Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)

My Lords, I tried to add my name to Amendment 27, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, but I was slightly too late for the printing of the Marshalled List. I think there is something important in this amendment in terms of thinking about who is able to have access to major games. If you look at the 2012 programme, there was a massive commitment right from the start to no free tickets—the sponsors paid for them. It was not just the joy on the children’s faces when they got to go and experience the events, but it was something that they will remember for the rest of their lives. It was also tied into the school programmes that were being run at the same time. As I have said before, 2012 was also the only time that I have ever been able to go and watch a sporting event where I was able to sit with more than one member of my family. With the ticketing, if someone could not sit in a high stand or needed to be at the end of a row, they also thought about how they linked that up to accessible toilets; those are all really important things. I think Wembley Stadium is the only place I have ever visited that actually understood some of those issues as well. I think there are 147 accessible toilets at Wembley Stadium, which other venues should definitely aspire to. Other things that you could do include “Pay your age”, which 2012 did really well. As a spectator who is a disabled person—the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, mentioned smarter ticketing—you are constantly having to explain what you need, where you want to sit and who you want to sit with or check whether you actually have a guaranteed accessible seat. Again, it is about showing the world what we do and what we care about. We should be looking at ticket touting wider than this, because it is an issue not just for the events that this Bill may cover. Another issue in this group of amendments, which I also mentioned in my meeting with the noble Baroness the Minister, relates to thinking about disabled people not just as spectators. I was commentating on a major event in a new-build venue, and it turned out that the commentator’s position was not wheelchair accessible, so I was not able to do my job properly. I spent half the time commentating in a completely different position. As a commentator, it helps if you can have some interaction with the other people that you are commentating with, so we had to move to a venue quite a considerable distance away to be able to do the last event that I was commentating on. There should be something in here about a guarantee of what accessibility means—perhaps not necessarily on the face of the Bill but just an understanding that we can do so much better. If we are going to be building new venues, whether it is for the Olympics, the Paralympics or more football clubs, we should make sure that disabled people have the ability to access events in a fair and equitable way. I support the other amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes. He has more experience on this than anyone else in the Chamber from his work at LOCOG and beyond, and we should be listening to the things that he is asking for.