Lord Moynihan (Con)

I am grateful for that intervention: I echo everything he said: everything he said, in terms of detail, is to be supported. The second point is this: we have to be incredibly careful, in discussing this subject, about the autonomy of world sport. We are looking at major sporting events and we are seeking to encourage UEFA, FIFA or the IOC to award the right to host those events in this country. We are not telling UEFA, the IOC or FIFA what to do; that is not the way world sport works. I hear in the response from the Minister, “We expect them to do this”, “We expect them to do that” and “We expect them to do otherwise”. We can expect as much as we want: it is UEFA, or the event organiser, that decides. What I was pleased to hear, in that context, was that this is clearly drafted with the agreement of UEFA for the Euros 2028, in the same way that there was unique legislation introduced for London 2012 to reflect what the IOC wanted. That is why the contribution from my noble friend Lord Holmes was so valid. The IOC listened carefully to what LOCOG—the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games—had discussed in great detail. They had discussed the need to criminalise the secondary market from selling tickets, to criminalise touting, so they could totally control the ticketing operation for London 2012, which they did highly successfully, not least because it allowed them to make tickets available to schools as my noble friend Lord Holmes said. They looked holistically at the overall ticketing for that event, unlike FIFA for the World Cup in the United States at the present time. It is incredibly important to recognise that, when we are talking about appropriate arrangements for ticketing in the Bill, we are talking about sitting down and listening to what the organisers of these major international events want, in association with the organising committee, and putting in place appropriate legislation for that. It would be very different if we hosted the Olympic Games in the future. We would need to come back with event-specific legislation—a point I keep making. It can be easily remedied on the face of the Bill, and all these issues could be put to one side if the Government recognised that, in addition to this framework, they will require, possibly, event-specific legislation to host major international events here—as I desperately hope they will—in the future. My concern was that we are being tough on touting on the face of this Bill for a small number of events that the Bill relates to. We may have found a way, in government, to talk tough and do nothing for the vast majority of people who are really concerned in this country about the abuse of the secondary market, and about the need for the Government to legislate. To bring forward a draft Bill, having said they were definitely going to legislate, with no commitment to implement legislation in a future session of this Parliament is not what the arts world, the music world, the sporting world, and the likes of the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, and myself—