Covid-19

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I am sure that the department will take soundings and work with as many experts as possible as we look to develop this. It is a future aim to start testing people to identify those who do not have coronavirus and are not infectious with a quick, simple, scalable test but we are not near that yet, so we will certainly work with experts and companies to develop it. We will draw as much expertise as we can because, along with the development of vaccines, this will be critical hopefully to moving back to some kind of normal life.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, the announcement yesterday hit sport very hard at all levels—not just those levels that are seen on television but community sport in whatever form. I believe that Ian Botham is to be introduced into this House on 6 October. Will my noble friend guarantee that sports will receive the same proportion of grants as have been given to the arts by the time that he arrives in this Chamber?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

I thank my noble friend. Like him and many others, I am extremely disappointed that we have had to pause these events. I was able to get one of 1,000 tickets to see Norwich play football on Saturday as one of the pilot events and, in terms of the way that was held, I thought that it worked very well.

We absolutely understand the economic consequences, as he rightly says, particularly for community and grass-roots sports, which so depend on spectators. I know that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State is working at pace with representatives from a variety of sports to ensure that we can come up with some kind of package to help them.