Birmingham Commonwealth Games Bill [HL]

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 25th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foster of Bath]

I am enormously grateful to the noble Lord. The entire House is looking forward to a later debate on future signage arrangements around Birmingham New Street station, which he is the world’s expert on. I hope that, before our Committee deliberations are finished, he will offer to lead a team of Games volunteers at the station to guide people, since he knows his way around there better than most.

However, the noble Lord’s suggestion is wrong: at no point have I been a clear enthusiast for a hotel tax. He will note that in many debates in the other place, I expressed on the record grave reservations about such an approach until the issue of VAT had been addressed. There is commonality of agreement with my noble friend on the Front Bench on this issue, but there are a range of views, which we will have an opportunity to hear when his noble friend introduces his amendment.

My final two amendments, 19 and 20, look at the wider reporting mechanism. Amendment 20 calls for an earlier report than the Bill currently provides for. I hope the Minister agrees that on financial and other vital issues, we need early reporting. Amendment 19, from the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, calls for not only earlier reports but far more frequent reports than is currently proposed. That way, your Lordships and the other House can keep abreast of what is happening and hold people to account. The more reports that we have as the Games develop, the better, and it is important that we use them to keep a tight grip on expenditure.

Let me give an example of why there are continuing concerns, and why there is a need to keep a grip and to understand what is meant by the Government’s plans for underwriting the Games. We know from newspaper reports that removing the National Express bus depot in order to create the Games village and subsequently providing 1,400 much-needed homes in the area was initially estimated to cost £2 million. Reports now suggest that the cost will be a staggering eight times higher, at £15.5 million. Will the money that has to be found be additional to the £185 million that Birmingham City Council must find, or will it be covered by the Government’s underwriting agreement with the council? It is important that we find out such details now. We need early and regular financial reports on what is taking place, and that is why I have tabled my amendment. I support nearly all the other amendments, albeit that one needs a slight tweak. I beg to move.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 3 and respond to the noble Lord, Lord Foster. He is right about the need for transparency in the underwriting agreement between the Government and Birmingham City Council. It is not at all clear to noble Lords. The key issue is: who is the provider of funds of last resort if the Games run into financial difficulty? We are entitled to be told at some point during the passage of the legislation. Whether we get that is another matter entirely.

It needs to be repeated that these Games are a fantastic opportunity for the country, Birmingham and the West Midlands. Many characteristics of the Games are very exciting. Now that we have resolved imaginatively the issue of the two sports originally to be excluded, all is set fair for a brilliant competition. However, the problem of finances for a city that is already under some financial challenge is formidable. As we have heard, there is a 75:25% budget split between central government and Birmingham City Council. Birmingham has to find £184 million and it will of course look for commercial opportunities to help with that; but it also has other plans such as the post-Games housing development in Perry Barr. All that means that sources of private funding will have to be found. We must recognise that the city council’s finances are under pressure, which is why this is such an important issue.

I have been interested in a tourism levy because the city council has been. The Core Cities group believes that a levy would be a sensible and fair way in which to raise funding revenue. Scotland is close to implementing such a levy for Edinburgh, and the consultation of the city council there showed high levels of support for it—85% of respondents to the consultation backed a levy of either 2% or £2 per room per night. The noble Lord, Lord Foster, rather unkindly took me to task for the wording of my amendment. We should not take the wording of amendments in Committee too literally. The point that I am trying to make and is clear in my amendment is that we want the Government to look at this matter sympathetically and produce a report. The issue that the noble Lord is right to raise is the length of time for which a levy would operate. I fully accept that important point and it surely would be discussed after review by the Government and the city council.

[Lord Foster of Bath]

I entirely accept the noble Lord’s point and that a drafting change can be made, but does he not think it more sensible to adopt the approach proposed in the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Addington, which talks about the Government looking at ways they can help Birmingham City Council raise funds through, for example, a local tax more generally or even a local lottery? There are quite imaginative solutions and to tie it down to one specific mechanism is probably an error.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

We already know from what the Minister said at Second Reading that she will say that the decision on a new tax rests with Her Majesty’s Treasury and it thinks that local authorities already have ample means to raise funding. I am sure she will say that again. The noble Lord raises some fundamental points about local government finance, and I am very sympathetic to them. I have been trying to put forward a very simple suggestion: as a tourism levy has been floated by a number of local authorities and we are seeing one implemented soon in Edinburgh, why not use the Commonwealth Games as a way to pilot it—without commitment to any other city or area of the country or that it will be a long-term tax—to see whether it could work?

I understood that, post-election, Her Majesty’s Treasury was looking at changing all the rules of engagement as part of the Government’s new strategy towards local government and to help in some of the more deprived parts of the country. This is a very straightforward way to try something out to see whether it would work, whether it would impact on the hotel economy—a downturn is clearly one risk—and whether it would be a very straightforward way to enable local authorities to raise more resources for sports, leisure and culture in the future. I do not see the problem with having a pilot scheme to allow that to happen.

[Lord Snape]

Is my noble friend aware that the Conservative candidate for Mayor of London intends to fight the mayoral campaign later this year with one of his policies being the right to levy a hotel tax in this city? If the Conservative candidate in London can say that that is what he is going to fight on, that should surely overcome the objections from the Treasury Bench and certainly from the Front Bench today.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

Indeed. I would not bet much on his chances, I have to say, but there is a growing movement for some kind of tourism levy. I am pretty sure that at some point it will be agreed to. I think this would be a great opportunity to do it now.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

This is an interesting group of amendments about the funding of the Games. My initial reaction was that it is an interesting idea, but how does it affect these Games? My initial response to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, was that it is an interesting idea but not here and now because the Government told me they have underwritten the Games. We will probably have a little more transparency and more of an idea about how that underwriting takes place in a few minutes’ time, but making these Games a success is the priority in these discussions. We will not solve local government finance in a Bill with this Long Title. It was suggested to me that the department wants us to pass this amendment so that it can fight with the Treasury. I know where my money would be on that one—it would not go beyond three rounds.

What are we going to do about this? We are going to make sure we know what is happening so we can get on and do the Games and do them well. If we get it wrong—remember it is a Bill about the Games—we will lose something that we have built up a huge amount of credit for. We can do these big events well. We have a track record. We are coming in late so we cannot have the schemes and imaginative discussions we had on the Olympic Games. We are the white knights, the rescuers, coming in to make sure the wonderful, second-biggest multi-games event on the planet functions again. We are doing a good thing. If we try and Christmas-tree too many things on it, we will get into trouble. If the Government are making very clear that they are underwriting the Games and Birmingham City Council knows what the relationship is—whether it is a loan or a gift—then we are in good shape. However, we have to know.

My amendment is designed to know what packages can be done. My noble friend described it as imaginative. It is not. It simply uses examples of what we have done before. We used the National Lottery for the Olympics. Do we use some form of lottery now? Do we use something based around it? If we place a series of handcuffs on or stumbling blocks in front of the organising committee, we risk throwing the baby out with the bath water. Let us get on with it. We have come in late. We are doing a good thing. It will not be perfect. We will not have the indulgence of discussing and preparing things like we had for the Olympics, where the Bill was there before we won the bid.

Using tried and tested ideas might be the better way forward. I suggest in future that local government should know what contributions it can make, how much it can raise and what responsibilities it has. Doing a study now will help it in the future because we do not want this to be the last thing to be put on. We do not want something getting in the way of us winning hosting, for example, the soccer World Cup. Let us make sure we have clarity. I hope at the end of this discussion we will have a little more of it.

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Before turning to the amendments, I will endeavour to answer the questions about the medals and the medal tables and how the system works, and I am happy to put this in writing to all noble Lords so that there is no confusion. The Commonwealth Games Federation has confirmed that each event will issue its own distinct medal table: one for Chandigarh 2022 and one for the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games. The medals will be different. The medallists in Chandigarh will receive Commonwealth archery and shooting championship medals, not Commonwealth Games medals. Then, as my noble friend Lord Moynihan clarified, a week after the closing ceremony, there will be a medal table which will include the results from both competitions. My understanding is that the week’s separation is to reflect that the two competitions are different. Both are extremely important, but there will be an aggregated Commonwealth sport medal table, not an aggregated Commonwealth Games medal table.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I understand how we have got to this position, and I sympathise with the organisers, but since the media will obviously combine them together immediately, is it possible for us to go back and gently say: “Do they not need to think about this again?”

[Baroness Barran]

I am happy to explore that, but my understanding is that that decision has been taken. Perhaps we need to see how it plays out in the event that the model is adopted in future.

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[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, I have been unable to speak in this debate previously but am enthusiastic to have the opportunity to say something on the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. It concerns me that we have talked about sports legacy for a very long time but have never willed the consistent funding and approach to genuinely embed it for generations of young people. I speak as a former convenor of the Commonwealth Teachers’ Group and am therefore actively engaged with teachers across the Commonwealth. I am very excited about the Commonwealth Games.

I am slightly concerned that, when I started teaching in 1973 in the ILEA, we had many sports clubs in schools. It has been a consistent rollercoaster of up and down; sometimes sport is well funded and sometimes it is not. Sometimes Ofsted is keen on it; sometimes Governments are keen on it. If everything that has been said by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, is to come to fruition and we are to see that young people in our schools have these serious opportunities in term time and during the school holidays, we must think about the legacy of these Games not just in terms of headlines but hard and long about how we fund all the things we want and need to happen in our schools.

I absolutely believe that there is a commitment from the teaching profession that schools, as the hubs of their communities, should be open more of the time. But that requires resources. It requires that the facilities, which will be used in addition to the time when the schools are in session, be maintained. It requires that there be coaches and other available teachers. It requires that schools work together. In Birmingham, for example, we have a plethora of different types of school, some of which work well together and some of which do not necessarily work so well together. We heard earlier in this debate about the problems vis-à-vis the financial challenges potentially facing Birmingham, and I am sure noble Lords will know that there is currently a significant issue around education funding generally, whether for sport or other issues.

For all the reasons already given in some of these fine speeches, there should be a real legacy that relies on young people having an absolute right to the level of physical activity which we all seek from them. I hope that noble Lords who may have the ear of Government will ensure that this sports legacy is not just a headline but a reality, perhaps initially, as the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, has said, in Birmingham and the surrounding area but spreading out across the whole country—ultimately, so that GB can be a model of the kind of sports legacy to which our young people can aspire and have as an absolute right in their lives, in not just term time but school time. It will result in a healthier school cohort and possibly even more medals.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I echo my noble friend’s point that we often debate the use of school facilities and bemoan the fact that they are in use for a disappointing percentage of time in the average week. However, we must face the financial reality that school governing bodies face at the moment. In Birmingham, a lot of primary schools are now closing at lunchtime on Fridays because they simply cannot find any other way to balance the books. The idea that the education system of schools in Birmingham can somehow magic up the ability to open their facilities for hours on end, particularly in the summer holidays, will not happen. I am sure that the Minister’s department wishes very much for schools to do more, but we have somehow to find a way to give them the ability to do it.

I hope also, although the amendments before us do not mention health particularly, that there will be a way to find an opportunity for health bodies in Birmingham to take part in some of the discussions. The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, has talked a little about young people’s health and well-being, but I am afraid that Birmingham’s obesity levels are very high. I have always hoped that the Commonwealth Games might be a catalyst for us to try to do something about it. The health service needs to step up to the plate, because its enthusiastic involvement in legacy planning could be very important. Health interests and sport interests do not always mix easily, partly because people in health worry that things such as the Commonwealth Games stress the joy of competitive sport at the expense of everyone. I understand that, but they can sometimes be very precious about it. I still believe that the two can run together, but opening the door to health interests now would be a good way to see whether they can be round the table and proactive in promoting legacy. The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, put it so well: this time we should ensure that we get legacy right.

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, I will make a few comments. First, on my amendment, I think we covered part of the international co-ordination and spreading the events in the previous debate, but if the Minister has more to say on that I will of course listen gladly. The main thrust coming through here is represented by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, effectively asking whether the Government will enact their own sports policy properly, which involves the department of health co-ordinating with the Department for Education and local government to make sure we have facilities to get out there and participate in grass-roots sport. Competitive sport is there at grass-roots level; it is just not as well done. I pray in aid my own sporting career. I am afraid that I missed Second Reading because I was playing rugby against the French Parliament. Yes, we lost. I recommend parliamentary rugby to anybody who wants to see the detail of the game, because we are so slow that you do not miss anything.

A good sports policy alone does not create champions. They often come by freak and fluke, and the very lucky get through. A good system will leave a supply of them. A really good sports policy will provide second-team and third-team players for small clubs and address the health problems, et cetera. People saying, “Wow, isn’t he great, let’s look at him on TV”, but then sitting down with beers and chips and saying, “Let’s try another channel” does not help very much. We need to get people out there to take part.

Perhaps we should be set up differently, but schools are a great facility. I started my club career playing on a school pitch that was lent to a small club that had just got itself a ground. We came through after 10 or 15 years of using school pitches. We must not stop that spontaneous growth of sport. We have a tradition of organising ourselves at a far higher level than any other country in Europe. Doing it ourselves means a cheaper facility. We should help and support that, as these amendments would do, enacting a sports policy which says, “These bits of government should come together”. Surely if something as exciting as a Commonwealth Games cannot allow us to do that, we really are missing a trick.

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[Lord Moynihan]

My Lords, I shall make a brief introduction to this amendment because we have covered this in some detail, but that does not in any way take away from the importance of accessibility and of a focus in the Bill on the interests of disabled athletes and anybody with any disability who is associated with the Games, whether a spectator, a worker, an employee or any individual. They should not be in any way discriminated against. Placing accessibility in the Bill should be at the heart of our approach to hosting an international sporting event. We need an inclusive approach to these Games. In my amendment I refer to the International Paralympic Committee, which has done remarkably good work on technical specifications for access, circulation, pathways, ramps and stairways. Those are clearly defined—the IPC accessibility guide has some 250 pages. It has rightly been accepted as a live document; it should improve. It was written in 2013, post London 2012, but it is still regarded as the key document for any sensible and modern approach to accessibility when hosting Games. It covers amenities, hotels, other accommodation, publications, communications, transportation—which we will come to in a much-anticipated contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Snape—and training in accessibility. Training the volunteers about accessibility is really important, as is making sure there is awareness training and job-specific training for hosting Games. Then, there are the Games requirements which we have considered in the past.

Tokyo 2020 has just published its accessibility guide for the Paralympic Games. It is interesting to note that not only does it aim to use the Games to ensure that all the venues, facilities, infrastructure and services provided are accessible and inclusive; more importantly to me, it sees the Games as a catalyst for change throughout the whole of Japan. It has simultaneously published a universal design 2020 action plan, which the Japanese Government are looking to implement to improve accessibility across the country. That is a step forward from the 2013 document, because it states that hosting an Olympic Games or other major sporting event needs to focus on accessibility in all its forms, but it can also be used as a catalyst for change in the country as a whole. All these measures show how vital it is to place disabled athletes and anyone who faces any form of disability on exactly the same basis as any able-bodied athlete or anybody who does not require detailed consideration of their disability. We must improve social inclusion and accessibility. I am looking forward to the highlight of the Committee this evening, when we hear more about the transport plan—and, on a serious note, the importance of accessibility throughout the whole of the transport network. With those brief words, I beg to move.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I do not want to delay my noble friend’s tour de force but I want to support the noble Lord in what he said about accessibility. My amendment concerns a small bit of accessibility, but a very important one since many visitors will arrive to see the Games via Birmingham New Street station. New Street is a paradox because it is a wonderfully bright building which is very popular and has fantastic facilities, but it is not really a railway station. It is a retail outlet that was placed on top of a railway station, with no increase in the capacity of the station, apart from the four lounges at the top. I do not know what my noble friends think of those lounges, but they are basically deeply unattractive concrete holding pens to stop people cramming down on to the platform. There is no carpet. They are not like an airport. There is not even rubber matting. They are concrete and cold and miserable and do not do the job.

At Second Reading my noble friend Lady Crawley spelled out the confusing nature of the layout. My noble friend Lord Snape is puzzled by platforms A and B, but there is also the name. Is it Birmingham New Street station or is it Grand Central? There are different signs with different descriptions of what I think is the same building. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, raised the issue of people with disabilities trying to get through. We go through regularly and see people asking where the taxi rank is. There are two taxi ranks, but they are nowhere near where people leave the station. Both are in the open air because even though the station was designed to have one taxi rank with cover, it was then decided that that was not where you should catch a taxi. If you ask people what they think of the retail outlet—John Lewis and the restaurants—they say it is wonderful; but it is not New Street railway station.

All I am doing is highlighting a real concern that Network Rail needs to get a grip on this and rediscover its role of providing facilities for rail travellers rather than being a retail estate developer, which is essentially what it has become. We need some assurance that the organisers understand this and are going to make it as easy as possible for visitors to find their way to buses, taxis, trams and other facilities. I realise it could be argued that this is a small point concerning an otherwise fantastic Games, but it is actually quite important.

[Baroness Brinton]

I put my name to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, and I will come back to that in a minute. I just want to pick up the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. I want to refer again to the meeting I had with two people from the organising committee who were extraordinarily helpful. Emma Clueit, in particular, was knowledgeable and more than helpful—she tried to explain things. I thought she could influence what was going to happen, so it was an entirely positive conversation.

However, there is a “but” coming. The “but” on transport is that she was saying that they had just been invited to have somebody on the transport forum. However, that is only one voice on a much wider forum. I have sat on those regional or subregional forums, and my worry about Birmingham New Street is the ability of one body to change something is much more limited than if you have a longer-term base.

The other issue is that change is required very quickly. I did not even know that there were two taxi ranks at Birmingham New Street when I relayed my problems with one of them at Second Reading. I find that quite amusing. There are going to be major issues with the large numbers of people coming through for the Games that will need to be dealt with as a matter of urgency. That will be a legacy for Birmingham if it is handled right.

I want now to move back to Amendment 8 on having a statement of accessibility in the Bill. I completely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, that it is essential. To refer again to the conversation that I had with Miss Clueit and her colleague, the Games team have slight concerns about the IPC standards being used because sometimes they want to better them. I have complete sympathy with that, but that is not what the amendment says. It says that the standards must be satisfied. In other words, it is a floor of accessibility, not a cap.

I think there is a very good reason for having it, for just the reason I have said, on transport. We need to ensure that Games committees have real power in the communities in which they are working to make changes happen. Having something in the Bill will make the other statutory bodies in the area have to face up to their responsibilities as well. I hope that the Minister will be prepared to put it in the Bill because some of the problems outlined during Committee stage today demonstrate that, while the organising committee has the best of intentions, its ability to deliver everything that the wider community wants is harder without the power of something being in the Bill.

I said I would go very briefly back to the issue of accommodation for athletes. I was rather disappointed with the letter I got from the leader of Birmingham Council. There are two forms of category 3 for living accommodation for wheelchair users. He said:

“Category 3 is generally around the provision of equipment specific to user”.


No, it is not. My worry is that the council is providing the planning permission for these units and the advice that Councillor Ward has got from his officers does not even understand the basics that Paralympic athletes will need. I remain extremely concerned about that. I hope that perhaps I can have an update letter from Birmingham City Council to reassure me. My letter made no indication at all that there was any accommodation for category 3. I know that that is not true because of the conversations I have had with Miss Clueit and I have also seen the Birmingham Mail report on the number of units that will require extra care in the future. It is 161 units and I suspect they are the wheelchair-user ones.

There is no joined-up thinking on this and that is exactly why accessibility needs to be in the Bill to make sure things do not drift and fall through the net.