London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (Amendment) Bill

Bob Blackman Excerpts

Thursday 28th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Hugh Robertson]

That is an interesting one. I think it is pretty much a fact of public record who has built the various stadiums. The construction company responsible for the Olympic stadium, for example, has done a fantastic job, as anyone who has been down there will say. I would be very surprised if that company thought it was getting squeezed out of the action, because everybody will know who it is. There may well be a stone somewhere or other that records who built the thing—I do not know—but my hon. Friend is right that the company cannot emblazon the outside of the stadium with advertising logos. If it had wanted to do that, it could have applied to be a tier 1 sponsor, and it has not done so. I guess that is because it thinks the building speaks for itself, and having watched it appear from start to finish, I have to say that it does.

Any more takers for interventions? Then I will get back to the 2006 Act and the Bill. This amendment Bill addresses three main matters: advertising and trading, ticket touting and the enforcement of traffic management regulations. Regulating advertising and trading near Olympic and Paralympic games venues is a requirement of hosting the games in the host nation contract. Parliament recognised during the passage of the 2006 Act that tailored provision was needed for the games, both to act as a stronger deterrent to ambush marketing and illegal trading and because existing powers alone were not adequate for such a major event.

The 2006 Act set out the broad framework for regulations that would provide the details. We need those regulations not only to fulfil the guarantees given to the IOC as part of the bid but to protect public space, so that spectators can access venues and we can maintain a celebratory atmosphere around the games. Following the ODA’s general notice about the regulations in June 2009 under the previous Administration, my Department launched a consultation on the proposed draft regulations on 7 March. The regulations will be reconsidered in light of the responses to the consultation before being laid in Parliament in draft and subject to the affirmative procedure later this year.

However, the 2006 Act provides the ODA and the police with powers to enforce the regulations, including the power to seize articles that are used to contravene them. We want to amend the Act to provide that any article seized by either ODA enforcement officers or the police is dealt with by the ODA instead of the police. The effect of that change will be that during the games, police time will not be spent filing and dealing with seized property. I hope that everybody can see the sense of that—the police will have better things to do. Instead, officers designated by the ODA, who are likely to be enforcement officers from local authorities who are familiar with dealing with street trading and advertising offences under existing law, will deal with breaches of advertising and trading regulations and handle any articles that are seized. Protection, and I hope a sense of proportionality, will be assured by the fact that the ODA is a statutory corporation established by the 2006 Act and, crucially, is subject to the direction of the Secretary of State.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

Can my hon. Friend tell the House the extent to which the ODA will have control? Olympic venues are not confined to east London. They cover the whole of London, and Olympic football events will be held all over the country and the sailing will be down in Weymouth. Where will the ODA limits apply, and what will happen to people who cross those boundaries?

[Hugh Robertson]

My hon. Friend asks a very good question. The key thing in dealing with people in that respect is applying a sense of proportionality. The regulations are designed to address big, corporate ambush marketing stunts, not individuals who through some error, act of omission or forgetfulness, or otherwise through no fault of their own, take the wrong thing into a venue. They will simply be asked to hand that over, as is normal.

Any venue that is an Olympic venue will be affected—effectively, there is a curtain around every venue, meaning not just the park, but anywhere that an Olympic event takes place. All football stadiums used for the football competition are covered. Outside London, the venues for sailing at Weymouth, for rowing at Eton Dorney, and for white water rafting at Broxbourne, and the mountain biking venue, are covered. If that is a pub quiz question, I think I have got the lot.

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[Hugh Robertson]

Correct—yes.

Infringing articles seized will be dealt with in accordance with clause 1, which sets out rules on how long articles can be held, when they must be returned, and conditions that must be met before they may be disposed of. Clause 2 will introduce a quicker procedure for making any amending advertising and trading regulations. The first and hopefully final set are out for consultation now.



Finally, the 2006 Act does not give us the ability to amend the regulations quickly once they have been made, but requires the ODA to give lengthy notice of any regulations at specified times before they come into effect, and provides that they must be laid in draft and approved by Parliament before being made. Effectively, that means that we are unable to alter the regulations in exceptional circumstances, for example if a games venue or road event changes at the last minute for security or other reasons. To resolve that, we propose to change the procedure used for any amending regulations under the 2006 Act to the faster, negative resolution procedure. The procedure for the principal regulations will remain as it is now.

On ticket touting, the games will be the largest sporting event this country has ever staged, with around 11 million tickets on sale. Unfortunately, ticket touts may seek to exploit the opportunities that that presents to profit at the expense of genuine sports fans. That is why the 2006 Act made the touting of games tickets, by which I mean selling or offering to sell tickets in public or in the course of business other than with LOCOG consent, an offence that attracts a maximum fine of £5,000.

The Bill contains a provision that will increase the maximum penalty for touting of Olympic and Paralympic tickets from a fine of £5,000 to a fine of £20,000. That increase is driven by the support of the Metropolitan police as a way of providing a more effective deterrent to the touting of Olympic and Paralympic tickets. In effect, it means that the police have recognised the threat of organised crime, rather than individual ticket touts, to the London Olympics. In doing that, we are not criminalising any new conduct; we are simply increasing the maximum penalty available to the courts in response to the obvious threat that touting poses to the games and to the UK’s reputation.

Visitors will come to the Olympics and Paralympics from all over the world, and we want to encourage them to do so. We would not want their visit, or their memories of the experience, tarnished by being confronted by strings of ticket touts, as has happened at some previous games. We intend to make the disincentive very strong and want to send a clear signal to touts that their activities will not be tolerated.

I should emphasise that this measure is aimed squarely at touts. Nothing in the law at present, or as a result of this change, prevents those who have games tickets from selling them at face value to family and friends. LOCOG will also run an official ticket exchange—this answers a point that was made earlier—so that people who find that they can no longer use tickets that they have bought legitimately can dispose of them.

Therefore, the law-abiding public have absolutely nothing to fear from this measure. The people who will—I hope—think twice are people and organised gangs who might be tempted to engage in touting and whose threat has been identified by the police. They should get the very clear message that the Government and the police take this matter seriously, and that the financial penalties for this conduct are severe, and indeed sufficiently severe to disincentivise them.

[Bob Blackman]

This is a key issue for the large numbers of people who have purchased tickets in the proper way. During my search for tickets—I hope I am successful in the ballot—I noted that a large number of unofficial websites are attempting to market tickets in advance of anyone receiving them. Clearly, they will seek tickets from those who are successful in the ballot. What action can be taken against those organisations and companies and to get those sites removed from the web?

[Hugh Robertson]

Two things come to mind. During my time as a Minister, I have become aware that some of these sites encourage people to subscribe even though they do not have any tickets at all and the whole thing is a blatant con trick. I recall the tragic case of some New Zealanders who came over for a rugby match at Cardiff Arms park on the basis of a set of tickets from one such website. It was a complete sham, but they had travelled all the way over here and gone to pick up their tickets, only to find there was nothing there. The point about the Bill is that it will enable us to take more effective action. A disincentive of £20,000 to someone perpetrating large-scale commercial ticketing fraud is likely to be much more effective than a disincentive of £5,000.

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[Hugh Robertson]

No final decision has been taken, but I can assure my hon. Friend—if this is what is worrying him—that it will be proportionate. There is quite a large ceiling in the 2006 Act. It is fair to say that this point caused us some concern back in 2006 on a cross-party basis. The application of charges will be proportionate. I think that this clause was called the granny clause, because nobody wants a little old lady straying briefly into one of these lanes by mistake and then getting hammered by an enormous fine.

[Bob Blackman]

One of the principal concerns of residents in my constituency is that the whole of Harrow and Brent could be turned into a very large car park for the duration of the games, with people coming from outside London, from the north and north-west, parking their cars and getting on the Jubilee line to Stratford. What regulations is the Minister proposing to allow the local councils to implement appropriate parking controls to prevent that from happening?

[Hugh Robertson]

No such provisions are proposed in the Bill. I could see that being quite a controversial power to grant. It is a matter for the local authority, and if it thinks that there is such a threat, it should take action. However, I hope that I can put my hon. Friend’s mind at ease by saying simply that the central tenet of the transport ban is that these are public transport games, and that the connectivity to the Olympics site is now fantastic, either via the Javelin train at King’s Cross—the area most likely to see the problem he mentioned—or through the upgrades to the tube lines. As I said, however, we suspect that the vast majority of visitors from outside London will probably come in to King’s Cross St Pancras and transfer on to the Javelin train. One can get to Stratford in seven minutes from there. I thus hope that the availability of public transport, and the ticketing system itself, will ensure that that problem does not occur.

[Bob Blackman]

If my hon. Friend came to Stanmore and Queensbury when Wembley station was in operation, he would find that all the residential streets are jam-packed—people come off the M1, park as soon as they can, and get on the Jubilee line to go to the stadium. The suspicion is that that is precisely what will happen for the duration of the games. At the moment, the local authority in Harrow has failed to take any action, and I am concerned about whether the Bill gives any special powers to enable the local authority to act for the duration of the games, rather than having to impose draconian measures for longer .

[Hugh Robertson]

There is no such measure in the Bill. I would need to take the advice of the drafting clerks, but my hon. Friend is putting before me a general problem that arises when there are large-scale sporting events. I am not sure, therefore, that it would not fall outside the scope of a Bill that is purely for the Olympics. All we could do with the Bill—and I am not even sure we could—would be to provide measures for the period of the Olympics and Paralympic games afterwards. What he raises sounds like a more general problem driven by sporting events at Wembley stadium and elsewhere. If the problem is worrying local residents—I presume he would not have raised the matter otherwise—it is for the local authority to take action.

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[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

It is an honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod) in speaking about the important Bill before us today. I rise as someone who, in a former guise, served as the Conservative Olympics spokesman in the Greater London authority, during the formative period when much of the work was initiated. I was also the deputy chairman of the GLA’s economic development, culture, sport and tourism committee for four years. We were responsible for the scrutiny of the Olympics and the development of the whole process.

I well remember the initial scepticism felt by most people in London when we began bidding for the games. That changed to wild enthusiasm when we heard the wonderful news on 6 July 2005, which followed that brilliant presentation. I compliment Lord Coe and Tony Blair, the Prime Minister at the time, who did so much excellent work to ensure that we were successful. However, we then woke up on 7 July to the horrors of the bombings on London transport and the security alert. That made us think of what could happen during the Olympics if we are not properly prepared, serving as a terrible early warning for everyone.

I well remember the early concerns about the site. The hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) encouraged people to visit the site. I have been there on many occasions, the first time when there was absolutely nothing there. It was an industrial wasteland, and one needed great vision to imagine what would happen in the interim period—something that has indeed happened, and which I welcome. We had concerns about financing the Olympics and in particular about the budget. We should remember that the redevelopment of Wembley stadium was an absolute fiasco. At the same time, we were considering the development of a vast range of venues. It is therefore extremely good news to everyone concerned that the completion of the various venues is coming in on budget, or possibly even below budget.

We were also concerned about the cost to Londoners. I well remember the previous Mayor announcing to the assembly that the cost to a Londoner would be no more than the daily cost of a Walnut Whip. The only problem is that the daily cost of a Walnut Whip over 25 years is likely to lead to diabetes and long-term health issues, which is precisely the problem that London is facing in having to pay for the games over an extended period. Londoners have also felt a great deal of frustration, particularly in west and north-west London, at having to pay for the cost of the games, while those living close to the edge of east London are experiencing the benefit, yet incurring none of the costs. That will be an important issue later.

We were also concerned that the costs had escalated, so it is good news that the budget is coming in the right way. The other concern that I would like the Minister to consider is the fact that national lottery funding was diverted to assist the games, as a result of which national lottery funding for large areas of London was removed. We were promised at the time that this funding would be returned from the profits from the subsequent land sales. We must not lose sight of that opportunity.

Part and parcel of this whole process has been the regeneration capability in that part of the world. The legacy of the games will not be just a sporting one, but a real legacy for the lives of east Londoners in particular. The key challenge will be to ensure that we do not allow what are, quite frankly, rabbit hutches to be put up at the Olympic park, leading to low-cost housing, thereby building in all the problems that were once part of the east end and which we are now addressing. I trust that the powers that be will ensure that that does not happen.

The venue development has been a wonder to behold. The fact that the venues are coming on stream much more quickly than expected and will be ready for public use and test events as early as this summer is an excellent testimony to all the hard work done by the ODA and LOCOG. I remember grilling the leadership of the ODA and LOCOG and feeling comforted that we had such excellent people at the helm making all this happen. I am delighted that the decisions taken by the appropriate people at the time to employ those people has borne fruit, and we should pay tribute to them.

Turning to the Bill, I want to raise an issue relating to the sporting events. We should remember that most people think of the Olympic games as consisting of the swimming, for about a week, and then the athletics. We are talking, however, about a broad range of events—about 26 of them—taking place throughout July and August, and into September, in the Olympics and Paralympics, that can create an explosion of great sporting legacy for the people of this country and encourage young people, in particular, to take part in sporting events that they would never have dreamed of taking part in.

I pay tribute to the ticketing arrangements so far. When I signed on to the website to bid for my tickets, I was sceptical about whether it would work. I found it very easy to access and to use, however, and the people who designed the process should be complimented on it. It is sad that there were problems on the last day, given the extended period of time in which people could apply for tickets. The fact that the advertising would lead to an increase in the number of people applying at the last minute was predictable, and it is sad that there was overloading of the system towards the end. However, I think that we have got the ticketing arrangements right.

I have one fear in that regard, which is that, if we are not careful, we could see rows of empty seats at the qualifying events, which are being sold at lower prices. I know that many sessions are oversubscribed, but I suspect that that will not apply to the qualifying events. I hope that schoolchildren across London will be given access to any such unsold tickets, so that they can have an opportunity to attend some of those undersubscribed events. That would have the dual purpose of filling the empty seats and encouraging young people to participate.

I take the point made by the hon. Member for West Ham about the fines for ticket touting. I draw a distinction between people who have bought tickets and pass them on to friends or family if they are unable to use them, the tout in the street who is trying to make a turn on tickets, and the seriously organised individuals who are making this a business. The proposal in the Bill to raise the fine to £20,000 is welcome, but I would ask the Minister to consider in Committee introducing a much higher upper limit, particularly for those who are turning ticket touting into a business. We could perhaps fine those involved in organised ticket touting £100,000, with tiered levels of fines for those involved in the various other aspects of the activity, and with clear guidance as to how the fines should be implemented.

On travel arrangements, we must remember that London has to keep moving and that other sporting events will be taking place while the Olympics and Paralympics are going on. There will be a full programme of premier league football throughout most of the period of the games, as well as champions league matches and a wide range of other sporting events taking place across London. We must remember that spectators going to those events will not want to be inconvenienced by the fact that the Olympics and Paralympics are taking place. The potential closures of roads and lanes presents a risk to regular drivers, as they could be seriously inconvenienced, particularly if they are not aware of the arrangements that are in place.

Let me repeat a point I mentioned in interventions. There is a massive danger that large parts of London, particularly west and north-west London, become glorified car parks for people wishing to use the tube network for the last part of their journey to the Olympic venues. I believe consideration needs to be given to encourage local authorities to introduce temporary measures for the period of the Olympics, rather than imposing potentially draconian measures unnecessarily throughout the whole year. Experience around the Wembley stadium area suggests that residents are severely inconvenienced when a minor event is going on at the stadium and draconian traffic control measures are implemented. Local authorities should be given the opportunity to address that issue in a particular way.

I believe we have the potential to run a very successful and brilliant event in 2012. I think we have an opportunity to create a lasting legacy for the east end, for the whole of London and for sport in general. I look forward to the newly re-elected Mayor inviting his predecessor, Mr Livingstone, to come along and play a part in the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic games, as we celebrate London at its best.