London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Bill

I am grateful to the Committee for emphasising that there is considerable anxiety about the provision in this clause. I hope to reassure the Committee that we intend to act effectively to deal with our obligations and the necessities for the coverage of the games. The Committee will know that the host city contract requires us to regulate advertising in the vicinity of Olympic venues. That is what this clause is designed to do. The regulations provided for in Clauses 19 and 20 allow us to comply with that requirement. The regulations will be drafted in a fair and proportionate manner in consultation with all those likely to be affected by them and will be subject to further debate in both Houses. Clause 20(1)(c) provides for the advertising regulations to contain exceptions. The clause is deliberately general. It effectively allows the Secretary of State to determine, at the time that the regulations are made—which is some way in the future—what specific exceptions are necessary, and to include them in the regulations. Amendment No. 60 takes a different approach. It seeks to specify on the face of the Bill the content of some of the exceptions. We are back to the problem of lists. If we try to set out a list of exceptions to be included on the face of the Bill, we cannot guarantee that it will be exhaustive. The best place for such a list to be set out is in the regulations, when we have been able to consult on these issues in detail and will be dealing with the state of the art at that time. In another place, we have confirmed that there will be appropriate exceptions in the regulations for newspapers, magazines, television, mobile telephony and other forms of media. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, will recognise—I shall not use the phrases that were used in the other place as he was somewhat critical about their pristine English—that the problem with mobile telephony is that innovations and developments occur with such rapidity as to take our breath away. What if it were possible for the noble Lord to walk into the vicinity of the Olympic park with a mobile phone and project an 80 foot image on to a screen or billboard nearby? We might think that we needed to restrict that because the advertisement would be translated with enormous effectiveness, as if it were a billboard, from the mobile telephone of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. The noble Lord does not have such a mobile telephone at present and he might find it inordinately expense if one were offered to him. I merely indicate that we do not know the technology with which we will be confronted in 2012. Therefore, rather than create a list that by definition could not exhaustive and might be so limited as to leave glaring gaps that would drive a coach and horses through the intent, it is better to indicate, as we have done, that for broad categories—newspapers, magazines, television, radio, mobile telephony and other forms of media—we will make exemptions, but we reserve our right to do that at a later and more precise stage when we know the nature of the technology with which we have to deal. We have to ensure that there is sufficient power in the Bill to provide in the regulations for all necessary exceptions, including those relating to current and future forms of media. I accept the laudable points made by the noble Lord when he moved his amendment. In another place, it was recognised that the Bill would not be drawn up in a way that inhibited proper forms of expression in the media because of this constraint on advertising. But I hope that the noble Lord and other Members of the Committee will see that it is right to draw up definitive lists closer to the events rather than putting them in the Bill at this juncture.