Lord Addington (LD)

My Lords, it just goes to show that, if you are speaking on a lot of amendments, you should try to get your mind on the right one. I thank everybody who has taken part. This has actually been a very good debate in terms of the policy going forward, with possibly one exception, but I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, is getting to know his colleagues very well. We have established a consensus that there are a lot of good things proposed in the Bill, such as the idea you must preserve certain things because they are a good unto themselves economically, culturally and socially. I wish I had tried to match the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, with a list of events, because hers was pretty impressive—I have a few in there as well. There are some very good ideas here, although possibly not the whole list. Certain things about traffic on a regular basis probably going through might be extremely useful. An event structure, if it comes up and if we eventually get round to it—and who knows what is coming in the next 12 months—might be an interesting thing to bring in. As the noble Baroness said, people are not saying this is a bad Bill. They are saying it is a good Bill and asking, “Can we actually take some of its benefits and push them out to somewhere else?” The traffic issue is one that really catches my mind, getting people to and from events, and if you have traffic controls, making sure that there is something in place before the big events happen. This is probably happening in other ways, but this is a nice regular way of doing it. If the Government are prepared to engage on that, even on a long-term basis, and say they will use some of the capacity, that would be something which would make people’s lives easier, you would get more out of it and you would ensure economic potential. That is rough; there are variations. The idea is that some sporting legacy and encouragement should go through. That is the thing the Olympics got wrong. We had a wonderful event but we had no physical sporting legacy, certainly not towards grass-roots level. There are a couple of veterans here of the committee that looked at it. It is the thing we failed to do. With all that success, this is what we failed to do, because we know it does not happen by osmosis. You have to have some actual involvement. I hope we will go back to this later on in the Bill. But that is one of the things that we have got wrong that we know about. I hope that the Minister, in further discussions on the Bill and going forward in this area, takes on board what has been said, because there is much here that we would like to expand on. Irritating a Government by saying “Yes, we agree with you and can we have a bit more please?” is actually one of the nicer ways of irritating a Government. Every now and then, we manage to do it to all Governments—may this Government have more of it. This is something we are engaging in to get the best out of. Generally speaking, it has been a very positive debate, and I will withdraw my amendment. I hope we will address this again at a later stage, with more information. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.