London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Bill

My observations will be very brief. They will be familiar to a small number of people who attended a late-night debate last week. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and I had a passage of arms on that occasion. When, the following day, I received an invitation to associate myself with him on the amendment, I thought that the swiftest way of burying hatchets and making the peace would be if I added my name to it. It is also true that on Thursday last week, I had to leave your Lordships’ House rather earlier than I usually do and I had not read every word that had been provided as suggestions for why we should do this. In no way has that caused me to resile from supporting the noble Lord. A principal source of my understanding of the present debate between the Newspaper Society and the Minister is in the form of quite long correspondence, which in one case is submitted by a lawyer and in the other case has, I imagine, been proof-read by a lawyer in terms of return. I was reminded in that context of correspondence I was once shown when, in the private sector, I was the chief executive officer of a small firm. I was responsible for dealing with our auditors on a global basis because they were auditing our accounts throughout the world. I was shown the correspondence between the head of our German business and the German auditors who were part of the worldwide firm which audited our accounts. I could not help feeling that it was a correspondence between highly intelligent people who were not actually reading the other side’s correspondence before they replied to the first lot. That is unkind in the context of the correspondence I have seen, but legal language between lawyers is not always the easiest way for the layman to understand. That is why I am so immensely reassured when I see that the noble Lord, Lord Borrie, is thinking of entering this debate at some stage. I genuinely think that this is a serious issue because it involves primary legislation. The sooner it is sorted out the better.