UK Concussion Guidelines for Grass-roots Sport

Lord Walney Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

We do not, but we hope that the guidelines will encourage people who play sport, whichever sport it is, to do so safely.

[Lord Walney (CB)]

I suffered a two year-long concussion while I was representing Barrow and Furness in the other place, and looking back, I was staggered by the lack of knowledge even among fairly senior professionals in the medical industry about this, so the guidelines are very welcome. Does the Minister not share my fear that we may be at the start, and not towards the end, of a profound period of change with these guidelines, and that future generations may look back with horror at the way in which people playing sport, particularly younger people, are subjected to risk of severe brain injury with practices at the moment?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

We know that physical activity, playing sport, is good for people’s physical and mental health, and good for society. We want more people to be active and to play sports, but to do so in a way which is safe. The guidelines are an important first step and a baseline for national governing bodies to make sure that people who play sports, whichever sport it is, can do so safely and enjoyably.

Gambling Act Review White Paper

Lord Walney Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

Submissions to our call for evidence were clear that online slots are likely to be the highest risk products, hence the work outlined in the White Paper addressing the risks of those and other products. Restrictive regulations on the number of gaming machines in a venue no longer make sense when it is possible to use a smartphone to gamble anywhere, 24/7. In fact, they can increase harm by making players reluctant to take breaks. What is important is the quality of supervision and monitoring that customers receive in land-based venues. We are maintaining and strengthening the protections for customers that are required in these venues, and we are still requiring operators to offer customers different types of gambling opportunities.

[Lord Walney (CB)]

I refer the House to my entries in the register of interests, including concerning analysis of the sector’s economic impact on communities across the UK. What will be the Government’s criteria for the success of the single customer view pilot, and how long does the Minister expect that analysis to run?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I cannot give the noble Lord precise answers to that, but I will write to him with the details I am able to furnish at this point.

Freedom of Speech

Lord Walney Excerpts

Friday 10th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Walney (CB)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson. I greatly anticipate the report that his committee is due to publish next week on the critically important area of regulation of the internet. It is of great interest, as he will understand, in relation to the report that I am writing for publication in the new year in my capacity as the Government’s independent adviser on political violence and disruption, looking at the far right, the anti-democratic far left and single-issue groups, as well as the scale of the threat that they pose and measures leading into that. It is clear that freedom of speech and the ways in which the internet can be used or misused are of significant importance to that.

I was struck by the Roger Scruton Memorial Lecture given by Lord Sumption just last month, which examined at length the issue of freedom of speech. He made the point, which has also been eloquently expounded in many of the contributions today, about the importance of freedom of speech to the proper functioning of our liberal democracy. This is not simply freedom of speech as an abstract concept, but the need to enable, allow and tolerate a breadth of opinions within it, to ensure that our liberal democracy can remain resilient, so that we are not simply a country that has elections every few years but one that has the underpinning of understanding, tolerance and an ability to move that actually makes a country a democracy.

I feel a little self-conscious talking about a secular crisis of faith in front of the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury and probably the most revered Anglican audience that it is possible to have, but I hope that he and they will indulge me, because I feel that this is relevant. I spent most of my life as a progressive, new Labour youngster activist and then a Front-Bench Member of Parliament and am now here on the Cross Benches. In most of my time growing up, I thought that I had a sort of Enlightenment view on equalities, with the idea that there were progressive opinions that were good and conservative opinions that were bad and that there would be an onward march of progressive legislation and culture change that would lead to ever-increasing benefits to humankind. In that context, if anyone had engaged me and my fellow new Labour acolytes on the idea of freedom of speech, we would not have had a great deal of interest in it. In fact, we would have spent more time engaging in no-platforming demonstrations for reprehensible people who we thought should not be given a platform in particular places.

The clash of rights, if I can call it that—I realise that that in itself is a highly contested way of describing this—between people with different views on rights related to biological sex compared to gender has profoundly shaken my faith in this sense of an ever-expanding sense of right as opposed to a clear sense of wrong. I am pleased that my noble friend Lady Falkner mentioned the plight of Professor Kathleen Stock. I add that the way in which the author JK Rowling is being pursued, with attempts to silence her, should profoundly concern us. It plays directly into this idea that we need a breadth of opinion to be able to make changes and decide where we want to go as a society.

It is sometimes seen as heretical or an abusive thing to say if one points out that many of the campaigners who now wish to place the views expressed by the likes of Kathleen Stock and JK Rowling as outside acceptability held views of that same kind 10 or 20 years ago. That is not to say that they were wrong then and right now, or right then and wrong now, but that you need that breadth of opinion to be able to understand where we want to go. I feel that that is being profoundly questioned now by people who are doing so for the best of intentions but who may well do significant damage to our democracy in doing so.

Turning to the partly related issue of online safety, one of the reasons I am seeking guidance from the committee and others is the profound tension regarding who, if anyone, should regulate the debate. It is potentially as problematic for a Government to regulate what should be within those bounds as it is for a very narrow group of people within Facebook. If you reject both those things, you are still left with the problem of where the boundaries should be, what the level of regulation should be and how you go about reaching an understanding.

I was really pleased to hear the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, talk so compellingly about disinformation. I feel that too often, we put together hate speech, misinformation and disinformation. However, I hope that a greater focus from government and the state on who is perpetrating disinformation—which countries and organisations—could unite all of us in what is otherwise a profoundly contested debate over where the boundaries of freedom of speech ought to lie.

Passchendaele

Lord Walney Excerpts

Thursday 13th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend, as I was just about to do that. He is right to mention their enormous contribution over the last 100 years.

Tyne Cot is the final resting place of almost 12,000 Commonwealth servicemen, of whom more than 8,300 remain unidentified—among them four German soldiers. At the heart of the cemetery is the Tyne Cot blockhouse, a formidable German fortification captured during the fighting and then used as a medical post. After the war, remains were brought to Tyne Cot from across the surrounding battlefields, but most of those buried there are thought to have died during the third battle of Ypres.

When the Menin Gate was constructed, its walls proved insufficient to bear the names of all the missing of the Ypres Salient, so a memorial wall at Tyne Cot bears the names of nearly 35,000 men who were killed after 16 August 1917 and whose graves are not known.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

Is the Minister troubled, as I am, by the inherent tension within the nation’s commemorative programme for the first world war between the need to remember the sacrifice of previous generations and the desire to instil in current generations the need for patriotism and potential sacrifice in defence of our values? The dreadful, needless mass loss of life in the first world war was perhaps different from the second world war.

[John Glen]

The hon. Gentleman makes a typically thoughtful representation of the challenge in getting these commemorations right. I hope he will recognise that a lot of thought and work has gone into trying to get that balance right. I hope we will begin to understand how it is being balanced when we hear from some of my colleagues, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison).

I will reflect, as I said I would, on the CWGC, which commemorates 54,000 of the missing on the Menin Gate and a further 35,000 on the memorial wall at Tyne Cot. When the names on other nearby memorials are added, the total comes to some 100,000 soldiers who have no known grave, numbers that are unimaginable in modern-day warfare.

Following the ballot for free tickets launched in January, I am delighted that around 3,900 descendants will attend the event at Tyne Cot. The content and staging of the event will evoke, I hope, a strong sense of place, making full use of the poignancy and historic significance of the cemetery. There will be readings by military personnel and descendants, musical performances by UK military bands, a choir and solo performances, and a formal act of remembrance. Readings of soldiers’ recollections, letters and diaries, as well as poetry, will tell the story of the third battle of Ypres and the experiences of men who fought there. Content will reflect the contribution of men from across the UK and Ireland, as well as from the Commonwealth.

In addition, from 29 to 31 July, the Passchendaele centenary exhibition will be held at Passchendaele Memorial Park in Zonnebeke. We have been working with Memorial Museum Passchendaele, and the exhibition will include contributions from a range of UK and Belgian museums and organisations. There will be artefacts, exhibition-style display boards and panels, living history groups and areas for historical talks and musical performances in open-air and covered areas. Memorial Museum Passchendaele will also have an exhibition entitled “Passchendaele, landscape at war,” which will be open to visitors.

I thank and acknowledge the help and support given to us by all the local organisations and local communities in and around Ypres and Zonnebeke during the planning stages over the last year. Their support has been invaluable, and my thanks go particularly to the mayors of Ypres and Zonnebeke, who have led that contribution.

We have also had a huge amount of support from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which is celebrating its own centenary this year. This organisation is one of our key partners, and it does outstanding work in ensuring that 1.7 million people who died in the two world wars will never be forgotten. The CWGC cares for cemeteries and memorials at 23,000 locations in 154 countries and territories across the globe, making sure that our war dead are honoured with dignity. The CWGC recently launched a new scheme for interns who have been welcoming and guiding visitors at major cemeteries and memorials this summer, including at Tyne Cot. Also, the Ministry of Defence is a key partner that is contributing military assets to these events. I am delighted, too, that the BBC will be broadcasting the events on both Sunday night and Monday.

Our key themes across the entire first world war centenary programme are remembrance, youth and education. On youth and education, I am pleased that the National Youth Choir of Scotland will perform at all three commemorative events and that around 100 graduates of the National Citizen Service, aged 16 to 19, will be part of the delivery team at the commemorations. The graduates have undergone an educational programme on the first world war in readiness for their roles in Belgium.