Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)

My Lords, in many senses, we have outperformed a World Cup football squad tonight, because we have hit the target ahead of schedule for this first day in Committee, and we have done it without a hydration break. Let me begin with the two amendments I have tabled in this group. It is an important group on which to end our debate, because it deals with the significant impact of the Bill on the restrictions on commercial interests, small as well as big, a point that my noble friends have rightly accentuated. My Amendment 40 seeks to create an exemption for charities from the advertising offences in the Bill, applying only where a charity is advertising wholly or partly for the purpose of promoting itself or a specified list of charitable services. I hope the Minister will be attracted to it. It is word for word taken from the provisions in the Birmingham Commonwealth Games (Advertising and Trading) Regulations 2021. If it was suitable then, why not for the new framework that we are seeking to set out? Amendment 55 similarly relates to charitable exemptions. Paragraph 1(2)(d) of Schedule 3 to the Bill states that a “Trading activity” includes “appealing for money or other property (whether for charitable or other purposes), with the exception of begging”. That means that the offence of trading in a restricted trading zone applies to charitable fundraising but not to people who are begging. I wonder if the noble Baroness can explain why it has been drawn up in that way. Surely we do not want to restrict people from collecting for good causes where that can be done in a way that is consistent with the sporting event, particularly when we consider that charities historically have been exempted from the advertising offences when we have hosted sporting events of this nature in the past. I have tried in doing that to follow the example that my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond has taken with his Amendment 39. As he said, that mirrors the approach taken in the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act 2006, which provided carve-outs for community and educational uses, and I congratulate him on the way he set that one out. I thought that the noble Lord, Lord Addington, undersold his Amendment 38 a little. It concerns the impact of exclusive advertising authorisations on small and medium-sized enterprises and, as my noble friend Lord Hayward has done, it is worth drawing the Committee’s attention to what the Government’s own impact assessment says about this, because it is rather revealing. The final stage impact assessment, published by the department, acknowledges candidly that the provisions most likely to affect small and micro-businesses are the trading provisions of this Bill, which could prevent established street and market traders operating as usual in and around restricted zones. It recognises that there may be “small disproportionate impacts on local traders relative to the broader business community”. Therefore, it acknowledges that the greatest potential impact will fall on street traders in affected areas—as my noble friend Lord Fuller said, the people who add to and enhance the enjoyment of many people going to sporting events. The impact assessment promises that “careful consideration will be given to how best to mitigate these impacts when making regulations on a case-by-case basis”. That is a candid admission, but candour in an impact assessment is not the same as a legal safeguard in the Bill. Amendment 38 from the noble Lord, Lord Addington, seeks to translate the Government’s own stated intentions from the impact assessment into an enforceable obligation. I think that one is worth the Minister looking at carefully in her response this evening but perhaps also as we consider all the issues we have looked at today between now and Report. I am grateful to noble Lords for all their amendments in this group.