Lord Addington (LD)

My Lords, when I saw that we were going to pray against the Bill, I thought, “Oh, this is interesting”, because I know that the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, is good at this. He casts the fly across the water and drags it out to see what will rise and bite. Well, this trout is biting—not at the fly but at the line. The Bill is going through and we will have precedent and case law very quickly on how this is operating. We will have to let the regulator get on with it. I agree with the noble Lord on one point: the ownership of these national bodies is incredibly complicated. The noble Lord, Lord Watson, has just mentioned it. If you think this is complicated, look down the chain. The origins of many of these institutions go back to the Victorian period, and they have been through many evolutions, changes and traumatic experiences along the way, wrapped around them. There is a great mess about these institutions, which is why they get into so much trouble and why we need the regulator. You will have to have a series of general terms, which will be defined by experience, case law and the attitude of the regulators. I hope the current regulator is a success. Let us face it, the regulator has not exactly arrived to universal fanfare, but I hope it is a success and we set a precedent for how this should be done, because we need that. It is too complicated to get the definitions and clarity the noble Lord seeks here. I know he opposed the regulation of this sport and is worried about other bits. I happen to disagree with him on this; I may agree with him on something else tomorrow, but on this I disagree with him. We should let the regulator get on with it and observe. We have other things coming in the “state of the game” report, and the Government cannot look away from this. We have to make sure that it happens independently. I hope that we just let the regulator get on with it because, let us face it, we have talked about this enough.