Birmingham Commonwealth Games Bill [HL]

Baroness Barran Excerpts

3rd reading & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 4th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister and her predecessor, who have gone through the rather odd process of having to do most of the work on the Bill twice. We have tried to engage to ensure that people know how this will work, and give them an idea of what to expect from it. The Government, the whole House and the political structure have done a good thing in dealing with something that might not have happened unless Birmingham had taken it on. Durban could not do it, so Birmingham has taken it on, which means that the Commonwealth Games will go ahead. The Commonwealth is an institution that may well become more important in our lives, and it will have its big sporting festival. Sporting festivals are good things; thus endeth the lesson. We have brought something through, and the House has tried to achieve a degree of agreement and consensus on a common aim. I do not know whether we shall manage to go down that path very often, but when we can we should celebrate it, and I thank the Minister and my noble friend Lord Foster, who managed to make sure that we were still represented when I could not be here. I thank them both for their help; I enjoyed working through most of this process.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

As we are not allowed to say thank you, it would be remiss of me not to break the rules, along with the noble Lords opposite. I echo the thanks of the noble Lords, Lord Griffiths and Lord Addington, for being so constructive and helpful on the Bill, and I acknowledge the extraordinary expertise of the noble Lords who contributed to our proceedings. I learnt an enormous amount about many things that I never even knew existed, including, obviously, the signage at Birmingham New Street station.