First World War Centenary Cathedrals Fund, of course; I was in Norwich this very weekend looking at some of the brilliant repair work that has been done. I think that we in this country are great at looking after historic buildings. We should be telling people overseas and they should be learning from our skills in conservation and architecture.

[Lord Grocott]

Does the Minister agree that one of the key factors, maybe even the key factor, which made the Rugby World Cup such a celebration and a success was that it was available for virtually everyone in the country to view on what we still occasionally call the terrestrial channels, which are free to air? Is the evidence not crystal clear that with major sports longer available on free-to-air television—notably cricket and, increasingly, golf, not to mention Premier League football—the capacity of the country as a whole to celebrate these events inexorably diminishes?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

To be brief, I agree that the television coverage of the Rugby World Cup was amazing. We all watched a lot of games, even though the home countries did not do as well as they should have done. Good television coverage is very important.