Contribution
My Lords, having heard from the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, who introduced this while, unusually, placed on my left—but Grand Committee has certain advantages from these changes—and from the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, with his forensic detail, I will concentrate on why the subject of sport is important and why we should bear it in mind.
As has already been said, sport matters to most people. The back pages of the papers are read at least as keenly as the front, and indeed more so in most cases. It matters fundamentally to certain people in terms of community and a feeling of belonging. It is also a way of encouraging people to take part in sport at amateur level, which has social and health benefits, so it is an important subject. Anything that attacks the integrity of sport attacks the community feel that goes with it and the health benefits; everything else is attacked if you attack the integrity of the sport you see up front.
The report includes nothing that I have not discussed before. I think the first time I looked at these issues was with the Jockey Club, looking at its model of supporting and protecting young people—young jockeys in that case. Young athletes starting out need protection in their sport, which needs support from outside, from the police and everybody else. If somebody gets one small charge in their youth on the way up, you have them for life; their career will always be on a knife edge and they could be destroyed. The same is true for other sports, such as tennis and football: somebody on the way up is vulnerable, as is somebody on the way down. With other sports, with the rewards and things going on at the top, the rewards are so great that it is more difficult to threaten them—it is not impossible, but more difficult—and they are under greater scrutiny.
We are sharing information internationally here. In the age of communication, you bet on something in country A, place your bet in country B, money is provided for somebody in country C, and the two athletes involved—if we are talking only about two—are from countries D and E. We go on. That is why it is complicated and why something of this nature is so important. How we manage to get people to co-operate is something we need to look at.
This clearly was not easy, and I cannot really add to the process questions, which have been covered well already—possibly that is down to my reading of it or the excellence of the previous two speeches, but I will let the Minister tell me which one she thinks is correct. But if we are going through on that, we have to work across the board here. I would hope that this is not the only way we are co-operating and encouraging sports to look and talk to each other on a wide basis. You need to gather information in. Movements on betting markets are very important, but if you do not understand the nature of the sport—for instance, spot betting has been one of the local things—you will not be able to look and see where there are aberrations in what is happening, such as aberrations in a certain player’s behaviour. We need to understand this; we need to share that information; we need to bring it together; and we need the governing bodies involved.
I have wondered whether I should say this, but I am going to indulge myself. We should encourage governing bodies to resist the blandishments of other politicians about changing the rules as well. When you start rescinding things about, say, foul play in a game with international value, you are risking those players again, because players will believe that they can kick harder next time and still get off. I will leave that one where it falls.
If we are going to act here, it is all about co-operation, and this is a part of that process. My question, therefore, to the Government is: what are we doing with international bodies of sport to share this information across them? How quickly will they be getting in touch with law enforcement bodies to check whether something has gone wrong, and how will they be encouraging those bodies to speak to their international compatriots?
This is important and it will help, but it is not the whole answer. When the Minister comes to answer, I hope that she will tell us how that co-operation is going, how the treaty fits into that pattern and what help the Government are giving. This matters to most people on an emotional level a lot more than many other things, and if we do not start to deal with it, we will be in danger of damaging something that is quite a fundamental part of our social structure.