Lord Higgins
Main Page: Lord Higgins (Conservative - Life peer)
Lord Higgins
My Lords, this is a very well timed debate. The torch relay is now well under way and it seems to be received extremely well as it tours the country. A mere take note Motion may sound a little unenthusiastic, but I do not think that can be said of my noble friend the Minister’s opening remarks, which reflect the growing level of excitement as the opening of the Games approaches.
Flying in to London City Airport today, it was very noticeable that there really has been regeneration in the very desolate part of the East End where the Olympic site was very sensibly located. As my noble friend said, the major architectural features—namely, the aquatics stadium, the velodrome and the main stadium—are all very different and have been well received. Will my noble friend update us on the stadium itself? Athletics has been something of a Cinderella sport compared with some others in the country and we desperately need a national athletics stadium. The stadium’s design seems very good, but it is important that, whoever eventually takes it over, it should be used not merely for track but for field events. If we are going to have a football operation there as well—my noble friend encouraged me to say this—putting shot puts and so on in the middle of the football pitch during the weekend may not be a terribly good way of generating a suitable environment.
I certainly look forward to the Games. My noble friend stressed the commercial rather than the sporting aspects. I hope that our team does extremely well and we should give it every possible support, but we must recognise that medals are not easy to get and the degree of competition is perhaps far greater now than ever before. Perhaps I may be nostalgic for a moment and say that the environment is very different from that in 1948, when we had no legislation whatever on the subject and no sponsors. One must stress that the Games were entirely amateur; they did not have the degree of professionalism which they have now. That is a considerable transformation which brings with it some problems. The 1948 Games took place at a time of extreme austerity. I think that the amount of meat provided for one day for a member of the American visiting athletic team was roughly the same as that rationed to a family for a month. In preparing for those Games, I remember not having a proper vest because we had run out of clothing coupons. It was a very different atmosphere and the organisers did a remarkable job in all the circumstances.
One of the effects of the change from amateurism to professionalism is a real problem with drugs. There was no point in taking drugs in 1948 because one saw little value in finding that one had won because one had cheated, whereas once the Games are professionalised, there is a growing danger of people being tempted to take drugs. In that context—my noble friend Lord Moynihan may care to say something about this—the British Olympic Association has been absolutely right to say that we should have a complete ban. If someone is guilty of a serious drug offence, having been properly investigated and so on, the only way to deter to them is to have a complete ban. It is absurd to give them a second chance. All that does is encourage them to have a first chance and hope that they are not found out. I strongly support what the BOA has said, and I hope that we can get international agreement on it. It is quite absurd that we should not seek to ban the use of drugs. If people who have been found to contravene the rules are in the Olympics, I hope that we do not end up with a 100-metres race where half the competitors have been guilty of previous drug offences. We do not know what the long-term effects of taking drugs are, but it is extremely unlikely that the muscles that one has built up with steroids disappear very quickly. I hope that we can take a tougher line on this, and I welcome the line that my noble friend and his colleagues have been taking.
In the course of our previous debates—we have spent a while debating these issues—the question arose of what happens if people arrive at the stadium with tickets which they cannot use. At an earlier stage, my noble friend Lord Coe said that the committee was considering whether it would be possible to hand in tickets officially, rather as one does with Wimbledon tickets if one is leaving after a particular match, so that they could then be resold at face value. I am not clear where we are on that; we have been left rather in the dark.
Our debate in Committee on the Bill was also rather cut short on the question of protesters. Given the problems that we have had in Parliament Square, we do not want to find a whole stack of people camping outside the stadium protesting about issues which may well be entirely irrelevant. Are we satisfied that the rules for dealing with protesters—particularly the establishment of any form of permanent operation for protest during the course of the Games—are under control?
We must certainly hope that the overall effect of the Games—I declare an interest as a patron of my club, Herne Hill Harriers—will be greatly to encourage participation in sport. The Games authorities have been very good in seeking to ensure that people come along, watch and are encouraged to take up sport in various shapes and forms. That should be the best legacy from the Games. It means that we will have to provide the facilities. In that context, the proposals to change planning laws, and so on, should make it clear that if planning permission is given which eliminates a sporting facility it is replaced with something of equal value.
All those are issues for the future. Meanwhile, we must hope that our team does well. We must encourage them in every way possible. Finally, we should congratulate, not least, those in this House who have been actively involved in the whole operation—in the same way that Lord Burghley and others were back in 1948. That is a good tradition. I think that they have done a very good job and I hope that the fruits of their success give us a major national event of which we can all be proud.
Lord Moynihan
I have made a distinction, I hope, in trying to assist the noble Lord about what happens when those rights return to the British Olympic Association. He made a very important point about the future benefit to those companies being showcased for the work that they have done and what is happening today. What is happening today is clearly a matter for the legal department and, as I say, I am not here to defend a legal department that is looking in detail at the definition of a breakfast menu. However, I am very concerned as chairman of the British Olympic Association that companies that have done a huge amount of work for these Games should be able to showcase in the future and win further contracts in the future. Sports facilities around the world are a multimillion-pound business, and it does not end with the Games in London. For them, it is the beginning of a long road, and we should be there to support them on that road. We need to get the balance right between ensuring their recognition—which is important to their business—on the one hand, and on the other the return of the rights of the British Olympic Association, which for over one hundred years had to rely purely on private sector funding; there was not a pound from government in those hundred years. The only way to do this is through the sale of the rights through sponsorship. I believe that we can achieve that balance.
I will move on to the work of the Government. The House should have nothing but praise for the Minister for Sport and the Olympics, Hugh Robertson. He fought for our athletes in maintaining funding for our Olympic and Paralympic teams after London 2012, going into the Rio cycle. He has boosted the credentials of this country to make sure that we have a decade of sport, by supporting our successful bids—and I emphasise that all these have been successful—to host the Rugby League World Cup in 2013; the Commonwealth Games, of course, in 2014; the Rugby Union World Cup in 2015; the World Athletics Championships in the Olympic stadium in 2017, and what a magnificent achievement it was to win that bid; and, not least after our great victory today, the Cricket World Cup in 2019. This will be a decade of sport for the United Kingdom.
However, Hugh Robertson will not be short of future challenges when the curtain falls on the Olympic and Paralympic Games. There is a need to restructure British sport. It is still a myriad of too many quangos and of public sector-driven and overlapping bureaucracy. I have always believed that the role of government in sport is to empower, not to micromanage. Where sport is at its best, it is driven from the athletes up, with the support and enthusiasm of their parents, families, friends, clubs and schools. It provides the ideal opportunity to implement the Prime Minister’s earlier objective of “big society, not big government”. The months after the Games will provide the best chance in a generation for fundamental reform. A leader like Hugh Robertson, who has won respect across the sporting world, has the ability to take on the forces of the past and deliver a true sporting legacy for the future. However, delivery of that sporting legacy will be our biggest challenge.
Against this background, the British Olympic Association will continue to perform its role as an independent voice for sport. When the Government, the mayor’s office’s attention and the Olympic movement move on and LOCOG is disbanded, we will still be there for the athletes. It is my view that sport holds a mirror to society. The values of sport reflect the values of society. Many of the principles and ideals inherent in sport have a broader application to our lives as a whole. The standards of probity and integrity in sport should mirror the highest standards of behaviour in society. The corresponding forms of sanction and discipline should apply if that behaviour is flouted. Keenly contested though it is, winning at any cost is inimical to the very essence of sport and to its philosophy of team spirit, honesty and loyalty.
The concept of fair play is one of sport’s most cherished tenets. Cheating, by whatever means, from overt fouling to match fixing to doping, is not fair play and has no place in sport. On 7 November last year, the greatest living Olympian, Sir Steve Redgrave, stated, with reference to the World Anti-Doping Agency:
“A two-year ban for doping is almost saying that it’s acceptable”.
He was speaking for clean athletes across the globe. Yet last month was marked by a deeply disappointing development. The Court of Arbitration of Sport formally declared the British Olympic Association’s lifetime ban for serious drugs cheats unenforceable. That effectively denied the British Olympic Association the autonomy to select Team GB athletes. We held a special meeting of all the governing bodies of sport to consider the effect of the ruling. There was a universal condemnation of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s decision to reduce to two years the bans for first-time offences. Let us hope that it is not tantamount—as postulated by my noble friend Lord Higgins—to giving a green light to the use of drugs in sport. If this proves to be the case, and nothing is done to stem the tide, we will drift inexorably towards a sporting world in which competition between athletes is equally competition between chemists’ laboratories. At the British Olympic Association and in the corridors of the IOC, national Olympic committees and international federations, we may have lost the battle. However, on behalf of the athletes whose interests we represent, we must win the war.
My noble friend Lord Higgins suggested that the benefits of performance-enhancing drugs may pass and go away during a period of two years. That may be a seriously wrong observation. If I had taken growth hormones throughout my teens and had ended up six feet tall like my noble friend Lord Bates, I guarantee that I would not have shrunk back to my present height in my 20s. That was a light-hearted way of making a serious point. If one takes a cocktail of drugs to enhance one’s performance in training and can do eight, nine or 10 times more circuit training in the winter than one would otherwise have done without those drugs, even when one comes off the drugs one can attain high performance levels with the muscular structure one has now acquired illegally by taking the performance-enhancing drugs, sometimes for a very long time. The case of growth hormones is extremely important, especially for people in their teens.
Lord Moynihan
I am delighted that I did mishear—and if I did, I may have done so slightly mischievously in order to make my point. I am more than grateful to my noble friend for raising the subject.
I turn briefly to the Paralympic movement. There is no doubt that the Paralympic Games this summer will be one of the highlights of 2012. When I was Minister for Sport, I went to see my then Secretary of State, Nick Ridley. He was not the greatest fan of sport. I recall a packed House of Commons for the Second Reading of the Football Spectators Bill. I was a nervous Minister for Sport and he, kindly as ever, offered to do the most difficult task, which was to take on the Second Reading speech in a packed House. The former Minister for Sport, Denis Howell, leant across the Dispatch Box. I had been going to football matches regularly for the previous couple of years in order to be able to answer questions. Denis Howell asked: “So, Secretary of State, when was the last time you were at a football match?”—to which Nick Ridley replied, “At Eton, under duress”. It was a classic example that contrasted with how many days I had spent at football matches, watching 18 First Division games and 14 from the rest of the divisions. He was a great Secretary of State.
I went to see him that Wednesday morning. My headline requests were that we should have £1 million to set up the British Paralympic Association; that we should establish a ministerial review of disabled sport; and that we should request support from government to encourage the IOC to make it a requirement that any city bidding to host the Olympic Games also hosted the Paralympic Games thereafter. Nick looked at me and simply said, “Fine”. I did not stay for further discussion, but said thank you and exited to a broad smile from his private office.
True early heroes of the Paralympic association such as Bernard Atha and Dr Adrian Whiteson in particular—the latter has gone on to mastermind the Teenage Cancer Trust—should be celebrated this summer. Since that time, many Paralympians have inspired us, showing a generation that it is the ability of athletes that we should focus on rather than their disabilities. The seeds of this transformation in society were to be found in Headley Court, Stoke Mandeville and the work of Jack Ashley and the others in Parliament who steered through much-needed legislation on behalf of the disabled. This year’s Paralympic Games will be the culmination of all their work.
The British Olympic Association has been transformed over the past four or five years. It has listened to the voice of athletes as never before. The voice of athletes has been heard in the meetings of the advisory board, on which my noble friend Lady Wheatcroft and the noble Lord, Lord Paul, continue to sit and give their guidance and wise advice. When I walk in to meetings of the National Olympic Committee, I am proud to see in front of me one of the most expert boards in British sport, which is why the BOA will continue to play a central role in the centre of sports policy.
However, what we will focus on now, above all, is giving maximum performance support to our athletes, all 550 of them who will be selected for Team GB this summer. One hundred and one have already been selected. Why should we give them that support? One example gives the answer. If you were fortunate enough to watch the Games in Athens, you would have seen the great gold medals that Britain won in the coxless four, Kelly Holmes’s 800 and 1,500 metres, the men’s 4 x 100 and Chris Hoy’s first gold medal in the 1 kilometre time trial. The final times of those five gold medals added together were 12 minutes and six seconds, but the difference between all five being gold and all five being silver was 0.545 of one second. That is why it is so tough to win gold medals at the Olympic Games, and that is why the work of the British Olympic Association should be devoted—every minute, every hour, every day—to supporting every one of our athletes on Team GB to deliver their best performance on the day. If we do that, we have the talent to match the success that we had in Beijing.
Our aspirational target remains fourth place in the medal table. It will be tough, incredibly tough. We will not beat the Chinese, Russians or the Americans, and the Germans and the Australians will be very much on our heels, but if we can continue to support our athletes, along with their families, their coaches and their governing bodies, we will see remarkable feats of sporting success this summer. I have every confidence that our Olympic and Paralympic teams will deliver, and I wish them well.