Lord Moynihan
Main Page: Lord Moynihan (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)(5 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Moynihan
That this House takes note of how sport, recreation, and the arts contribute to wellbeing of society.
Lord Moynihan (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the many Members from all sides of this House who have chosen to speak in this debate. We received many valuable briefings in advance; I place on record my thanks to Russell Taylor, who collated the excellent Lords Library Briefing, highlighting the significant social benefits of participation in sport, the strong evidence demonstrating positive associations between participation in arts and health, social capital and education, and the benefits that sport and the arts bring to the well-being of society. He quotes Arts Council England, which stated that,
“art and culture enhance every part of our lives”,
as well as delivering social, economic and educational benefits,
“from the future prospects of our children, to the vibrancy of our cities, to the contribution made to economic growth”.
Ryan McCullough produced an insightful paper focusing on local sports facilities and the serious levels of inactivity in children and young people, on which the Sport and Recreation Alliance is rightly campaigning, mirroring Charlotte Cuenot’s work with ukactive as it aims to get,
“more people, more active, more often”.
That must be a priority for the Department of Health as well as for DCMS. The fight against obesity will be achieved by focusing not solely on what we eat but, equally, on changing people’s perceptions regarding lifestyle, the importance of a healthy diet and access to sports facilities at affordable prices.
When, as Minister for Sport, I was visited by the then Irish Minister for Sport in the late 1980s I was asked what one measure I would introduce to help sport, recreation and the arts. My answer was simple: introduce a national lottery. Margaret Thatcher thought otherwise. It took John Major to respond to this request, and sport and the arts should be forever grateful to him. In her briefing to us, Catherine Nicholls from Camelot highlighted just how important the National Lottery has been to sport and the arts, and how its investment of over £20 billion has added to the well-being in society.
Many noble Lords might be among the millions who have seen the YouTube video by Simon Sinek, which, while generalising broadly, nevertheless hits a nerve when he reflects that in our generation we have failed to prepare young people during their childhood and education for the realities of the workplace. How often, he asks, have we complained that the millennials are tough to manage, unfocused, lazy and entitled, and constantly being told they are special and receiving medals from us for coming last? He goes on to say that many turn to Instagram and Facebook, which places filters on life around them: no need to tough it out, just count the likes on Facebook. He points out that for many young people the greatest trauma is being unfriended by a popular classmate. When finally reaching their destination in the world of work, too many are unprepared for getting nothing for coming last, and at that point entire visions can be shattered.
In our schools, one critical component that we can turn to for the young and for the improvement of the well-being of society is widespread access to sport, recreation and the arts. Competitive sport is a vital educational tool, capable of addressing many of these challenges. There, the lessons learned are of teamwork—learning the ability to handle losing both individually and as a team—and taking the time to develop skills through hours of training. There is no instant gratification in the world of competitive sport. It is through participating as a member of a team that we build self-confidence and discipline, and the environment in which we do so must be fun and inclusive. We are better educated from the experience of playing within the rules of sport and building trust through co-operation, and realising the joy of working hard on something which takes a lot longer than a month or a year to learn. We learn to recognise that making time for people and the little things are the building blocks of leadership. Sport can help this generation build confidence. Playing by the rules reinforces values, allowing us to reach a better work/life balance.
Our exposure to the arts has the same ability to broaden our minds and develop a whole range of skill sets. It is very important to look to the quality of arts education and to recognise that there is so much more that we should be doing to promote, increase and improve the standards of teaching. As Picasso said:
“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist while we grow up”.
However, the well-being of society is also about having a deep and clear understanding of what is right and wrong, and it must be based on the strongest ethical standards, because that is what all of us expect of those who compete or enjoy recreation. We ensure that the 100-metre runner has his or her fingernails microscopically behind the line as a demonstration of fairness and clean competition.
That is why, in my view, one of the most important sporting events of 2019 took place when my right honourable friend the Secretary of State Jeremy Wright hosted the International Partnership Against Corruption in Sport—IPACS—meetings in London earlier this month. More than 100 Ministers, international sports organisations and experts came to London to work on a global commitment to tackle corruption in sport. I declare an interest here as vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Sport, Modern Slavery and Human Rights, under the able leadership of the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Hornsey.
In that capacity, I spoke last week at the Sporting Chance Forum, ably led by the Centre for Sport and Human Rights. Today I urge the Government to develop tools to prevent corruption around procurement at sports events. It should never be the case that workers on venues which have to be finished to meet the deadline of a FIFA World Cup have their passports withdrawn on arrival in the country, effectively being drawn into modern slavery. Corruption in all its guises is corrosive, but nowhere more so than in the world of sport.
Good governance, transparency and the avoidance of conflicts of interest are vital. We expect integrity, honest endeavour and fair competition from our athletes. They in turn should expect nothing less from sports administrators and the nations that host international events, along with the wealthy individuals who benefit from sharing the gold dust that clean competitors create by their skills.
There is an important role for government here through anti-corruption legislation and law enforcement. We will not put an end to match fixing, illegal gaming, bad governance, insider information, conflicts of interests and the use of clubs as shell companies unless Governments act in unity and place legislation on the statute book to tackle these pernicious characteristics which swarm around sporting events. We need laws to help root out the perpetrators of sexual abuse in sport and to support the survivors. We need to protect the rights of athletes and fans, and of journalists working in totalitarian countries whose Governments increasingly seek to host major spectator sports events to gain international credibility where they have no alternative to win recognition. We need to fight for the human right to non-discrimination and equality in sport, recognising Georgia Hall’s stunning victory in the Women’s British Open in golf as much as Francesco Molinari’s success on the international and national stages.
I have had a number of opportunities in your Lordships’ House to debate the greatest challenge to elite sport not only here but internationally: namely, doping. This first came to my attention when I had the privilege of coxing the British eight in the 1980 Olympic final, with one of the finest crews this country has produced in front of me. We were narrowly beaten by an East German eight. In latter years, members of the DDR Olympic team sought compensation from the post-unification German Government for the damage to their health from the drugs they had taken. Even that was not enough for the International Olympic Committee to strip them of their medals. The IOC at the time did not have the courage of its convictions to act in line with its charter, but it had a major influence on me and led me, when Minister for Sport, to seek agreement for the first Council of Europe sports ministerial initiative to tackle drugs in sport.
An athlete knowingly taking performance-enhancing drugs to cheat a clean athlete who has trained all his or her life, with the support of his or her family, out of selection, a career, a living and considerable wealth is committing fraud. The criminal sanctions should be no different from those for fraud. So far we have turned a blind eye to this, whereas Australia, Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Italy, to name just a few countries, have all enacted sports-specific legislation that criminalises the trafficking of performance-enhancing substances, with some going considerably further to protect clean athletes.
This is a matter for the law to protect and promote well-being in this society. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State is a lawyer. Given his interest in sports law, I urge him to follow the example of many countries and consider introducing a UK sports law. Over the past 40 years, sport has developed from recreational activity largely enjoyed by amateurs in the 1970s and 1980s to highly commercialised and lucrative worldwide competitions. The change has been caused by the explosion of media rights and sponsorship, particularly in the 1990s. When in 2005 we won the right to host the Olympic Games in London, I noted that sport contributed some €29 billion towards the European Union economy and provided jobs for approximately 4.5 million employees. The value of European football alone is today £21 billion.
The need to justify this spending is recognised in the Parliaments of European nation states and is becoming increasingly important here, not least because there is barely a department of state not involved in sport and recreation—from taking disadvantaged kids off the escalator to crime and away from their feelings of alienation in the classroom, at home or in school by conversing in the only language that many of them understand, which is sport; to the health benefits; to the soft power; and to the far-reaching educational benefits.
There is now pressure on government to match the political changes under way. The well-publicised failings of sporting organisations in the first 18 years of this century, such as the IOC scandals in Salt Lake City, corruption in FIFA and the IAAF, scandals in Formula 1 and the World Anti-Doping Agency’s ineffectiveness in discovering endemic state-controlled doping programmes in Russia—we have the Sunday Times to thank for that—and subsequent inability to address the scandal, should surely ring alarm bells in the corridors of the DCMS. These well-publicised failings of sporting organisations damage the integrity and fairness of sport which we expect from the players, and the onus should be on Governments to intervene and co-operate with sport rather than sit back.
It is time for the governing bodies of sport to adopt best international practice, not least in dealing with the prevention of harm from injuries, including concussions in contact sports. It is time for the Government to legislate further to promote the safety of cyclists. It is time to oblige sports agents to disclose their financial interests when entering into an agency contract with an athlete—and, more fundamentally, it is time to oblige the Government to produce two annual reports, one on sport and one on the arts, to be debated in both Houses, setting out national policies for both.
It is time to promote sport and physical activity to tackle obesity and enhance healthy lifestyles. It is time to legislate for clear measures to increase participation, not just for the able-bodied but, most importantly, for disabled athletes, where not only active leisure pursuits but access to facilities should be part of our legal structure. It is time to recognise the importance of cross-sector partnerships between independent and state schools, as well as local communities, and the dual use of school sports facilities to justify charitable status in the independent sector. All of these measures would add to the well-being of society.
The image of sport has been tarnished by various scandals in recent history, and its credibility and integrity need to be restored. A new framework for sport is long overdue. We need a sports law—and it would be the most popular Bill of its Session. I beg to move.
Lord Moynihan
My Lords, once again sport and the arts have united the House. I thank my noble friend the Minister for stepping in at short notice for my noble friend Lord Ashton of Hyde, whose daughter is unwell at the moment but on the road to recovery. I know the whole House will offer them both our best wishes. I thank noble Lords for their contributions and in particular say how moved I was by the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, which was a classic of its kind—and I say that as a Monmouth-educated boy.
It would be invidious to pick out other speeches, but perhaps I may pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Mawson. We worked very closely together. I may have done a whole range of activities during the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, but none reached the persistence, the commitment and the devotion of time over a very long period—both before and after the Games—that the noble Lord has given to the legacy of the London Olympic Games. It is a privilege to pay tribute to him for all his hard work.
One issue resonated through the debate: the Paralympic Games. I was pleased, because the Olympic Village grew in size; the whole nation became an Olympic village, and when the Paralympics was on, the nation recognised for the first time in my lifetime that we could concentrate on the abilities of the Paralympians and not their disabilities. That resonated throughout society. I think two of the great misnomers are “able-bodied” and “disabled”—but the reality was that, at last, across society there was great recognition and respect for people for their abilities rather than their disabilities, which has lasted to this day.
I thank noble Lords for contributing to this debate, and conclude by reflecting on the powerful and evocative speech on music given by the noble Baroness, Lady Bull. It made me reflect on how many times I have listened to Verdi’s “Nabucco” and hoped there would be a call for an encore to the “Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves”. This was a debate where an encore would indeed be a valuable use of parliamentary time—and with those words I wish all noble Lords who participated a very happy Christmas, and my heartfelt thanks for participating in an extremely useful and insightful two and a half hours.