Birmingham Commonwealth Games Bill [HL]

Lord Campbell of Pittenweem Excerpts

Tuesday 9th July 2019 Lords Chamber

In closing, I thank my colleagues in the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Sport, Modern Slavery and Human Rights.

[Lord Campbell of Pittenweem (LD)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. I have been listening to him with great interest; he has a very specialist knowledge of these matters. The one thing that concerns me is the obligation contained in the elements he has quite properly outlined. These Games are taking place in rather a concertinaed fashion, because of the history, which we need not dwell on. What he suggests, ideal though it may be, will be a considerable burden on an organisation that might be quite stretched. I do not know what he has in mind regarding who should be directly responsible or, indeed, the resources necessary to ensure that these obligations are implemented, but perhaps, before he sits down, he might illuminate the matter.

[Lord Moynihan]

I will, with great pleasure. The noble Lord—a greater expert on sport than I will ever be, both on and off the track—makes an important point. I tabled this amendment because the organising committee in Birmingham is already doing this. The work is significantly advanced and would need to be co-ordinated into a charter, but no more than that because every step I have outlined is actively being considered or has already been implemented by the organising committee.

In answer to his first question, it would be for the Secretary of State to require the organising committee to bring all of these points together in the form of a charter. That is the process that I have advocated. I do not think it would be onerous, or that additional people would need to be employed. I have been more than impressed by the very significant work that Birmingham has already committed to this, and it would well reflect the work that the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Sport, Modern Slavery and Human Rights has done in co-ordination with the organising committee and, indeed, all other relevant parties.

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[Lord Coe (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, for tabling Amendment 5, which elevates the crucial importance of legacy. I am sure that no noble Lord, on either side of the House, would argue with that concept. We share the sentiment that no Games should ever leave a city or community without leaving an indelible footprint on its infrastructure, society, education or economy. I will make one observation to counsel caution, which buttresses the remarks I made at Second Reading. The primary responsibility of the organising committee is to deliver a fabulous Games. The prerequisite for a legacy platform has to be the successful delivery—operationally and otherwise —of those Games. On that occasion I also remarked that if the Games themselves were a damp squib there would be little or no appetite to further the legacy ambitions.

The noble Lord has a proper menu of legacy issues which needs to be addressed. I speak on behalf of the trade union of current and former organising committee chairs who tend to become a slightly persecuted minority over this process. I want to make sure that we are not placing too onerous or burdensome a set of responsibilities on the organising committee itself. The noble Lord pointed out, quite rightly, that there needs to be a proper balance of those legacy responsibilities between local authorities, and their agencies, and the Commonwealth Games Federation. To further the prospect of other bids, it is not in the interest of any federation to walk out of a city without having been quite demanding about what is left behind. I approve of the framework, but the organising committee has the herculean responsibility of getting the operational integration across the line to create an inordinately complex sporting construct in the space of 10 or 12 days. I therefore caution against asking it to focus too heavily on the legacy burden. That has to be shared properly with the local authorities and housing agencies that have that responsibility. Yes, an organising committee can and should, in the way it constructs a Games, always be concerned to maximise legacy and to do things in a way that allows that post-Games legacy consideration to be delivered optimally. Within my general support for the amendment, I want to make sure that we are entirely clear about the very specific responsibility of the organising committee.

[Lord Campbell of Pittenweem]

My Lords, I may be hypersensitive, but I inferred from something that the noble Baroness said that she might have understood me to suggest that I was in some way opposed to the principles that the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, set out. I am of course not opposed to those: there is no more enthusiastic supporter of the obligation of human rights in the Chamber than myself, I venture to suggest. All I was at pains to do was to point out, as I think has already been agreed, that these are rather demanding obligations and I am anxious to ensure that there are the necessary resources to ensure that they will be met.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been a most instructive debate right at the outset of our consideration of the Bill. It might well be worth while for all of us to read in Hansard the many detailed, specific and informed remarks that have been made from varying angles. I thank all who have taken part thus far and I invoke the name of my noble friend Lord Hunt, simply because his absence today really was unavoidable and he will certainly want to take part in the future evolution of this debate. I thought if I mentioned that right now, noble Lords could take that into account. Much of the thinking, as my noble friend Lord Rooker said, was initiated by him.

These amendments, in their totality, ask us to look at a number of things. It is true, as has been said, that the wish list on the legacy amendment is long and, as the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said, could be longer. I will concentrate on two things my noble friend highlighted: the question of housing and the alchemy—if that is what it is—that turns houses into communities. A proper legacy would not only build a certain number of houses and have a certain percentage of them for this, that or the other category of use, but would leave us with schools that children could go to and places where they could play. Some of the very desirable things mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan—activity, sport and so on—could be done within the community thus created. It seems to make a lot of sense. Various percentages are mentioned in the amendments: 50% for social housing, for example. The right reverend Prelate suggested that from the Birmingham end it is 35%; well, there is room for debate there. The facts have been laid before us, the options are there and I am sure we will have some keen and passionate debates in due course.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, talked about the importance of the flow of information, and he was echoed by others. The noble Lord, Lord Coe, or perhaps it was the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan—I tend to get them mixed up; since I first met them both on television, I cannot tell them apart in the flesh—emphasised information flow and the prime need for transparency. It does us well as we debate this issue to remember that we are not the only stakeholders, or prime actors in this drama. In terms of local government, it is not just the City of Birmingham but other local authorities which differentiate this initiative from Glasgow and London and make it a bit more complex and needful of a good deal more thought. There is local government; DCMS and our own Government; our own organising committee, which has been amply referred to, with the owners’ responsibilities weighing upon it; the Commonwealth Games Federation itself, of course; and all those beholden to all of them. Very complex organisation of bureaucracy is involved here, and the need for a flow of information is paramount.

Such awareness as I have of the work being done in other places in this process leaves me really rather heartened. In Birmingham, the strands of community cohesion, civic pride, culture, tourism, trade, investment, jobs and skills, education, infrastructure, sustainability, accessibility, physical activity and well-being are being looked at already. Areas of collaboration between the private and public sectors, and local and national government, are already being identified, and schemes and projects are already being worked on. In a sense, we are behind the curve compared with what is happening elsewhere. We must take heart from that. The flow of information seems very important.