London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Bill

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Billingham, whose sporting achievements are far greater than my own. The only claim I can make, even marginally tangential to hers, in the particular game at which she excelled, is that I am unbeaten abroad at real tennis. However, I have to confess that although I have played real tennis abroad, I also once protected my unbeaten record by declining to play the then world champion after I had been his guest at lunch in Philadelphia when he discovered I could play it and offered me an immediate match. It was also a great pleasure to be present for the highly apposite and beautifully delivered maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine. I am already looking forward to her next one. I congratulate Her Majesty’s Government and their allies who are represented in the team which will deliver the Games on having secured them. I have known my noble friend Lord Coe since my eldest son was, two decades ago, one of his colleagues in the Haringey AC, and I have the utmost confidence in what he and his colleagues will achieve. The Bill is a timeous next stage. I recognise that it is required to provide the legislative cover for the contract which Her Majesty’s Government have signed with the IOC. I shall comment on only two aspects, which I shall take alphabetically—advertising and biodiversity. They were both covered earlier in the debate. On the former, I speak as a member of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee of your Lordships’ House. Your Lordships will know that we drew attention to the significant powers on advertising and supplemental regulations in Clauses 19 and 20. We found those in Clause 19 acceptable, given the special considerations, but we prompted the question—successfully, in the case of my noble friend Lord Higgins—in relation to Clause 20 about why, in disapplying the hybrid principle in Clause 20(4), organisations representative of those affected by the regulations had not been included among those required to be consulted on their content. Only those responsible for planning in the relevant places, the Olympic Delivery Authority and the London Organising Committee, were to be consulted on regulations that the Secretary of State will bring forward under Clause 19. If the Secretary of State can change the list of words in the Act by affirmative resolution at any time in the next six and a half years, advertisers are left with little certainty or protection. A television commercial can take much more time to produce than is required for an affirmative order to go through both Houses, and no consultation will have been vouchsafed them in advance. The direct implementation of Schedule 4 restrictions upon Royal Assent, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said, has the same effect. It is worth asking the Minister what is different about this Bill, six years before the Games, from the Communications Act and the Gambling Act, which both afforded comparative consultation to the advertising industry. Other noble Lords have alluded to the standard presumption of innocence under English law being reversed into presuming advertisers guilty of infringing the London Olympics association right unless and until they can demonstrate they are not associating with the Games. As the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said, the IOC does not require this. Perhaps it paid us the compliment of believing it impossible that this country, of all countries, would reverse the burden of proof. The debate about the vocabulary that will not be permitted in advertising by Schedule 4 is more for Committee, but it may be the first time in English law that the word ““summer””, if used in particular connotations, may carry the mark of Cain. I agree that we are obsessive about the weather, but this looks at first a season too far. Under the Act, the term ““gold-plating”” may even become illegal, but that makes it the more important to make the point now. We shall no doubt also debate in Committee why existing powers are inadequate to meet the Government’s needs, and some of them have been quoted, but the scent of retrospection currently lies unsweetly in the air. That is a good climatic note on which to change gear to biodiversity. I declare an interest as a vice-president of the London Wildlife Trust, which covers the area of the 32 boroughs, the Corporation of London and the Greater London Authority. The bid document and its logic was well received for its references to sustainability. The trust of which I am an honorary officer supported the prominence placed on biodiversity within the regeneration process and Defra’s promotion of ““the sustainable elements of the bid””. The potential opportunities in the Olympic Park development plans are considerable, but emphasis on the natural environment is not reflected in the wording of the Bill, especially in Clause 4. I foresee a lively debate on the absence of this emphasis from that clause in Committee, given that built structures, sustainable drainage, and the regeneration of the lower Lea to link wildlife sites through a network of ecologically functioning waterways offer such potential. We may be encouraged by the newly appointed ODA chief executive’s decision to slow down decision-making for the Olympic Park with the eventual legacy in mind, but he too would no doubt be encouraged by better legislative cover. Additional environmental benefits could include water recycling and reduced carbon footprint, which were both highlighted issues in the London 2012 candidature file, Theme 5 Environment and Meteorology, which was submitted to the IOC. In the end, we look forward to our successor to the 1948 Games, made memorable then for the young, like myself, by the genius of—again alphabetically—Blankers-Koen and Zatopek. We have our chance, in the scrutiny of this Bill, to make all that more likely and even more worthy of Tony Banks’ memory. As the late Damon Runyon once memorably wrote, ““The race is not always to the swiftest nor the battle to the strongest, but that’s the way to bet””.