King’s Speech

Lord Wrottesley Excerpts

Friday 19th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wrottesley (Con)]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to take part in today’s debate on His Majesty’s gracious Speech. I sincerely wish the Minister and His Majesty’s Government success with their legislative programme.

I will focus on the importance of sport in the context of this debate. I would have liked to have seen more reference in the gracious Speech to sport and its vital importance as a guiding force in people’s lives, especially for young people. As I hope all noble Lords appreciate, sport is the most practical way to learn many life skills, from its benefits to a person’s mental health and well-being to being able to deal with healthy competition in a positive environment. I must declare an interest in that I have had and continue to have various roles in sport governance, as set out in the register of interests.

I want to interrogate the matter of sport following on from the mention of the children’s well-being Bill. Can the Minister give more information about how sport will feature in this Bill? How do His Majesty’s Government plan to increase participation in grass-roots sports and back the commitment to the “Get Active” campaign, which set a target to get 3.5 million more people classed as active by 2030?

In the gracious Speech, there is also a proposed Bill on football governance. I genuinely welcome this. Football is almost part of our national psyche, and some might even suggest a religion—I beg forgiveness from the Lords spiritual. Football often acts as a gateway for children to take an interest in sports and keeping active, not to mention the huge community and economic benefits that flow from that. We have only to look at last weekend to see the incredibly positive effect that football and sport can have—and it did not even come home.

It is incredible how diverse our nation’s sport that we all rally behind is, from tennis, cricket and golf to all the Olympic and Paralympic sports that will be on show over the coming days and weeks in Paris, as well as field hockey, netball, volleyball and even ice hockey—I declare an interest as chair of Ice Hockey UK. I strongly believe that the wider we cast our net and embrace some of these maybe less well known or glamorous sports, rather than focus so intensely on mainstream sports, the richer, more diverse and more active a population we will have.

In my roles in sport I see first hand how, across all communities, young and old alike benefit from all sports. In the UK, we host an increasing number of major international sporting events for the nation to pull together and embrace our nation’s top sporting teams and athletes. That can only be a wonderful thing for the nation and our great nation’s citizens.

I am chair of Ice Hockey UK, which has been asked by our international federation to bid for the world championships in 2029. We are on UK Sport’s preferred major and mega events hosting list, but due to the event’s size and prestige it would require DCMS support. However, we are caught in no man’s land, before there is a fiscal event of this Government. Will the Minister please kindly and urgently take this up with her colleagues so we can submit a letter of intent to the international federation by 1 September?

If we were to miss out on this incredible opportunity, we as a nation would lose out on over 300,000 visitors to the UK, a projected direct economic impact of £36 million and an indirect impact of £57 million—all for a modest £1 million to £1.5 million of investment. This investment would see the growth of a truly global sport in the UK and showcase what the UK has to offer to our existing and potential future international partners.

We have a small window of opportunity to submit our bid to host the world championship before other more established nations in the sport start bidding again. The National Hockey League, better known as the NHL, is the biggest professional ice hockey league in the world and the fifth top professional sports league in the world by market value. It sits just behind our own football Premier League at over $6.4 billion. I can see a day when the NHL comes to the UK. Please can the Minister look at this matter urgently before the deadline runs out on 1 September?