Council of Europe Convention on the Manipulation of Sports Competitions
Tuesday, 15 September 2026
Contributions
Motion to Take Note
Moved by
Lord Johnson of Lainston
That the Grand Committee takes note of the Council of Europe Convention on the Manipulation of Sports Competitions (the Macolin Convention). Relevant document: 4th Report of the International Agreements Committee
Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted, as chair of the International Agreements Committee, to lead this debate on the committee’s report on the Council of Europe Convention on the Manipulation of Sports Competitions, better known as the Macolin convention. People in the UK are passionate about sport and the integrity of sport competitions is fundamental to their appeal. Match fixing and other forms of competition manipulation present real risks to the integrity of sport as well as to the UK’s sports betting sector. The Macolin convention is the first international treaty focused specifically on tackling this important issue, which increasingly transcends international borders. It was signed by the UK back in 2018 but was laid for ratification and scrutiny by Parliament only in June of this year. We judged the convention to be politically and legally significant and, as a result, we decided to report it to the House. Noble Lords will be aware that the usual scrutiny period for international agreements under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act is an extremely short 21 sitting days, which does not normally allow the committee time to take evidence on treaties. We therefore requested an extension of the scrutiny period to allow us to take evidence, which, I am delighted to say, the Government granted. We are grateful to them for this, as the extra time was vital to our ability to scrutinise the treaty properly. I am also grateful to the witnesses who gave up their time to give evidence to the committee, including senior officials from DCMS, and as always I thank our staff team, led by Dom Walsh, and particularly Ben Awkal and Paul Berman, for their excellent work in producing the report. I declare at the outset my interest as a non-executive director at Block Scholes Ltd, a technology company promoting some technologies that are used by Polymarket and prediction market companies. Competition manipulation in sport can take many forms. It can involve match fixing, which aims to fix the outcome of a sporting event, but it also includes fixing in-game events, often referred to as microfixes or spot fixing, as seen with recent high-profile incidents relating to deliberate yellow cards in football. We heard mixed evidence as to whether competition manipulation in the UK is getting worse overall or whether it is simply that the nature of the threat is changing. Three things were clear, however: this is an increasingly global and transnational problem; it is increasingly fuelled by organised criminal gangs who use the profits to launder the proceeds of other crimes, including drug and human trafficking; and certain sports and levels of sport are particularly vulnerable. Football and tennis appear to be the biggest targets, due to their popularity, while lower tiers of sports are vulnerable due to limited resources and easier-to-target participants. The consequences of competition manipulation are very serious. The sports and sports betting sector makes a significant contribution to the UK economy. In 2021, it contributed almost £100 billion of direct economic output, equivalent to 2.5% of total economic output for the year and around 1.25 million jobs. The Gambling Commission told us that if competition manipulation puts the integrity of sport in serious doubt, that could have an extensive commercial impact. There is also a profound cultural dimension, given the popularity of sport. The committee heard powerful testimony from Moses Swaibu, whom I thank for his contribution. He is a former professional footballer who was convicted for involvement in a 2013 match-fixing scandal and is now one of the leading advocates for combating match-fixing and educating young players about integrity. He told us, quite rightly, that a breach of sports integrity does not affect just football; it affects the entire country and its reputation. To address these issues, the Macolin convention sets out a range of measures aimed at preventing, detecting and sanctioning the manipulation of sports competitions and promoting national and international co-operation between public authorities, sports and sports betting organisations. We heard repeatedly that, although it has not yet formally ratified the convention, the UK is largely compliant with it and has been voluntarily implementing many of its provisions. We were therefore keen to understand what value was added by ratification. We concluded that the convention’s framework is both comprehensive and flexible. Its principal strengths are its provisions on international co-operation and information sharing. In the UK’s case, moving from voluntary compliance to ratification is expected to formalise, safeguard and enhance existing international co-operation, particularly information sharing, which is, in turn, expected to improve informing. It would also provide the UK with representation on the convention follow-up committee, enabling it to influence future Council of Europe decisions on the convention. Ratification seems to come with few disadvantages, as the costs are minimal. However, it comes with limitations. Nobody expects this convention to eliminate competition manipulation or unregulated betting entirely. It should be seen as one part of wider efforts rather than a complete solution. Although it is open to non-European states, it is at present predominantly European in its reach. This inevitably limits its ability to tackle what is clearly a global problem. Given that the UK has already been applying many of the convention’s provisions, implementation is not expected to be a major concern. We heard about a specific issue with Northern Ireland, which has different gambling legislation from the rest of the UK that is widely accepted to require reform, but government officials were confident that this would not prevent Northern Ireland’s compliance with the convention. I would be grateful for any further reassurance that the Minister can provide in this regard. I also want to raise a couple of scrutiny issues. First, the Government intend to enter a reservation in respect of the convention’s jurisdictional requirements. This was set out in the Explanatory Memorandum, but the reasons were not explained. The Government provided a further explanation after we wrote to them, but we ask that, in future, any reservations that the Government enter into in any international agreement are explained at the outset in the EM. I would be grateful if the Minister could take note of that. Secondly, on amendments to the convention, the EM simply stated that “Any amendment requiring ratification would be subject to” parliamentary scrutiny under CRaG. Statements such as these, which have been made by the Government in other EMs, are of no real use to the committee because they are circular. By definition, any amendment requiring ratification will be subject to scrutiny under CRaG. The real question for Parliament is whether amendments require ratification in the first place. I hope that the Minister will be able to give us useful input there. Again, the Government clarified this point in response to our written questions, but we should not have had to ask. We have repeatedly stressed that the Government should say in the EM which amendments will be subject to ratification and therefore scrutiny, and we have made that point again in our report. I would be grateful if the Minister could commit to that approach going forward. Overall, this is a useful agreement that helps to tackle an important issue. Match fixing is an international problem, and international co-operation is clearly part of the solution. It will not solve everything. Enforcement and preventive measures, such as education, remain vital, too, but it is clearly a step in the right direction. I beg to move.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
My Lords, I have not been well recently and the Chair has very kindly agreed that I might sit to make my address; I hope that that is acceptable. I congratulate the chair of our International Agreements Committee on his excellent introduction, which covered so many of the points that we made. I do not want to go back through them all, but I will pick up one or two things that might need to be reflected on by the Minister. I hope that she will be able to respond, if not today, perhaps in writing later. I will also talk a bit about the procedural points on which the noble Lord ended—about the CRaG system and how difficult it is for our committee to engage properly with the issues that come before us. First, the noble Lord pointed to the question of the timeline. This agreement was signed in 2018 but laid only in 2026. When we asked about that, the only information that we got was that it was due to pressure of business on government. I am rather surprised that a relatively straightforward piece of documentation that will be helpful on a major issue for the British public takes eight years to reach Parliament. I do not know whether the Minister can comment on that when she comes to respond, but it is perhaps something that we should note for the future. On the report itself, which the chair has covered very clearly, we are talking about something that is very important in the UK, and that is sport. You do not need to watch television or read newspapers to know that it is something that seems to dominate almost every conversation that we have—and that is right. It is important that it should, as it is a wonderful thing that we have, with wonderful sporting activities. But betting clearly is undermining quite a lot of what we watch and enjoy. The point made earlier about the significant involvement of organised crime syndicates, perhaps laundering proceeds from other crimes, is not really picked up by the legislation in front of us. I wonder whether, when the Minister responds, she might say what further work will be done in this area, because this will hit us very hard if we do not catch it early and properly. Given the geographical limits of the document that has been signed up to, emerging as it has from the Council of Europe, even though the Council of Europe admits other organisations into it, this issue is going to spread widely, despite what the legislation will say, because a lot of this is happening in the Far East, in Latin America and in places not likely to be party to the document in front of us. Do we have sufficient documentation and processes available to us to ensure that these evils can be tackled, and what more can be done to improve enforcement? I do not think that we got proper answers to that when we were receiving evidence and we were unable to cover it in any detail, but this is something which I am sure needs to be looked at. Again, could we have some thoughts from the Minister when she comes to respond? Even though signing up to this Council of Europe arrangement is important, it is not going to be sufficient to unwind some of the difficulties that we are already experiencing in prosecutions. We had evidence that, although quite a lot of activity can be seen to happen through the sports bodies and others, we do not actually see many people ending up in court. That is partly because prosecutions require a great deal of high-level evidence that is not often easy to get. It is not clearly the department’s responsibility, but it is something that the Minister might want to take up with other colleagues at some point. Of course, the whole question of what the future holds for us in terms of online gambling and other issues has yet to be addressed. Again, I think it would be helpful in future documentation that we are likely to see as the result of AI and other issues that gambling does not get forgotten, because it is clearly going to be something that we will need to deal with in future. The chairman mentioned in his comments the difficulties we had in getting access to material to carry out the work that the committee has to do under the CRaG rules. It may be recalled that we had a similar discussion on this issue when we had an earlier debate on issues when the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, was the responding Minister. The difficulty that we have with CRaG comes from the fact that we have tried to put into a system that was designed to deal with a very limited number of treaties, which the Government were undertaking under the royal prerogative, a parliamentary process that gives some responsibility to Parliament for addressing the issues around it. Given, at the end of the day, that the royal prerogative is going to trump anything that Parliament might want to say, that may be a vain hope. But at some point, somewhere in government, I think people will begin to think about the question of how we should look at issues. We had a good discussion on this in the committee, and the previous chairman made arrangements with the Department of Trade, as it then was, to try to get information ahead of the time when material was being laid in Parliament so that the committee could begin to think through where the evidence was required, which people should be approached, how it could be addressed best, and whether we would have time within our meetings schedule to do that. But that does not apply to treaties other than trade. We have, largely, no information given to us beforehand; anything we get is informal and not to be relied on. I ask that at some point this issue is addressed, because the intention when we first set up this procedure after we left the European Union, when I was involved in the process of setting up the new Trade Bill, was to try to follow what was happening when we were in Europe, where the European Parliament had a very active approach to all treaties, but particularly trade, with a considerable amount of time being spent in the Chamber and in the committee to make sure that issues were properly explored, officials helped and evidence gathered. This is not happening, as we currently do it. Our timelines are extremely tight. Gathering evidence is very difficult for the staff; they have very little time to do it, and we often do not really get as much as perhaps we should. The time available to consider and debate that is very much squeezed. This needs review. I hope that that is helpful to the debate.
Lord Addington (LD)
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.
Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)
My Lords, I very much welcome the debate today and declare my interests: I chair Sport Wales and, with that, I sit on UK Sport; I am a member of the Government’s Soft Power Council, which looks at sport; and, in 2017, I authored the report, Duty of Care in Sport , for the then Sports Minister Tracey Crouch. I am also part of the Laureus World Sports Academy. Laureus is perhaps best known for hosting Nelson Mandela in 2000, when he gave a famous speech about how “Sport has the power to change the world”. The rest of Mr Mandela’s comments are also significant, because he talked about how sport can unite nations and bring people together. At its best, sport is incredible; however, there is a darker side, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, and his committee for the work that they have done on this important issue. I very much welcome this report, and it has also been welcomed by the wider sports industry and sports organisations, although it has taken us a little while to get there with the convention. Sports integrity is the very essence of fair competition, but we need to think about how we protect everyone who works in sport, not just the participants. There are huge sums of money won and lost, and lives are also destroyed. We have seen that in a number of sports—most notably, probably, tennis and football—but these issues are occurring in other sports. We also have to think about how we future-proof the world of sport and what that might look like in the next 20 or even 50 years, where the fan base, consumption and even what a popular sport might be could change. I was thinking about the development of e-sports, which have developed very rapidly and gained hugely in popularity. For a while, it felt like e-sports were moving closer to the Olympic movement—I am not sure that they are quite there yet—but they have a huge advantage: you do not have to build massive venues and you can sell literally millions of tickets, as long as you have decent internet. However, how the participants are protected, and the welfare of everyone who is in and around, are a really important part of that. I am glad to say that a lot of UK governing bodies have done work on the welfare, protection and education of everybody in sport, but there is clearly more that we need to do. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, when he said that people in the UK are passionate about sport, but competition manipulation presents a real risk to integrity. It is good to know that the Betting and Gaming Council does not think that there is a systematic problem in the UK, but we need to keep our eyes open to any future risk. I am pleased that ratifying the convention will give the Government representation on the convention’s follow-up committee. That is really important, as it provides an opportunity for the UK to influence Council of Europe decisions, policy development and future initiatives. If we look at this through a soft power lens, sport is a really important part of soft power, whether it is the British events that we host here that have worldwide significance or bringing major events to the UK, such as the Tour de France Grand Départ next year. It is really important that the UK has a seat at the table, especially if we are considering bidding for a future Olympic and Paralympic Games. It is not just the bid process; we do not just fling in a bid at the last minute. There are lots of things that the UK has to get right to make sure that we have a chance of a favourable outcome. The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, might wish to expand on that, as he has a huge amount of experience in this space. It is not just the bid process; there is so much that we have to think about. As the first international treaty designed to prevent, detect and sanction match fixing, the convention responds to a sharp rise in manipulation linked to globalised sport betting markets, organised crime and the governance failures that happen in the wider world of sport. There are many threats through this, whether it is to sports ethics, to public trust and sponsor confidence—there have been quite a lot of major issues in sport over the years which have had a variable impact on sport—or to the economic sustainability of sport. Manipulation can also occur with or without betting involvement and with or without criminal activity at national but also, importantly, transnational levels. That escalation has grown since the early 2000s. As we see greater commercialisation of sport, higher financial stakes, the expansion of online and cross-border betting markets, the emergence of illegal betting markets with high payouts, involvement of organised crime groups using sport for fraud and money laundering, we have to be mindful that some of this takes place not just at major sporting level but in minor leagues across the world. I just wanted to spend a little bit of time exploring the wider issues of organised crime and its implications. There is a report by Dr Serhat Yilmaz from Loughborough University that was written in 2024 but launched in Parliament in July this year, which was supported by the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. It looked at the issues around sport trafficking, which is not so much known about—this is about the trafficking of players of sport—and this lack of definition really hinders targeted inventions. However, this happens because of organised crime. In 2015, in a report titled “Chasing dreams: Young African footballers duped, dumped by traffickers”, Kieran Guilbert wrote that charity Foot Solidaire estimated that around 15,000 young players a year are trafficked from west Africa to play in leagues around the world. This is not monitored, so that figure could very easily be higher. They are sold into debt bondage and they have exploitative contracts. We can also look at major games. Building venues requires hundreds of thousands of workers in some cases, and organised crime can very easily play a part in that. The Clewer Initiative, which is a UK-based modern slavery group, has said: “Once sporting tournaments are underway, the big audiences and large numbers of tourists can create an environment in which modern slavery and exploitation thrives”. It says that, although it is quite hard to get official documentation on this, “many believe that the Super Bowl is the largest sex-trafficking event in the world”, and that the lead up to the Super Bowl resulted in 750 arrests. It notes that “Anecdotes from NGOs working to support victims of trafficking suggest that thousands of women” and in many cases, children, are brought into the area in the lead-up to events, in particular the Super Bowl, “and there is a significant increase in advertisements for sex, as this becomes part of the ‘tourism’ that fans seek out around the games”. In addition, “violence towards sex workers increases when there are significant losses as fans take out their frustration”— which we already know from domestic violence figures around matches that are won and lost. This week, I spoke to Kat Craig, an internationally renowned expert in safe sport, who said that when she was working with the IOC on the design and contextualisation of safe sport hubs in southern Africa, she found some frightening cases when she was working with local consortiums. She told me about a footballer who was found guilty of match fixing. He should have had a degree of responsibility, but he had come from an impoverished background, and all the way through primary school his parents and teachers encouraged him to cheat and lie, to pretend he was older so he would have more opportunity to be scouted. He said that he first realised this was happening when he was seven or eight years old. He was frequently told he needed to contribute to the needs of the family. He managed to move to Europe, but then his life and those of his family were threatened. When he arrived in Europe, he was taken to a dark room, a gun was put on the table, and he was told that if he did not involve himself in match fixing, he and his family would lose their lives. When he reported this to the police, he was punished, though that was not necessarily the case for the syndicate behind it. I am very keen that players who take part in this should be penalised, but we have to recognise there is physical, economic and psychological duress. It should be very much as we do in anti-doping, where we look at everybody who is involved. Athletes rarely do it on their own, so it is important that we target everybody who is involved in this. I am very excited about the rise of women’s sport—this is a really important moment for us—but there could be a greater risk for women who are poorly paid who work in sport. There are leagues that nobody pays attention to, and there is a huge increase in the online abuse of women who play in sport, so we need to make sure that we do everything that we can to future-proof this. The committee said that the convention is not a complete solution but is just one part of solving the puzzle, and I agree with that. While in the UK we have the Gambling Act 2005, the Fraud Act 2006, the Bribery Act 2010 and the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, we have to be mindful of what more we need to do. Sports organisations need to consider codes of conduct, educational awareness and fraud detection systems; sport betting operators need to monitor irregular betting patterns, prevent conflicts of interest and manage insider information; and the public authorities need to regulate betting markets, legislate and look at financial support and combat illegal betting. There is still much more that we need to do to protect sport, but I look forward to a future where we can protect everyone who is involved in and works in and around sport to make it fair and to keep its integrity. I hope that we can remember the words of Nelson Mandela that sport has the power to change the world for the better, if we allow it to.
Lord Verdirame (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I welcome the report of the International Agreements Committee, and I very much support ratification of the Macolin convention. I will make a few brief general remarks then turn to the reservation, on which I have some specific questions. The noble Lord, Lord Johnson, and indeed the committee, asked the question, “What is the added value of the convention, given that we already comply with most of its terms?” The answer is that the convention deals with a phenomenon of a transnational nature, and our compliance is not sufficient to protect our society and our economy from this phenomenon. This is even more so because the convention seeks to protect a quintessentially British value, fairness in sport. Some of the figures in the underlying documentation about the values involved in match fixing may seem relatively small—Europol estimated it at about €120 million—but, as the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, just pointed out, this is part of a much bigger phenomenon of organised crime, so it is very important that we deal with it. It is also important to note that the convention would not create a new international jurisdiction or expand an existing international jurisdiction. There is no mechanism under the convention for any international court or tribunal to issue a binding judgment or render a binding award. It is a mechanism of co-operation and improvement through the exchange of information. Another question that has been asked is why we should have a European convention when we are dealing with a global phenomenon. I suppose the simple answer is that this is the instrument that we have now; there is no UN convention on sports manipulation. Also, Council of Europe conventions may be signed by non-member states, and in fact the Macolin convention has already been signed by Australia and Morocco. Japan has also expressed an interest in signing the convention. I was reading about the visit of a Japanese delegation to the Council of Europe last July, which reiterated Japan’s interest in signing the convention. Japan has proposed that the 20th Asian Games, which are starting next week, would benefit from international monitoring co-ordinated by the Group of Copenhagen, which is the network of national platforms established under the convention. There is every reason, therefore, to believe that the convention will be successful beyond the territory of the member states of the Council of Europe. By the way, that is not uncommon. The first Convention on Cybercrime—the Budapest convention of 2001—includes many non-European parties, including the United States. Also, the Anti-Doping Convention, which was mentioned previously, includes non-European member states. Perhaps the Government can tell us whether they intend to promote membership of the convention by non-member states of the Council of Europe in future. On the reservation, Article 19(1)(d) of the convention provides that state parties adopt the necessary legislative measures to ensure that the offences that must be established pursuant to the convention can apply not only in respect of offences committed within their territory but for offences committed outside the territory where the alleged offender is a national of or a person with habitual residence in the country. In effect, if we accepted the obligation in Article 19(1)(d), we would need to have offences that apply to our nationals and residents in the United Kingdom, even if the conduct took place entirely outside of our jurisdiction. Article 19(2) permits state parties to make reservations to Article 19(1)(d) and exclude the application of that provision. That is the reservation that we intend to make. I understand the policy reasons behind the reservations. Investigating and prosecuting extraterritorial offences is, as a matter of both policy in principle and practice, quite complex, and we should be quite careful about accepting a binding obligation to do so. It is also the case, as the committee report points out, that a number of other countries have similar reservations, although their reservations are quite interesting. The Poles, for example, have made a reservation only in respect of residents but not in respect of nationals, so they would exercise criminal jurisdiction in respect of nationals committing the offences covered under the convention overseas but not in respect of residents. France has instead said that it will exercise jurisdiction for extraterritorial offences only where the conduct in question was also criminal in the other jurisdiction and where there is a request from the foreign state to exercise jurisdiction; that seems to me to be a very sensible approach. Our reservation would simply say that we reserve the right not to apply Article 19(1)(d). My questions are in relation to a certain tension, it seems to me, between the FCDO memorandum and the written evidence from the DCMS on the reasons for the reservation. The Foreign Office memorandum said that the reservation “reflects the UK’s existing jurisdictional framework and ensures that ratification does not require changes to established legal principles”. The DCMS evidence to the committee said that “the Government has concluded that there is a strong argument that existing UK law is consistent with the Convention’s overall objectives”, and that the UK will not be prohibited from “prosecuting offences in a way that meets Article 19(1)(d) completely”, but the reservation gives “a degree of flexibility in the event the factual circumstances or the precise charges applicable are such that a prosecution cannot be brought in a particular case, so as to avoid a risk of breaching the terms of the ratification”. I was a little bit confused. Would we be able to prosecute nationals or residents for extraterritorial offences if we chose to do so, which is what the DCMS memorandum seems to suggest or, as the FCDO memorandum appears to suggest, would we need to change some of the established legal principles to investigate and prosecute nationals or residents in respect of those offences? There is a bit of tension there, but maybe it is just a question of different formulations for the same point. In that case, it is important to understand whether any changes to the existing legal framework are deemed necessary to investigate or prosecute, if we so choose, nationals or residents in respect of offences committed outside the territory. Even with these questions in mind, I very much remain a supporter of this convention. I hope that we can proceed to ratification speedily and that the United Kingdom will become a leader in promoting compliance with this convention.
Lord Moynihan (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Johnson and all members of the committee on the work that they have done on this important issue. The contributions to this debate have fallen into two broad categories: detailed examination of the convention, mainly from the lawyers; and the vital importance of the convention from the perspective of the world of sport. I will speak today not primarily as a politician but as someone who, for many years, trained and helped to prepare and steer a succession of British rowing eights to the start line, trusting that the crews alongside me were competing on equal terms. That trust is the entire currency of sport. Once spent, it is brutally hard to recover. During my time, performance-enhancing drugs were common behind the Iron Curtain. Later, after reunification, the East German crew who marginally beat us to gold in the Moscow Olympics took legal action against the West German Government for the damage the drugs had caused them. For many years, doping—to knowingly deny clean athletes medals and a livelihood—was the major issue that concerned us in competitive international sport. Today, that currency is under assault from every direction—from the criminal syndicates behind match fixing, from the laboratories quietly exploring what gene doping might do to an athlete’s body and now, from a technology more powerful than either: artificial intelligence and the still distant but not unimaginable prospect of machine superintelligence and corrupted athletic performance. I will take these in turn, because each deserves the Committee’s attention and because, I will argue, they are not separate problems at all but the same problem wearing different kit—a point well made by my noble friend in sport, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and the noble Lord, Lord Addington. They both focused on the vital importance of this convention to sport in the wider context of trafficking, prostitution and modern slavery—all critical points that are currently evidenced in the world of international sport. On match fixing and the manipulation of competitions, which we are focusing on today, we have made real progress. The Macolin convention stands as the only binding international instrument the world has produced on this subject, and I welcome that the Government are finally moving toward ratification, some eight years after we signed it. But let us not mistake travelling for arrival. Out of 43 signatories, 17 states have ratified. The private betting operators, who hold more real-time data on suspicious markets than anyone, remain locked out of the convention’s own co-ordinating bodies. An illicit betting market estimated at close to €1 trillion in stakes does not wait patiently for Parliaments to catch up. To its credit, the International Olympic Committee has built real infrastructure; here I declare my interest as a former chairman of the British Olympic Association and a member of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games 2012. That real infrastructure and work—the Integrity Betting Intelligence System, the Joint Integrity Units we saw pioneered at London 2012 and which have been refined ever since, and the athlete ambassadors now walking the corridors of sport, particularly Olympic sport—deserve recognition. Both Thomas Bach, the recently retired president of the International Olympic Committee, and Kirsty Coventry, who has inherited his mantle and done outstanding work in the 15 months since she overwhelmingly won her presidency, deserve our thanks and praise. But—I turn to the important point made by the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame—in sport, infrastructure without universal participation is a fortress with open gates. On gene doping, we face a quieter but, in my view, more troubling threat. Here is the uncomfortable truth: we do not yet have a reliable test. A protein produced by an athlete’s own manipulated genome can be chemically identical to one that their body would have made regardless. We are, in effect, asking anti-doping science to prove a negative against an opponent who has not yet been caught, even once. Unlike a banned substance that clears the bloodstream, genetic alteration can be permanent. A decision made once on a young athlete’s body or a baby, genetically modified, cannot be undone. I do not raise this to cause alarm. There is no confirmed case in human sport, but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and the scientific capability is advancing far faster than our capacity to police it. Now, overshadowing both, comes artificial intelligence. I will be candid with this Committee about what concerns me most. It is not that AI is inherently a threat in this context. Indeed, the same pattern-recognition capability that could help a criminal syndicate disguise a fixed match inside 1,000 innocuous-looking bets is precisely the capability that lets Sportradar and the IOC’s own systems flag that match in seconds. The same computational power that might one day help a rogue laboratory design an undetectable genetic enhancement is the power that could help our scientists build the detection test we currently lack. This is not a battle between good technology and bad technology; it is a race between who deploys a capability first and who deploys it more wisely. Here is my fear: the institutions charged with protecting sport—the World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA, along with the IOC’s integrity units and the Council of Europe’s follow-up committee—are by their nature slow. They are multilateral and consensus-driven, and many are chronically underfunded relative to the sums at stake. The actors on the other side of this ledger—organised crime, and in time perhaps state or commercially motivated actors seeking genetic advantage—answer to no such constraints. If advanced artificial intelligence reaches those who would corrupt sport before it reaches those who would protect it, we will not be having this debate about incremental threats. We will be having it about whether elite competition, where doping has the marginal effect between winning and losing, retains any meaning at all. What, then, can be done? I turn to my noble friend and say first that universal ratification of instruments such as Macolin cannot remain aspirational, but it is very difficult to see what can be done otherwise. I suggest to the Committee that it should become a condition precedent of hosting any international event, of federation membership—both international and national—and of our own governing bodies. The easiest way to make sure that this is effective is not through the Council of Europe or Governments; it is by getting sport that is still run autonomously. Through federations and via the IOC, any bidding city in the world that wants to host the Olympic Games needs to sign this. They are the ones we should focus on. Secondly, the artificial wall between public and private betting integrity data must come down. Criminals do not respect that distinction and neither should our defences. Thirdly, we must fund anti-doping detection science, including for genetic methods, as though it were a genuine arms race, because it is one. Fourthly, and perhaps most urgently, this House and our international partners must begin now to think seriously about how sport governance engages with frontier AI development before the technology outpaces our institutions rather than serving them. I competed for this country believing that what happened on the water was decided by skill, preparation and courage, not by what was in a syringe, coded into a genome or manipulated from a betting terminal in another jurisdiction. That belief is the entire point of the exercise. We owe it to every footballer, to every sportsman and sportswoman, and to every young athlete preparing for Los Angeles—and every Olympic Games beyond—to ensure that that belief remains true. I commend the convention to the Committee.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, this debate on the ratification by the UK of the Council of Europe’s Macolin convention—so excellently introduced by the chair of the International Agreements Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Johnson—is of wider significance than the detailed subject matter covered by the convention, important though that is. This debate followed the confirmation by the then Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, that our procedures for handling legally binding bilateral international agreements equally apply to legally binding multilateral ones, of which there are quite a few coming down the track. That is as it should be, I would argue. I welcome the Government’s action, which has led to this report we are debating today and will I hope lead to the end of the parliamentary scrutiny of the Macolin convention prior to its early ratification by the UK. Perhaps the Minister, whose presence at the Dispatch Box I warmly welcome, will give us some idea of other multilateral agreements, such as those concluded committing the UK to the interim dispute settlement procedures system of the World Trade Organization and the pandemic convention, still under negotiation, and when these may be likely to reach us. All the evidence we took on the Macolin convention was in favour of the UK joining and ratifying the agreement. The problems arising from illicit gambling on sporting competitions are rising and increasingly international in their operation and impact. Hence the need for international co-operation in combating them. One might have expected some discordant views, perhaps, questioning the need for and possible effectiveness of such co-operation, but we did not hear any. Those in our own Government tasked with countering the rising international criminal activity in the sporting field were clear that it was in the UK’s interest to be part of Macolin. Perhaps the Minister can tell us why it has taken the Government so long to ratify and join Macolin. Can she give us an absolute assurance that if and when this debate today, as it should do, completes the process of parliamentary scrutiny, ratification by the UK will follow promptly and without any further delay? Of course, as several other noble Lords have said, ratification and joining Macolin is not the end of the story. Of equally great importance will be the effective operational co-operation over enforcement of its provisions. To what extent will we be hampered by the loss of such operational co-operation following Brexit and the inadequate provisions made for law enforcement co-operation in the post-Brexit trade and co-operation agreement? What steps are we taking to remedy those losses in the reset of our relations with the EU currently under negotiation? It would be useful to hear from the opposition spokesman, the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, when he speaks at the end of this debate, how his party intends to reconcile the need for greater law enforcement co-operation with its commitment to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, which is all too likely to further damage such co-operation, perhaps irremediably. In conclusion, speaking as another member of the International Agreements Committee, I strongly support the findings that it is in the UK’s interest to ratify and join Macolin.
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.
Lord German (LD)
My Lords, like the noble Baroness, I declare my interest: I am a full member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. I am not a member of the committee that has been dealing with these matters, although I may have voted at some stage on associated matters in the parliamentary assembly. All the contributions that we have heard today have been incredibly powerful and have amplified the need to make sure that this convention is ratified. I pay my tribute to our chair of the International Agreements Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, who has shown a dogged belief in making sure that this Parliament —both Houses—have a proper way to scrutinise international treaties. I am sure that he will continue to fight that corner on behalf of our Parliament to make sure that, when international treaties such as this come before us, we are properly able to investigate, to look in detail and to draw evidence as necessary to make them work. In that respect, we are very grateful to the Government for giving us extra time to look at this one, but we are being very careful at the moment because we do not ask every time—otherwise it can lead a change to the way that the law is in front of us. CRaG is useful but it is not yet totally suitable given how these investigations should take place. I will try to refer to a number of contributions. A number of noble Lords asked why there has been a delay. Paragraph 30 of our report says that the Explanatory Memorandum, which comes with this application, explains that ratification of the convention has been delayed due to “competing priorities”, including Covid-19 and “the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union”. This is the Council of Europe, not the European Union. It has nothing to do with the European Union. Perhaps the Minister can explain why that came in the evidence provided to us from the DCMS because, quite clearly, that confusion between the Council of Europe and the European Union is not going to help us in the future. I will reach the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, on Council of Europe activity at the very end of what I am about to say. As we know, this is to be welcomed, because it is the first international binding agreement on this very important international or transnational issue—whatever you want to call it. The consequence of manipulation is very complicated indeed. One of the advantages that we will have now, of course, is that we are a member of the follow-up committee body called the Group of Copenhagen—the GoC in the parlance. We will have membership of that instead of just being associated with it and not being able to take anything forward. It is worth taking a look at the Council of Europe’s definition of “manipulation”, because many noble Lords have used examples of what it might or cannot mean. Very briefly, the core elements of manipulation are: first, that it should be an intentional arrangement, act or remission; secondly, that whether it is or is not successful, it is an attempt to improperly alter the result or the course of a sports competition; thirdly, that it is to remove all or part of the unpredictable nature of sports competitions; fourthly, that it is to obtain an undue advantage for oneself or for others; fifthly, that the intention of manipulation is there even if the intention is unsuccessful and fails to obtain the undue advantage; and, lastly and importantly, that the undue advantage always has a financial dimension, either directly or as a consequence of the sports competition manipulation. Exploitation of betting markets is just one of the many ways of obtaining an undue financial advantage. We are therefore dealing here with a multiple manipulation consequences issue. It is not straightforward, but it has a context. That context was explained at the beginning by my noble friend Lord Addington, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, and many others. It affects what we might call the integrity of and investment in the industry. I just specify that all the documentation from the Council of Europe has one word on the front to explain what it is about: “trust”. The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, talked about the reduction in trust if this happens. Trust is the password by which it happens. Another thing, which the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, mentioned, is that we are now talking about minor areas of sport as well. She called it the minor league—well, as a supporter, in small amounts of cash, of the Newport County second division football team, I must say that I am very conscious that, as a member of the supporters’ club, my £5 or £10 a month may be going astray. Also, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, was right that this is about dealing with syndicates. This is a multinational operation. Often, the person being asked to manipulate directly could be in one country, the person seeking and asking that person to manipulate could be in another country, and the person seeking to benefit financially from it could be in yet another country. This is manipulation on a grand scale, and we therefore need to tackle the syndicates. On the binding nature of member states taking action, the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, thankfully raised a question about the reservation; I had difficulty in stating what the ambition was in this reservation of the UK Government. Thankfully, he has asked all the right questions. I look forward to every single answer to the questions from the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, so that I may understand the consequence of the reservation, particularly in respect of the matter he raised about France’s expectation, which would be quite different and perhaps more suitable. I wait for judgments to be heard around the Floor. The most important thing is that we are going to have an opportunity to work with a body that has some considerable powers—the follow-up committee—which can formulate proposals to further enhance the establishment, operation and development of national platforms. It has a role in the framing of domestic criminal offences where each party, each country, “shall ensure that its domestic laws enable to criminally sanction manipulation of sports competitions when it involves either coercive, corrupt or fraudulent practices, as defined by its domestic law”. So it will have a broad picture of what is happening in order to ensure—in a useful precedent for what should happen—that domestic laws live up to the intentions that are in a convention of this sort. That is very important. Further to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, about doping, I know from the work that is being done by the follow-up body on the convention that it does not regard doping and manipulation as separate items. They are very closely linked indeed. That combination is talked about in Article 13 of the follow-up committee’s rules—they have to look at all the conventions and all the issues related to these matters, which are in the public domain for Council of Europe members. The signatories, as the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, said, are much greater than just simply those on the European continent. I am not trying to denigrate what the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, was saying, but it seems to me that it is not an either/or as to who must act in these situations. It is not either Governments, collectively or on their own, or international sporting bodies—it is both. There is a role for both to be playing here. What we are dealing with is perhaps sending the right signals to international governing bodies of sport but at the same time trying to ensure that we have bedded down some very important points in relation to the actions that are possible with those who have signed and ratified this convention. I conclude with a remark that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, addressed to the noble Lord who is speaking on behalf of the Official Opposition. I do not know what the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, might say about these matters, but I remind him that this is a convention of the Council of Europe. If we were to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, we would no longer be a member of the Council of Europe.
Baroness Coffey (Con)
Not true.
Lord German (LD)
It is absolutely the truth, and I am going to quote, because I committed this to memory. The Secretary-General, on behalf of the Committee of Ministers, has said on more than one occasion—and maybe the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, was not there at each one—something straightforward: he said that membership of the Council of Europe is incompatible with leaving the European Convention on Human Rights. I think that is worrying for those of us who believe that these international agreements are very important to us all. We in this country have signed over 200; some we have ratified and some we have just signed. It is a huge body of activity that we want to join and be part of. Leaving the Council of Europe would mean that we would lose our right to have all these extra powers that we are going to get from being part of the group of people who are taking forward this convention. Therefore, I support the clear position that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, is taking, but I think it is very important for this Grand Committee to know the consequence of all this.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, I begin by congratulating the Minister, and welcoming her to her place. I was sadly not able to be there on Friday when she made her maiden speech in your Lordships’ House, but I have read it with pleasure and welcome her warmly to her position in DCMS. As the Minister set out in her maiden speech, she brings great international experience as well as great experience in Whitehall and Westminster to the work that she does, which is particularly pertinent for the topic today of international affairs. We all look very much forward to working with her. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Johnson of Lainston for the way he introduced the debate today and thank him and all the members of your Lordships’ Committee on International Agreements for the detailed work they have done in scrutinising this proposal. I am very glad that the Government provided extra time for the committee to do its work; the very good and detailed contributions that we have had today reflect the careful thought that the committee and your Lordships’ House have brought to this matter. The manipulation of sports competitions is a very serious issue. The noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, was right when he said that this goes to the very heart of the fundamental British value of fair play. We heard very strong and moving speeches from the noble Lord, Lord Addington, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and my noble friend Lord Moynihan about the integrity of sport and the impact that this has not just on current sportsmen and women but on young people we want to be encouraging to be more active and to represent their country on the international elite stage. We heard from a number of noble Lords about the close links between what some people might dismiss as “just a bit of gambling gone wrong” and serious organised crime: people trafficking, terrorism, illicit financing and so many other offences. So, it is absolutely right that this issue is being taken seriously and that we are working with international colleagues to tackle this transnational issue. As we have heard, and as the committee’s report says, the United Kingdom already has a good story to tell about this domestically. We already fulfil the requirements of the convention through, for instance, the work of the Gambling Commission, the sports betting intelligence unit and the Sports Betting Integrity Forum. We have some expertise that we can share with international partners. We have already learned lessons in tackling this. The ratification which all noble Lords have looked forward to today would formalise existing arrangements and solidify the commitments that we have already made on the international stage. That is reflected, as we have heard, by the evidence that the committee gathered from witnesses who appeared before it, who very much supported the UK’s ratification of this convention and highlighted the need for international co-operation to tackle this. However, as noble Lords from my noble friend Lord Johnson onwards have been at pains to point out, ratification alone is not a solution to this problem. My noble friend said that it must be seen as one part of a wider effort, and he is absolutely right. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, and my noble friend Lord Moynihan were right in pointing to the importance of international governing bodies of sports. Perhaps the Minister can say a bit about the discussions the department is already having with those governing bodies to make sure that they are doing what they ought to be doing to tackle this issue. My noble friend Lord Moynihan is right that we should be talking particularly to nations that want to host major international sporting events. The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, whom we wish a speedy recovery, is right that this is about other jurisdictions well beyond Europe. We have some leverage when people are applying to host major sporting events. The decision today by World Athletics to award the 2029 world championships to Nairobi rather than London has disappointed many, including our new colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Khan of Tooting, and all those who worked on London’s bid. They were particularly dismayed because of Kenya’s current record, with 136 athletes currently serving doping bans. I do not know whether the Minister is able to say something on that specifically, but it would be interesting to hear about the Government’s work with host nations and international bodies that make these decisions. I will allow her to follow up the questions that noble Lords raised, rightly highlighting paragraphs 85 and 86 of the committee’s report, which deal with the reservation the Government intend to enter in respect of the convention’s jurisdictional requirements on Article 19(1)(d). The noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, unsurprisingly, was particularly forensic in his examination of the evidence given by DCMS and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office on that. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hannay of Chiswick, for his keen interest in the policies of His Majesty’s Opposition and will arrange for him to be sent a copy of the report by my noble friend Lord Wolfson of Tredegar, which deals with this issue in detail. But he and other noble Lords will know that the way that convention prevents us from tackling serious crimes, such as people trafficking and cross-border criminality, is eroding trust—not just in this nation but in other member states of the Council of Europe—in the way it operates. We are not the only country looking at whether it can be reformed and brought back closer to the original intent of those who drafted it many years ago. If that is not possible, I do not think we will be the only member state looking at alternatives to it. But that is a debate for another day and I am grateful to all noble Lords who took part in this one.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Mackenzie of Sherwood) (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Johnson of Lainston, for securing this debate, and I thank all noble Lords who have taken part for their valuable contributions. I am grateful to the International Agreements Committee for its excellent work and its report, published on Friday 11 September, on our plans for ratification of this Council of Europe convention. The Government welcome the committee’s scrutiny of this important convention and the opportunity to set out why we consider ratification to be in the UK’s interests. The Government consider the manipulation of sports competitions to be a serious threat to the integrity of sport and fair competition; we agree with every noble Lord who has made that point. It undermines the fundamental principle that sporting outcomes should be determined by ability and performance, and it reduces public confidence in sport as a whole. As the Gambling Commission noted in its evidence to the committee, reports of suspicious betting activity received by its sports betting intelligence unit increased by 28% in 2025 compared with 2024. Although the commission has underlined that increased reporting and monitoring may account for some of this rise, neither it nor the Government is complacent. It is very clear that sports manipulation is an increasingly international issue, as so many noble Lords have remarked. No single country or organisation can tackle these risks alone. The Macolin convention provides a framework for Governments, law enforcement, gambling regulators, sports organisations and betting operators to co-operate, particularly through information sharing and national platforms. Given the increasing importance of international co-operation in tackling these risks, we consider it vital that we now proceed to ratification. As we have heard, the UK is not starting from scratch. We have undertaken a detailed assessment of UK compliance across criminal law, gambling regulation and our operational arrangements. In doing so, we have worked with the Gambling Commission, the devolved Governments, legal advisers and other stakeholders. Our assessment is that the UK’s existing arrangements meet the convention’s requirements. We already have a well-established national platform, centred on the Gambling Commission’s sports betting intelligence unit and supported by the Sports Betting Integrity Forum. Indeed, the Gambling Commission worked with the Council of Europe between 2010 and 2014 to shape the development of the Macolin convention, with the Council of Europe using our national platform as the template. Our existing legal framework also provides for relevant conduct to be addressed through a range of offences, including cheating at gambling, fraud, bribery and corruption. Ratification therefore does not require new primary or secondary legislation or the creation of a new UK body. The value of ratifying the Macolin convention is therefore about formalising and strengthening the UK’s existing international position. The UK already co-operates internationally on this area through networks including the Council of Europe’s Group of Copenhagen. However, as we have heard, ratification would give the UK a formal role in the convention’s follow-up committee, allowing us to contribute to policy recommendations, share expertise and help to shape the international response to sports manipulation. As the Gambling Commission has underlined to the committee, ratification should help increase the speed of international intelligence sharing and support the development of a more co-ordinated approach on international enforcement. That is a key area for improvement, which the Gambling Commission highlighted in its evidence. Ratification will therefore build on the strong foundations that already exist and strengthen our ability to work with international partners to tackle this global threat. The committee’s scrutiny has also tested whether our existing arrangements are sufficient across the UK—this is an important point for the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey—and whether there are areas where further work may be needed. We have engaged with the devolved Governments as part of the ratification process. In Northern Ireland, where gambling is subject to a separate framework, we have engaged directly with the Department for Communities and the Gambling Commission, including on how this relates to the Northern Ireland Executive. Our collective assessment is that existing arrangements are sufficient. Specifically, Article 169 of the Betting, Gaming, Lotteries and Amusements (Northern Ireland) Order 1985 makes cheating at gambling or enabling or assisting another to cheat an offence. We have established that no substantive Northern Ireland-specific issue has been identified that would prevent ratification. We have also carefully considered the question of criminal enforcement. The Gambling Commission has referred 19 cases for enforcement action under Section 42 of the Gambling Act 2005 over the last three years, with several investigations ongoing, including formal prosecutions as part of Operation Scott. There has been one successful prosecution under Section 42, concluded in 2015. I know this is a point that several noble Lords raised. It is important, however, that Section 42 is understood in the context of the wider criminal framework. Relevant cases may also involve offences such as fraud, bribery or corruption, and enforcement necessarily involves the Gambling Commission working alongside law enforcement and prosecution partners. We have also considered the convention’s provisions on criminal jurisdiction. As we noted to the committee, following detailed consideration of the legal position, we intend to make a reservation in respect of Article 19(1)(d) on jurisdiction. This reservation is specifically allowed through Article 37 of the convention. We are confident that relevant authorities throughout the United Kingdom will continue to pursue potential breaches of the criminal law in the context of sports competitions with vigour and seriousness. The reservation simply reflects the reality that in a limited number of cases, the relevant criminal offence may not have extraterritorial application, or there is an insufficiently close link between the criminal activity and the UK. As such, this reservation is consistent with the approach taken by nine other signatory countries. I am not sure that I have addressed that question adequately, but I will be happy to take up any points that I have not sufficiently addressed after this debate. Finally, we recognise that the threats posed by competition manipulation will continue to evolve. Online and in-play betting, as well as new betting products, are changing the environment in which sports competition manipulation takes place.
Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.
Baroness Mackenzie of Sherwood (Lab)
My Lords, I will continue. The convention is deliberately technology neutral and this, I hope, addresses a point that several noble Lords have very correctly raised. It allows countries to respond to emerging threats without requiring wholesale changes to the treaty itself. The UK will continue to engage constructively through the convention’s governance arrangements to ensure that international co-operation and best practice keep pace with these developments. The committee has supported the convention’s pragmatic approach and welcomed the Government’s intention to ratify. It also recognised that ratification is expected to create opportunities and benefits for the UK and its international partners, while the costs and burdens are expected to be limited. The committee also rightly recognised, as have many of the contributors to this debate today, that ratification is not in itself a complete solution to the manipulation of sports competitions. The Government agree with this. We know that tackling this threat requires continued work domestically and internationally, including action against unregulated betting markets and continued co-operation between Governments, regulators, law enforcement and sports bodies. I thank noble Lords for the emphasis they have placed on the responsibility of sports bodies. The committee also made a number of observations about the Government’s Explanatory Memorandum and future treaty scrutiny processes. We will consider these carefully and respond to the committee formally. I would like just quickly, if I have a little time, to respond to some of the other points that have been raised. I apologise if we are unable to respond adequately to the points raised on the CRaG process, and I will return to that and to other points so wisely raised by the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, and my noble friend Lord Stevenson and other noble Lords. The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, raised the important issue of modern slavery and sport trafficking, giving the example of 15,000 young players from west Africa. I feel that this is an extraordinarily important area. It is not absolutely relevant to the convention of the Council of Europe, but it is an area I would like to raise with colleagues in the Home Office. I would be happy to pursue that, as it is a point of urgency and priority. I am also, I am afraid, going to suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, that I report back on the possible tensions between the FCDO and the DCMS and see if we can get some clarity on those points. I would like to quote, if I may, from the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, that trust is the entire currency of sport and that this has to remain the gold standard to which we all aspire. I think his point about the importance of sporting governing bodies taking a lead in this area is vital. It is very important for all of us that we are all partners; we have listed all the partners who have to be involved, but the leadership must come from the sports’ governing bodies. Indeed, noble Lords, in particular the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, have correctly drawn attention to the importance of international governing bodies and the nations that are seeking or managing to win international events. They are in a very powerful position to be a force for good. Those awarding the glory and honour of an international major sporting event have a lot of power to raise standards by making this a vital part of the process for selection. I apologise if there are other points that I should have raised but have not. I end by offering the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, good news: ratification will happen straight away after this process, which is a nice clear answer to his question. The Government consider that the UK already has strong domestic arrangements for tackling sports manipulation. Ratification will formalise those arrangements internationally, strengthen our participation in the convention’s governance and help us to co-operate more effectively with international partners. It will also allow the UK to continue contributing its expertise to the international effort to protect the integrity of sport and respond to a threat that is increasingly global in nature. The Government welcome the committee’s scrutiny and its support for ratifying the Macolin convention. We look forward to continuing to work with our international partners and stakeholders across sport, gambling and law enforcement to protect the integrity of sport.
Lord Johnson of Lainston (Con)
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for a first-class debate. I feel, as I always do when I am in my own committee, deeply humbled by the incredible level of expertise around me, supplemented so well by Olympians and other enthusiasts and knowledgeable individuals contributing to such an important issue. If I may, I add to the paeans of praise to the Minister. This is her first Grand Committee outing. I congratulate her on using wonderful legalese with the phrase, “consider carefully and respond accordingly”; she has already mastered the language of her department. But then she ruined it at the end, unfortunately, by giving a clear answer, telling us the very good news about ratification, the importance of which was raised, rightly, by the noble Lords, Lord Stevenson and Lord Hannay, and my noble friends Lord Moynihan and Lord Parkinson. It has taken a very long time to get to this point, and I am extremely pleased that when this process concludes, we will ratify the treaty. If I may, I will dwell on a small number of points, as it is important to give credit to noble Lords who have made such a contribution. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, raised a relevant point about the vulnerability of many sports people. He used the phrase, “on the way up and on the way down”. I was very touched by Moses Swaibu’s testimony to us in his witness evidence, in which he described a glittering career ahead of him, but he lost his position, started to be relegated and became vulnerable. The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, gave us an illustration of sports trafficking at its most extreme, but Moses unfurled in his evidence the vulnerability of so many of these people, who are basically young kids. He was extremely young, not of huge education and very vulnerable. In his case, the thin end of the wedge process led him to ruin his life, in effect. I pay tribute to him for having got it back on track. I am very pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, raised the issues relating to the principle of the jurisdiction; I have raised them as well. This is a long-term issue that I am sure the Minister will continue to review and come back to us. I greatly appreciate my noble friend Lord Moynihan’s very sensible solutions to some of these problems. At the end of the day, we were surprised how significant this issue is and how it is continuing to grow far more rapidly than people realise, I think. One of my colleagues—perhaps it was the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, or my noble friend Lord Parkinson—pointed out that the $1 trillion, or €1 trillion, or whatever currency it is in, is a significantly large amount. If this treaty is to be successfully applied, more money needs to be put into enforcement—it is really as simple as that—and there needs to be more co-ordination. We have to be realistic. This is not a party-political point; all Governments are going to have this issue, and we must ensure that if we are going to sign these treaties, we are quite vigorous in making sure that we have the money in order to deal with it. This is very clearly a global issue. I know the issue of the Council of Europe is an important one, and I will not get into the debate on that now, but I will say that it has to be beyond simply the Council of Europe. This is a global problem. The countries that were alerted to us in our witness statements were not France, Belgium and the UK, although there is clearly match fixing there; the real issues come from crossing borders and from other nations, such as in Latin America, in particular, and Asia. The noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, raised an important point about other principals, such as e-sports and prediction markets. There is now so much more than simply placing a bet on a race with a bookmaker. This is highly complicated. In fact, someone suggested on the way up here that there should be a bet on the spread of who got here first, the Minister or the Opposition spokesperson. The point with e-sports and other types of sports betting is that the complexity has now multiplied on itself, so we call on the Government to make sure that we are not backward-looking but that we are thinking really innovatively about how to tackle these problems. As the noble Lord, Lord German, rightly said, this committee will continue its dogged scrutiny and ensure that the CRaG process is a beacon of parliamentary scrutiny of the Government’s ability to enter into agreements that will benefit us all, which we believe the Macolin convention will.
Motion agreed.
Committee adjourned at 5.36 pm.
Source: UK Parliament Hansard API. Debate ID: 5408151.