King’s Speech

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I warmly welcome the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, to his new role. I declare my interests as chair of Amey, a provider of complex facilities management services across the public estate. As chair, I visit our teams working on the estate and have recently been to Styal, a closed category prison for female adults and young offenders, as well as Leeds prison, where I benefited from spending time with the highly impressive governor, Rebecca Newby.

The challenges that the Minister faces are well known to the House—the vital importance of mental health referral support, reducing overcrowding and capital investment to make our prisons places of rehabilitation and places where people want to work are certainly high on the list. Kiosks or in-cell IT in prisons revolutionise the place, freeing up staff time, speeding up responses to queries to reduce frustration and safety concerns and creating agency among prisoners.

With overcrowding, prisons are in danger of becoming care homes for prisoners. Crowd management confines the culture of rehabilitation into the shadows, which in turn fails to reduce recidivism. Take some of the strain out of the system, as the Minister’s Statement recommends, and you can then be more impactful by creating purposeful activity. The challenge is to create career paths. The bigger challenge is scalability.

The good news is that there are few people throwing their hands in the air when the Minister openly speaks about reducing the prison population, while recognising that society needs protection. In politics, if the national mood music is in harmony with you, there is the possibility of real change and the noble Lord, Lord Timpson, is well placed to drive change management. We need more projects such as our Clean, Rehabilitative, Enabling and Decent—CRED—programme, which arms prisoners with the skills and valuable work experience they need to successfully enter the working world on release, which the Minister knows so well. Of vital importance is that prisoners work alongside our prison maintenance teams while they serve their sentence, improving their employability and well-being.

In this year alone, the CRED programme has delivered £67 million in social value, substantially impacting the lives of individuals within the justice system, and has delivered 64,000 hours of work activity each month, supporting 374 prisoners in 44 prisons. This programme has further facilitated full-time employment positions once those people have left prison, not least within Amey’s supply chain.

On a second subject, currently there are 44,000 young people in contact with the criminal justice system in the UK, with youth reoffending rates remaining high. This not only impacts the individuals but costs the taxpayer £15 billion per year. Those not in education, employment or training are five times more likely to obtain a criminal record compared with their peers. This programme helps to reduce that.

Following a meeting with His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh and his team last year, we are now working with them to develop a new programme that aims to join the dots in the current judicial system and give offenders real opportunities to transform their prospects post release. Working alongside HMPPS and prison teams, the team are co-creating a tailored programme that aligns qualifications with vocational work experience and the personal development skills passed on by the Duke of Edinburgh bronze scheme. It will create a scalable, replicable pathway to employment blueprint and develop a UK-wide rollout plan that can be offered to other industry and strategic partner organisations, delivering social value programmes in the secure estate in other sectors. The country needs more aligned supply chain partnerships and scalability is critical.

In closing, I hope that I have the agreement of your Lordships’ House to convey every possible success to Team GB as I leave for the Olympics in Paris tomorrow. I wish our athletes and the Minister and his team every success.

Ukraine Refugees: Mothers and Dependent Children Arriving in the UK

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, for his absolutely outstanding work and, as part of that, for communicating and engaging with us today by securing this debate. It is hugely appreciated and I am glad that noble Lords from both sides have paid tribute to the work he has done. It is also humbling to speak in this debate when one has just heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, about her experiences. I hope she will forgive me if I echo some of the comments she made and the reflections she has given us to consider today, because they are important and I hope the Minister responds to them.

In speaking in this debate, I should declare my interest. I am chair of the board of governors of the Haberdashers’ Monmouth Schools, and we welcomed a boy recently to Monmouth School for Boys and are caring for him as the male members of his family continue fighting in Ukraine. Similarly, we look forward to welcoming a young Ukrainian student at Monmouth School for Girls this September. Both have appropriate bursaries. But it is a case study.

I turn to a case study of a family I know well: the head of the family is a colleague who is an outstanding energy expert. In conversation with her, she has come forward with a number of reflections that I think are worthy of consideration by the Government, some of which have been made already, more eloquently than I will, by the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan.

To set the scene, the host family offered to sponsor a family of four: a grandmother aged 60, a mother aged 37, a son aged seven and a son aged 15. They left Sumy via one of the humanitarian corridors two weeks after the conflict started and were picked up from Warsaw station by a Polish family who gave them accommodation in their home around the middle of March. Russian troops continue to terrorise the Sumy region, and the family’s concern about family and friends there continues to this day. My colleague found the family through a Polish contact at PA Consulting, where she is a partner.

For background, the Ukrainian family attended the British visa office in Warsaw on 27 March, with the host family’s sponsorship forms completed—not without difficulty, as was noted by the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan. A month later, on 25 April, the host family contacted their MP via email to ask for assistance. I have to tell the Minister that the Home Office contact number given for assistance is more or less useless, as those answering are unable to advise on specific cases.

The family received an acknowledgement and update from their MP on the same day, advising that the grandmother’s application was approved on 25 April and the mother’s on 13 April, but that the children’s application would take longer as they were travelling independently of their parents. That comes to the critical point of recognising the importance of a family as a unit in this process.

The host family clarified the situation with the mother—understandably, this caused her a great deal of distress—and responded to their MP on 26 April, confirming that the children were her biological children. Once again, the Home Office helpline was unable to take any information and/or discuss any particulars, so the Ukrainian family had to attend the visa office in Warsaw and resubmit their information. The Home Office took some 14 days to respond to the MP’s subsequent inquiry on their behalf.

Another month passed. On or around 25 May, the Ukrainian family was called to the embassy to get their visas. The host family booked their flights and they arrived at Luton on 31 May, more than 60 days after their application process was started. The initial entry visa is for six months, and a subsequent visit to the Home Office is required to gain a British residency permit. They had used their savings to live in Poland and arrived in the UK with no financial means. Since arrival, they have attended the Croydon Home Office department to gain their British residency permit. One for the grandmother has been received so far, allowing her to remain until 31 December 2024. Again, they have not been treated as a family.

Let us look at the support on arrival in the UK. The host family is resident in East Sussex, which has thus far provided a free laptop and found places for both children relatively quickly at local schools, on which it should be congratulated; it is an essential step, and the family is very grateful. But it has not yet received the £200 initial payment, or the host family its £350.

As the noble Baroness just said, to apply for universal credit the family needs bank accounts; this is the guidance provided by East Sussex County Council. The host family applied to NatWest on 7 June to open two accounts, one in the name of the mother and one in the name of the grandmother. All relevant forms were completed in the NatWest branch in Tunbridge Wells, which advised that the bank account would be opened in five to 10 working days.

On 21 June the host family contacted the NatWest customer service centre to ask NatWest to contact them, because they had not yet received confirmation that the bank accounts were opened. The manager returned their call on the following day, advising that she had not been in the branch and would make inquiries and come back. No response was received. After several chasing emails, the host family spoke to their own premier banking lead, who chased his colleague, who then rang to say that the account approval had not gone through as they had pages missing from the application or had not provided passport information. In such circumstances, it is perfectly possible that the passports were not internationally recognised, but they were sufficient to enter the UK. In this case the banking system was not capable of addressing or dealing with that, so the host family provided the passport information again on 30 June.

There is no way of making contact with the bank directly other than via email, and to this day the host family has not had a response save to hear that staff are too busy dealing with branch matters. These customers should surely be a priority, and the host family is at a loss as to who to speak to next. This reflects very badly on NatWest. Surely, along with so many other organisations and businesses, it should recognise the priority that needs to be attached to Ukrainian refugees.

The family arrived on 31 May but has not had one penny of financial support to date. Under current rules, universal credit will not be backdated. There is an important point about UK sponsoring families needing to use substantial personal means to support Ukrainian refugees for at least three months after arrival if the experience of the host family is typical. I ask the Minister to look at this. It is very important to reflect on how the Government can provide the substantial means to support those Ukrainian families and to consider doing so for, say, three months.

Finally, I want to mention the experience of some other local families who have taken in Ukrainian refugees. Families who have successfully received universal credit are required to attend jobcentres in the local area, at least once a month, to be available for work. East Sussex is a rural and geographically spread area. Single mothers have been asked to attend jobcentres in Bexhill and/or Haywards Heath, some 30 or so miles from where they live, noting that the nearest available jobcentres are, in fact, in Kent. With no financial means, beginning to learn some English only gradually and with only a rural bus service, this is nearly impossible for them to do independently. This is causing much stress and anxiety, and in some cases has deterred families from seeking universal credit. I ask the Minister whether consideration could be given to staying the requirement for up to three months to allow them to gain some independence and financial collateral.

I always try to finish on a positive, and they have received free bus passes from Brighton and Hove for one month, but they have to get to Brighton in person to receive them. They also have free use of Freedom leisure centres for three months, which is a very good thing from my perspective on life.

I hope my noble friend the Minister takes this speech as constructive. Perhaps he will allow me to add names to this case study, in writing to him. I ask him to respond positively and swiftly on some of the key policy issues that I have touched on and are behind this. In doing so, I thank my noble friends and colleagues from both sides of this Committee for listening. It has been a privilege and pleasure to hear the three speakers so far. I am sad that I have not been able to match their knowledge and experience or the outstanding work they have all done in this sector.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Harrington of Watford (Con)]

Thank you very much. Right, I have no excuse at all now. I am really not trying to get out of this at all; it is just that I have been going through things quickly to try to get it done in that time.

On jobs, if I could go back to the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, and her well-discussed point about process in the system, we are working on a system with DWP to get more trained people to help them. It is interesting that the first ONS survey of this cohort showed that more than 60% of those over 18 were already in work. I am meeting a lot of people who are in work—and so pleased to be, as we are so pleased to have them in work. There are problems with transport, however. The Brighton example was mentioned by my noble friend Lord Moynihan, but generally people have to get to the jobcentre for that.

I meet every week—well, I met Ministers every week to discuss this but I am afraid I cannot possibly tell your Lordships quite who it will be next week. Particularly, the department for employment has been very helpful on this.

Quickly going through the other matters, now that I have a bit of extra time, I am seeing what I have missed out in my canter through the whole thing. I probably skipped over the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, too much. It was, basically: what support are we giving to local authorities? He knows this very well but, to put it on the record again, it was a well-negotiated consensus view that £10,500 per refugee—not per family—would cover most of it. I meet so many local authorities now and some of the people cost hardly anything and some, of course, cost far more than £10,500. Basically, they are doing a pool system.

I have not had reports that it is not enough money. I have heard worries about our unaccompanied minors scheme and that it is not enough for them. Of course, we made provision for where children need extra care, be that through intense social services or, unfortunately, to be taken into care. A lot of extra money is available for that. I think we support the local authorities well. They are very articulate and vociferous in their weekly calls to me on that. Again, I hope everybody realises that there are no political points in this at all. Everyone is really trying to help collectively, particularly the local authorities.

Perhaps they were a bit tongue in cheek, but I will just respond to the final comments from the noble Lord, Lord Khan, about what difference the new Secretary of State for Levelling Up will make. He got the job only three or four hours ago, but I was very pleased that he did, for a number of reasons. Apart from the personal friendship between us, he was the Secretary of State when I did the Syrian programme and was excellent with it. The whole purpose for appointing me in the first place was so that I am ring-fenced to deal with this work, but I am very optimistic that what Greg Clark, the new Secretary of State, does will do nothing to impair or impinge on it. In fact, I hope he will improve on it.

The noble Lord asked how the councils are supported. I have dealt with various points to do with that. I ask noble Lords for any feedback they have from any councils—I also ask all the MPs this in my weekly call—as we really do try to learn on the ground.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

On that point, would my noble friend the Minister be happy for me to populate my case study with the names and write to him accordingly, so that he could follow that up? Also, since the Minister mentioned his engagement with the banks and their commitments, if NatWest is on that list, could he make sure that it is aware that it is not being as effective as it committed to publicly? If it is not on the list, why not?

[Lord Harrington of Watford (Con)]

I wish I had that much influence with NatWest. I do not recall it being on the list, but TSB and Halifax are, for example. They are all quite well-known banks, but it is not just the big clearing ones. I would be delighted to hear any case studies, or indeed to meet personally with the refugees my noble friend knows, if he would like me to. Every week, I meet refugees and I find out a lot from it. I have found meeting MPs very helpful as well, because of course they meet constituents. I would be very happy to meet personally with my noble friend Lord Moynihan —I have not seen him since we were undergraduates together, but he will not remember that—or any of the refugees he mentioned. I would be very happy to bring them here to meet them and hear about their experiences.

Emergency Services: Ministers of Religion

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Monday 22nd November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I am sure that what will come out of that group are considerations of whether any changes are required to the guidance issued to police officers faced with such situations. I know that hospital chaplains are available around the clock to cater for a range of different needs and provide comfort, both during a period of illness and at the point of death.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, the circumstances surrounding access for the local priest to be with Sir David in his final hours put everyone concerned in an exceptionally difficult position. Will my noble friend the Minister look at the US model, where emergency managers can identify and engage with faith-based groups in emergency preparedness activities, building partnerships with them to establish protocols for use at the scene of serious injuries and integrating faith leaders into emergency situations involving serious injury?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I will certainly take my noble friend’s point back. I know the College of Policing welcomes engagement with faith community leaders and others who have concerns about the current authorised professional practice to understand views and consider possible next steps for this issue.

Policing: European Championship Final

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Thursday 15th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con) [V]]

I can certainly assure the noble Lord that all the evidence that is being put forward from Sunday is being considered and taken forward by the police. Perhaps I may join him in saying that it is an appalling situation where our non-home fans are beaten and I reassure him that the police will do all they can to bring these criminals—“thugs”, as he says—to justice.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I spent many years focusing on ways to tackle hooliganism and subsequently on the preparation for a secure and trouble-free London Olympic Games. Does the Minister agree that it is incomprehensible that the FA and the police did not erect barriers hundreds of metres away from the stadium, as we did in London 2012? That would have prevented tailgating, which was flagged as a major concern in the semi-final. Does she also agree that such an approach must be comprehensibly built into the bid documentation for the 23rd World Cup, to demonstrate that security firms, stewards, the police and volunteers are far better prepared for that tournament, along with far tougher lines against racially provoked attacks, both physical, verbal and online, which quite simply have to be stamped out if we are to earn the right to host the World Cup?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con) [V]]

I totally agree with my noble friend. On the racial attacks, the Prime Minister could not have been clearer about his abhorrence for and willingness to deal with them than he was yesterday. On lessons learned from the Olympics, I agree with my noble friend. I am sure that that will be considered and that the House will be kept updated on the progress made.

Immigration Skills Charge (Amendment) Regulations 2020

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Wednesday 7th October 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to focus on the issue of sportspeople. I want to ask the Minister a few questions, which I am sure she will be able to clarify for me.

First, the reference to the exemption of “sports players” and “sports coaches, instructors and officials” includes the numbers “3441” and “3442”. I assume that that is for the Office for National Statistics coding system, and that the Home Office set out the requirements and the ONS categorised them. What is crucial overall is the UK points system, and the Home Office policy document about the new rules will formulate that. Indeed, there is reference in an explanatory note to the guidance being forthcoming, but at the moment we do not know what that guidance would be. Therefore, for sportspeople, it is difficult to have clarity on exactly what the regulations will require.

As I understand it, the requirement will be similar to the tier 2 regulations, which require that sports governing bodies decide on the very high standards required. For example, if you came in as the spouse of a researcher, you could take employment in virtually every area. But that is not the case in sport, because in sport you have to go back and satisfy the governing body of the sport that you met the very high standards required to take on employment under these regulations. Should that be the case, I ask whether it is wise to focus exclusively on the governing bodies of sports rather than the clubs, given that it is often the clubs that will be making employment offers to individuals. I hope that will be clarified in the guidance.

Take as an example the world of rowing. As I understand it, somebody like Sir Steve Redgrave might have the opportunity to apply to be performance director of British Rowing, and that as long as the sport’s governing body stated that there was a non-UK applicant who would do the job better, that is sufficient to satisfy the Government under these regulations. However, if it was the Leander Club doing it, I cannot see the system that would apply for the individual who wished to be performance director—say, Steve Redgrave.

It would be very helpful to have a little more clarity on that. I hope my noble friend will say that this will all be clear in the guidance: if she does, I would be delighted, but on the other hand I would be concerned that the House had not had the opportunity to review the guidance, because the devil is sometimes in the detail.

There is a general point. I may be wrong in this, but it seems to me that the definition of “skilled worker” in the 2017 regulations is much tighter than the definition in these revised regulations. Whereas, for example, you have a skill level from RQF level 6 coming down to RQF level 3 under the original 2017 regulations, now the Secretary of State has the right to determine that the skills are “appropriate”. “Appropriate” is a very generic word and is not defined clearly. To give the Secretary of State such powers may well be appropriate, but it is exactly the sort of thing that I imagine the Delegated Powers Committee, on which I used to sit, will look at and say that to talk about “appropriate” skills is a wide delegated power, rather than being very clear in the definition of what the skills should be in any given circumstance.

Finally, the definition of a sports player includes a separate definition and exemption of the cost for “sports coaches, instructors and officials”, but the sports player’s entourage if, for example, they are coming to Wimbledon and training in this country, goes much wider than sports coaches, instructors and officials. It could include sports physiologists, sports doctors or sports scientists that work with that sports player. I just wonder if there could be a catch-all definition for the sportsman or sportswoman’s entourage to be covered in that context.

My final point is a comment that I hope will be helpful to the Home Office in future consideration of draft statutory instruments. A number was provided for us to seek answers to these questions, but when you phone the number, you need a name, and when you ask for the migration policy unit, which is in the guidance to us as Members of Parliament, sadly, you cannot get through to anybody, because they do not have the extension of the migration policy unit. You need the name of somebody there, and that name is not in the guidance. For future assistance to Members of the House of Lords and, indeed, of the House of Commons, it would be useful to have a name associated with the telephone number, or the telephone number of the unit. Either way, that may be useful on future occasions.

Quarantine: Scientific Advice

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford [V]]

The noble Lord makes a point about different rates of infection and the strategies that we have employed. When the initial rate was low, we were trying to contain the virus. Then the peak happened, and measures at the border were seen to be very ineffective. Now that they are now low again, mandatory self-isolation comes in to keep them low.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, can the Minister confirm that the Government’s policy is to relax quarantine rules for elite sports so that soccer clubs can compete in European competitions, Formula 1’s plans for Silverstone can go ahead, and French horses entered for the Derby in three weeks’ time can do so, with appropriate safeguards but without a strict fortnight’s quarantine?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford [V]]

My Lords, it is absolutely the Government’s intention that if we can lift restrictive measures, we will. Many of us are keen to watch the football. I was supposed to be going to the Derby; I do not think I will see it in real time, but I might see it virtually. Based on the science, we are reviewing these things every three weeks.

Child Sex Predators

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord is absolutely right to point that out. The evidence is very clear. The obligatory RSE that will start in secondary schools from September will be very helpful in pointing children to what a healthy relationship looks like, as opposed to those encouraged by some of the things they might hear from their friends or see online.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, sadly this is a problem we need to be alert to in the world of sport. In that context, will my noble friend commend the work of the NSPCC’s Child Protection in Sport Unit, which builds the capacity of sports to safeguard children in and through sport and enables sports organisations to lead the way in keeping children safe from harm?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I certainly will. During this lockdown period we provided funding to the NSPCC which helps parents keep their children safe online too.

Policing and Crime Bill

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I will draw the attention of the House to the criminalisation of doping in sport. The subject was tabled in another place as proposed new Clause 39 to this wide-ranging Bill by Christina Rees, the Labour MP for Neath, to whom I am grateful.

The most compelling criminal activity in competitive sport is defrauding fellow athletes. For the worst excesses of sports fraud, where professional athletes have obtained money, property, services, a benefit or an advantage dishonestly or by deceit, they can and should be prosecuted for fraud and attract a term of imprisonment. Too often the sports-specific nature of doping in sport makes the use of existing laws ineffective and warrants the introduction of long-overdue sports-specific laws that cover not only the criminalisation of doping but match-fixing and illegal gaming as well.

As I have consistently argued in your Lordships’ House, winning at any cost in competitive sport, keenly contested though it is, is not acceptable. Cheating is inimical to the very essence of sport. Cheating by whatever means, from match-fixing to intentional doping, has no place in sport. Nor should there be any tolerance of cheating through the use of performance-enhancing drugs because of the significant dangers to athletes’ health that it poses.

When I had the privilege to be chairman of the British Olympic Association for the Beijing and London Olympic Games a poll, participated in by well over 90% of the members of Team GB, resulted in a firm and uncompromising stance by our sports men and women that those guilty of cheating should be banned from selection for Team GB for life. Olympic victory takes years of hard work and hours of gruelling training, day after day, week after week. The sacrifices required to win are huge, and only the best will succeed. Those elite athletes, pushing themselves to the limits of the physically possible, have a responsibility to do that fairly and honestly, without resort to a performance-enhancing bullet found in a pill or syringe. When an athlete chooses to cross the doping line, they not only defraud their competitors but cheat themselves.

Every week we read about yet more cases of doping where the athlete feels that the chances of being found out are minimal and the sanctions weak. I believe the time has come to create effective deterrents and criminalise the worst cases of doping in sport, which should include criminal sanctions against the coaches, the doctors, the administrators and the athlete’s entourage as well. It is argued that Olympic values should include the indulgence of human frailty, forgiveness and redemption and that the mark of a true justice system is the prospect of reform and redemption that it offers. These are important values, and society as a whole is defined by our recognition and adoption of them. However, we need to ask, where in this case is the redemption for the clean athlete, denied selection by a competitor who has knowingly cheated and potentially taken the whole “enchilada” of drugs? There is no national team kit for Rio for that clean athlete, no redemption for him or her. What is worse is that the cheat, possibly with a lifelong benefit of a course of performance-enhancing drugs, is back again, potentially strengthened by years on those drugs, while throughout that time they shredded the dreams of clean athletes with every needle they injected.

We should first look to the World Anti-Doping Agency to protect the world’s clean athletes. It was set up to police, educate and lead the crusade against the long-standing threat to clean sport. Sadly, it has consistently failed. It has been not WADA but the law enforcement agencies and the press that have led the fight against doping. It was not WADA but the law enforcement agencies that broke BALCO and exposed Marion Jones. It was not WADA but the Sunday Times and the police, backed by countries where doping in sport has been criminalised, that exposed the former era of pervasive drugs in cycling. It was not WADA but the Sunday Times and the German broadcaster ARD that exposed this year’s endemic cases of doping in Russia and Kenya.

WADA has failed to root out the training camps and countries where doping in sport is endemic. Only the dopey dopers get caught during the Games themselves. Regrettably, the intelligent cheats take drugs out of season away from the testers in countries such as Kenya, where access to drugs is so easy that the Sunday Times could recently easily pose as managers of athletes and gain access to EPO, a notoriously difficult drug to detect at altitude camps. Why has UK Athletics not banned British athletes from training in Kenya? It defies understanding. Why has the IAAF not done the same for international athletes?

At the heart of this failed policy of policing the world for drug abuse in sport, I regret to say that WADA is riddled with inadequate governance, a lack of accountability and rampant conflicts of interest. The president of WADA has shown that he is attached at the hip to his friends in Russia. Russia’s electoral power in the corridors of world sports administration wields significant influence. So it was no surprise recently when the president of WADA wrote to his friend Natalia Zhelanova, the Russian anti-doping commissar, after the Sunday Times broke the story of endemic doping in Russian athletics, saying:

“I wish to make it clear to you and to the Minister that there is no action being taken by WADA that is critical of the efforts which I know have been made, and are being made, to improve anti-doping efforts in Russia”.

He went further, saying,

“I value the relationship I have with Minister Mutko and I shall be grateful if you”—

Natalia Zhelanova—

“will inform him that there is no intention in WADA to do anything to affect that relationship”.

Unexpected and untimely deaths have followed the revelations of endemic doping in Russia, not least that of Nikita Kamaev, the former director of the Russian anti-doping agency, who was found dead in February, apparently from a heart attack, following the announcement that he was working to co-author a book with,

“information and facts that have never been published”.

WADA’s mandate is,

“to promote and coordinate the fight against doping”,

yet that is currently undertaken by proactive Governments—with legislative powers to criminalise doping—and the press, without which we would have yet more cheating athletes heading to Rio this year. The innocent athlete feels guilty with an intrusive regime that is potentially illegal anyway under the European working time directive and is built on a fundamentally misguided principle that a clean athlete is guilty till proven innocent. If you know that dozens of Kenyan athletes have tested positive since London 2012, what more intelligence does WADA need to initiate a proactive investigation into endemic doping last year?

Now, WADA looks increasingly isolated in its opposition to the criminalisation of doping. Nicole Sapstead, chief executive of UK Anti-Doping, had this to say on BBC Radio 5 Live a week ago when asked how UKAD was getting on in the investigation into allegations exposed by the Sunday Times. She replied, “What plays to our advantage is the fact that in Kenya since May it is a criminal offence to actually assist in doping—so to dope or to assist somebody to dope. So if these doctors have indeed done what they are alleged to have been doing, they are facing criminal prosecution. So it might help them or it might help us when trying to uncover the truth”. That comes at a time when the problems surrounding our own anti-doping agency continue to worsen.

When a British doctor claimed to have doped 150 sports stars this year, the organisation did not only make “ghastly mistakes”, in the words of its chairman, David Kenworthy, but it failed in its core mission. It has been shown to be toothless in this context because the law as it stands stops it taking action if the doctor concerned was not affiliated to a British governing body of sport. In other words, it is impotent to act in the face of the actions of over 99% of British doctors. Through this Bill, we now have the opportunity to rectify this inadequacy.

Clean athletes around the world need an international body—a world anti-doping agency—and a domestic national anti-doping agency backed by criminal legislation. Those organisations must be impeccably free of conflicts of interest and professional in their leadership competence, and have the finest independent lawyers and medical experts available to lead them, while remaining accountable to clean athletes. And so it is to national Governments that clean athletes increasingly turn if they are to compete against each other fairly, openly and honestly. This country used to lead in the world of sports administration; now, we lag behind Austria, Italy, France and Spain, all of which have criminalised the use of WADA-prohibited substances and methods. Cyprus, Denmark, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Serbia and Sweden have all enacted sports-specific legislation that criminalises the trafficking of WADA-prohibited substances and methods. Europe is not alone in introducing laws that criminalise doping in sport: China, Mexico and New Zealand have all enacted laws of various breadth and scope that deal with the trafficking of prohibited substances and methods.

In Committee, I hope that we will have the opportunity to consider legislation which, in the context of our athletes, addresses those who knowingly take performance-enhancing drugs with the clear and proven intention of cheating fellow athletes out of selection and their livelihood. We can learn from all the countries that I have mentioned. Now, we have the opportunity to act.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s grand coalition Government passed a law only this year which Justice Minister Heiko Maas described as,

“a declaration of war on cheaters”.

Under the legislation, athletes found guilty of doping can face fines or prison terms of up to three years. Those involved in supplying athletes with performance-enhancing drugs could face jail terms of up to 10 years. Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière said that the law was meant,

“to deter and to help uncover criminal doping structures”.

I believe equally that our law should be drafted first and foremost as a deterrent. I understand that the Government are still looking into this area. I hope that I will be forgiven for pointing out that they have been looking into this area since I signed the Reykjavik convention as Minister for Sport in 1987. We owe it to clean athletes to act now.

The outgoing director-general of WADA, David Howman, recently stated:

“I want to pose the question: should doping be a criminal matter? It is in Italy and WE think—some of US—that the real deterrent that cheating athletes fear is the fear of going to prison not the fear of being stood down from their sport for a year, two years, four years but a fear of going to prison”.

Howman went further as long ago as 2014, when he stated:

“I think, now, organised crime controls at least 25 per cent of world sport in one way or another. Those guys who are distributing drugs, steroids, and HGH [human growth hormone] and EPO and so on, are the same guys who are corrupting people, the same guys who are paying money to people to fix games. They’re the same bad guys”.

Meanwhile new Dutch analysis has estimated that the prevalence of doping in elite sport is “likely” to be between 14% and 39%. The situation is worsening month by month and year by year, and we need to protect the clean athletes.

Sadly, the current model is broken. The likes of Thomas Bach, the president of the IOC, and John Coates, vice-president of the IOC and president of CAS, the arbitration service, are well positioned to take stock of the current doping crisis afflicting world sport. A new, overdue and totally independent external review is necessary after Rio. It is needed now more than ever. A proactive international Olympic review could lead to a much-needed change at the top of WADA and address a crisis which, if not tackled soon, will bring other sports down with athletics. Otherwise, weak governance of sport and the lack of transparency, accountability and professionalism governing doping in sport will lead to a world in which competition between athletes becomes little more than competition between chemists’ laboratories, as gene doping overtakes substance abuse as the challenge of the 21st century.

For decades, sports administrators have talked of taking a no-compromise approach towards the drug chiefs, but their words are hollow. Their actions read like a catalogue of compromise, mixed with personal ambition and conflicted interests. It is time for far-reaching change. WADA, and the lex sportiva set up by the international sports organisations, has failed in its mission. What we need to do now to actively fight against doping in sport is to introduce criminal legislation, here in the UK, in this Bill.