Sporting Events Bill [HL]

Lord Young of Norwood Green Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 3rd June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

My Lords, I broadly welcome this Bill, but I shall focus on the things that particularly interest me. The Government have announced that they have

“commissioned … UK Sport to carry out an initial strategic assessment examining whether the UK could host an Olympic and Paralympic Games”,

and have said that the assessment will look at “potential cost”. The Government have said:

“Funding will not be used for the regeneration of these stadiums but the government will work with sports clubs and leagues to unlock opportunities for large-scale housing delivery, jobs, apprenticeships, transport improvement and community sports facilities”.


Those are really worthwhile objectives, which will benefit young people and communities as a whole.

The Local Government Association has called on the Government to join up their ambitions to be a world-leading host of major sporting events with their ambitions to tackle physical and economic activity, providing more funding for public leisure facilities. It said more investment was needed to develop and refurbish leisure facilities, which it said helped people be physically active, stay in work and contribute to the economy and provided the essential infrastructure for grass-roots sports.

There may be lots of disagreements with many other aspects of this Bill, but I would not have thought that anybody would disagree with those objectives of getting young people off their screens and on to the greens. Some of the things that are contained in this Bill are perhaps not some of the most major things that we have talked about, but I am sure that there is going to be a lot of exchanges and amendments.

The Bill also talks about financial assistance for sporting events. Clause 25 would give the Secretary of State the power to give financial assistance, such as loans, grants, guarantees or indemnities, to support a sporting event taking place in England

“for any other purpose connected to, or arising from, such an event”.

It refers to Scottish Ministers and Northern Ireland departments having the same power for events taking place in Scotland or Northern Ireland respectively.

The Government have stated that allowing financial assistance to be given for purposes connected to the sporting event would ensure that it could be used for things such as legacy programmes and social impact initiatives, in addition to supporting the actual operational delivery of the sporting event. It seemed to me that, whatever else we may argue about in this Bill—and it is quite obvious that there are going to be significant differences of opinion—the Government’s intentions are sound and worthy, and they are obviously going to be developed as the Bill goes along. But for me, anything that gets young people involved in sport is worthy of support.