Sporting Events Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Holmes of Richmond and Lord Hayward

Committee stage
Monday 22nd June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I echo the comments of my colleagues across the Chamber in relation to this set of amendments, although I tend to disagree—or will clarify—in relation to one of the amendments. This is an enabling Bill. Surely, therefore, it should provide the opportunity, as the noble Lord, Lord Addington, has said, for major sporting events which wish to make use of the Bill—whether it is the RFU, the LTA or whoever—to be able to come forward and say to a Government, “We wish to use this Bill for the following reasons”. Surely that is the objective of this legislation.

The point has been made a number of times already that sporting frameworks change, and we cannot guarantee that the Olympic Games, European Championships, et cetera, will be the same in 15 or 20 years’ time, or whenever it may happen to be. Structures of international competition change. If ever there was an example of one—and I am surprised that the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, did not refer to it—it is the announcement in the last few days that the London Marathon is going to move from one day to two, with the objective of having 100,000 participants.

It is about the level of attraction from around the world. Most people look at the London Marathon and say, “Oh, it’s just the London Marathon”. It is not; it is part of an international body of marathons, a set group of them. If there are 100,000 participants next year, we are going to have many hundreds of thousands of visitors. There are transport and all sorts of other implications. Surely, if this legislation is anything, it should be available to that sort of sporting evolution, because it is so positive both for this nation and for fitness in general.

I wish to make a brief observation in relation to the amendments, where they cite certain categories of people. I just ask, for reasons most people in this Chamber would recognise and which I identified at Second Reading, that where there is specific identification of women, girls, the disabled and ethnic minorities, we either use the classifications of the Equality Act or just stop at

“removing barriers to physical activity”.

I speak, as I identified on previous occasions, as the founder chairman of the world’s first gay rugby club, a structure that now has 100 clubs around the world and an international structure where we compete on a regular basis. Certainly, I know only too well the difficulties and the challenges associated with bidding and with organising international competitions, with people coming from other parts of the world.

We had the European championships in Birmingham less than a year after the Commonwealth Games. The competition, the Union Cup, was the largest sporting competition in the Midlands after the Commonwealth Games over the following 12 months. There are international competitions all the way down—they restructure and they reorganise. But I ask that we remove barriers to physical activity for underrepresented groups and stop at that point, rather than trying to cite specific examples, because we risk excluding some groups or others, and I know that is not the intention of those who have proposed these amendments.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Hayward. Were I to imagine myself—as I never would—on the Bishops’ Bench, in approaching this set of amendments I would be very much reminded of the parable of the prodigal son.

The Bill rightly sets out a whole raft of provisions for mega sporting events that come to the United Kingdom on occasion. Events already listed by my noble friend Lady Evans, such as Wimbledon, the British Grand Prix, and so on, do their thing year in, year out, staging world-class events which are far greater than sporting celebrations and competitions, with economic, social and cultural benefit which goes far beyond, for example, Wimbledon, SW19.

In asserting the principles in the Bill that have to be in place when it comes to international bids, it seems odd that at least some of these provisions would not be available to those extraordinarily impactful sporting events that are the very fabric not only of our sporting nation but of our culture. I ask the Minister to consider, if not implementing these amendments, the essence behind them and to how it could be threaded into the Bill. Further to my noble friend Lord Hayward’s comments on frameworks, why would the Government not want that to be available to the sporting events that wish to avail themselves of some parts of it? Ambush marketing is ambush marketing, whether it is targeted at the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games or the Wimbledon Championships every year.