Baroness Coffey (Con)

My Lords, I start by thanking the committee for the important work that it has done in going through the fine details of this in the inquiry that it held. I also want to commend the Government for actually getting on with ratification. I am very conscious that a lot has happened since 2018, not only political battles to do with Brexit but the issue of Covid, so it is fair play that they have taken up the opportunity to ratify. I am somewhat daunted to be here with two Olympians. My greatest achievement is helping noble Baronesses to win our tug of war earlier this year, but I am a lover of sport, and I must say that the latest frustration continues to be about how VAR got it wrong. Nevertheless, sport matters in so many ways; we see that when the country comes together, and when the world comes together at significant moments, whether that is for the Paralympics, the Olympics, or the World Cup, of whichever sport you like. Indeed, we are united in trying to make sure that there is a fair game, and that the hand of God is not the way to win, nor the doping, which has been referred to. It is why it needs to be fair, and that governing bodies around the world need to make sure that it is fair. One thing that still is finally getting sorted is the fact that women will have a fairer chance now that many more sporting bodies are not allowing biological men to go into those sporting competitions. Many women have lost out on medals, and indeed that sense of fairness. Nevertheless, I appreciate today that the convention is really about match fixing. It is about money and about tackling crime and it is important that we keep focused on that. Earlier this year, we heard about “clickgate” in Saltburn. Somebody was clicking their fingers, pretending that somebody was out. I do not know if it was about money or just trying to get that cricket club higher up the league but, yet again, it resonated across the country as being something pretty grim. I think it is a couple of years since David Coote from the Premier League made comments about a particular football manager. Although he was never charged with corruption in terms of this sort of thing, basically he was not allowed to referee a Premier League match again—I have forgotten the exact name of the company. Indeed, in a different way, he got his comeuppance and showed his true, really despicable, behaviour when he was convicted earlier this year of child pornography offences. It attracts all sorts of odd people, this ability to be prepared to sell and be sold—to sell your soul just for your own fix. That is why sports betting is very mindful of the issues. I am a big fan of prediction markets and do not necessarily want to see them constrained, but the big issues with them are particularly difficult, and how we get that information shared around the world is quite extraordinary. I am a Liverpool fan. I recently was at Anfield for the Liverpool v Forest game with a group of friends and had a different sort of experience. I had not even heard of this thing. I was asked, “What do you think will happen in this match?”. I said: “I think X”—I will not name X—“will get a yellow card”. I was quite surprised that X did not get a yellow card given the behaviour on the pitch; however, this was one of six things that together added up to a kind of a playful bet. Somebody else said X would get an assist or whatever. I had not realised that this was going into a bet. I thought we were having a chat about football and the match ahead of us. It was only, I think, a £1 bet, but it did make me think, and it is one of the main reasons I am here today, about what we are doing. I think gambling can be positive—I know it has its downsides—and the betting companies should think again about what they are doing and what kind of behaviours they are trying to encourage when somebody is watching sport. I appreciate how much regulation there is already in this country and, while this is about online betting, I think the real issue lies with offshore betting. I want to commend the Group of Copenhagen countries. They came together, as the Council of Europe recognised, for the FIFA World Cup, monitoring 104 different matches and working with the FIFA Integrity Task Force. I do not know the outcome of that, but I will be asking that question when I am at the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly soon where I am a substitute member on the committee that covers sport. We have a certain amount of regulation already which probably covers what we need, but are there any gaps? I think only two sections of the Gambling Act 2005 apply to Northern Ireland, what are we doing to make sure that there are no gaps in the different bits of legislation that cover the entire United Kingdom as we put this ratification into force? In terms of the Information Commissioner working with the SBIU, I cannot give a direct example, but there is definitely an issue about aspects of GDPR and the tipping point for the SBIU to hand over information to the police and CPS where it might suspect something is happening. What can it do about that? Indeed, will there be any new protocols to make sure that the authorities not only ratify the Macolin convention but put it into practice? Finally, I have a question for the Minister. I am very conscious that, with ratification, we gain more access to national platforms and different ways that this can be done in the future. The work with Interpol can still happen now without us having ratified it. But, in terms of our own prioritisation, I fully understand that the NCA will be focused on terrorism, trafficking and all sorts of things. Where will this come in the pecking order, and what is being done within DCMS to see whether different targets will be put in place or whether there can be some different, helpful funding to the NCA to be able to consider this further? We already know that the CPS does not prosecute unless there is a high level of evidence, so I do not think we are going to see many prosecutions out of this. But we have to try to see deterrence and frustration of the money flows to try to shut down these channels of illegal behaviour. I look forward to the Minister’s response and I will certainly report back to my noble friend some of the reaction on my return from Strasbourg and the Council of Europe.