London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (Amendment) Bill

Powerful stuff indeed from my noble friend about ticketing. This has clearly got to change, and we will have many opportunities in Committee to make sure that it does change. It cannot be in the interests of people who have purchased tickets to be treated in this way, and I think that LOCOG will have to look again and address this matter. Certainly, the Committee will make its voice heard. I have four things to say—first, on another aspect of ticketing, secondly, on traffic matters, thirdly on security and, fourthly, on the sporting legacy. In doing so, I declare an interest as a member of the advisory board of the British Olympic Association under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Moynihan, whose driving style certainly puts a capital V into the word vigour in all our discussions and activities. First, on the sale of tickets, the proposals in the Bill to increase the maximum fine for selling tickets in a public place or via a business without consent from £5,000 to £20,000 is sensible and I believe it to be proportionate, for large profits—much larger than have been suggested this afternoon—could well be made on tickets on the black market. The greatest profits are probably going to be made via internet offerings, not just from domestic websites in this country but from sites that are domiciled abroad and very difficult to trace—a further manifestation of cybercrime, in other words, and probably organised cybercrime at that. We need to be sure that the skills and resources are there to deal with this within our jurisdiction but also outwith it. I have great faith in the Serious and Organised Crime Agency addressing these issues under the chairmanship of Sir Ian Andrews. However, it is not going to be easy so I seek reassurances from my noble friend the Minister about cybersecurity and ticketing without seeking any details that might compromise operations. In addition, a further point is that individuals living in the UK may seek to sell their tickets, again sometimes at a substantial profit. Are we really sure that Section 31 of the 2006 Act, as otherwise amended, will catch this nuisance of individuals as opposed to businesses and organisations? Secondly, I turn to the provisions on traffic, which potentially make quite radical extensions of the powers of traffic authorities to implement temporary controls very fast, as various noble Lords have pointed out. While I can see that it may well be expedient in dealing with unforeseen circumstances—although problems caused, for example, by a terrorist disruption of transport infrastructure would undoubtedly be covered by pre-existing powers—I am concerned that these new powers should only be used if strictly necessary. This is because I believe that it is traffic and transport difficulties which are likely, in our crowded capital, to be the cause of perhaps the greatest controversy during the Olympic period by far. I must tell your Lordships that I have already had the benefit of the advice of a number of distinguished London taxi drivers on this matter, as they have sometimes conducted quite lengthy seminars on Olympic diversions while I have travelled in the back of their cabs. They have variously opined on roadworks and particularly on those special lanes for the Olympic elite. This topic has been a particular target of their affections and attentions and they seem to attribute most of it to the Mayor of London. Only my respect for the delicacy of your Lordships prevents me reporting verbatim their views on the Mayor of London in this respect. While I have read with admiration the characteristically clear and weighty advice given over these matters by my right honourable friend Mr Philip Hammond MP, the Transport Secretary, to which the House, LOCOG and others should listen very carefully, other voices which have been raised from other parts of London—and possibly from other parts of the Olympic movement—have struck an unhappy note, at least to my ear. It is as if they are saying. ““You'd better lump it and stay away from London for six weeks, working at home and not making traffic problems worse by trying to come to work in the first place””. This sort of thing is totally wrong and does harm to the Olympic movement. People have an absolute right to come to work in the capital, which is the powerhouse of the United Kingdom economy, and their employers have an absolute right to expect them to do so. Such voices should also recognise that for every Olympic enthusiast like me there are, as other noble Lords have said, others who are not Olympic enthusiasts living, working and commuting into London. We should not, in the present low-growth economic environment, wish to be seen to be actively encouraging what might be portrayed as an Olympic dip in the gross domestic product of the country during the six weeks of the Olympic period, which may not be wholly offset by the one-off special boost to the earnings of the hotel and hospitality sector during that Olympic period. London is, indeed, our economic powerhouse; we depend upon it for growth and everyone concerned with transport and traffic regulations must do their very best to get people to work who wish to get to work and whose employers wish to see them in work. Thirdly and very briefly on security, the Bill possibly offers—unless in emergency circumstances—a last chance to fine tune any security-related legislation. Here, I think less of anti-terrorist, public order or anti-rioting matters than of the constantly mutating and developing risks of direct cyberattacks on, for example, ticketing or our transport infrastructure. I wish only to be reassured that Ministers have considered that there is nothing more that they need to introduce into the Bill in this respect. Fourthly, amid all the talk of wonderful opening and closing ceremonies that we have heard in earlier debates, of medals won, of the regenerative effects of all those billions spent on the buildings and open spaces of east London, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Ford, has just referred, I have missed hearing much talk of the sporting legacy of the Games—at least until this afternoon, when my noble friend Lord Addington raised this issue first, and then, if I may say so, my noble friend Lord Higgins put his finger on the apparent lack of care and concern for some aspects of the sporting legacy. We should listen carefully to what he had to say. Then, of course, my noble friend Lord Moynihan spoke in his powerful closing passage of the need to ensure that the greatest legacy of the London Olympics and Paralympics 2012 is a sporting legacy and nothing else. There will, of course, be the legacy of the built environment of the Olympic Park, but, otherwise, I hope that the ongoing effects of the London Olympics and Paralympics 2012 will not be like those all too often short-lived, week-long effects on people tuning in to Wimbledon fortnight, reaching for their tennis rackets and promptly putting them back in their presses about a week or ten days later. We must have a much more long-lasting sporting legacy than that. I am really concerned that the real sporting legacy, bizarrely enough, has not had and does not get the attention that it deserves and, most of all, that the sporting legacy will not have a powerful effect in our regions outside London, which is the principal beneficiary. Now, suddenly, there is an outbreak of politicians apologising. It has been going on quite a lot recently. They were at it again this weekend, apologising for this, that and the other; it used not to happen in the good old days. I very much hope that I have to apologise very profoundly to your Lordships’ House in a few years for being totally wrong about the absence of a sporting legacy and I look forward to being proved wrong.