UK Parliament / Open data

Data Protection Bill [HL]

My Lords, once again your Lordships’ House is very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, for raising this issue and, as the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said, for doing so in such a comprehensive way. It is in the context of the much wider range of issues that the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, has been pursuing regarding how sport, gambling and fairness are issues that all need to be taken together. We have been supporting him on those issues, which need legislation behind them.

Noble Lords may not be aware that we have been slightly accused of taking our time over the Bill. I resist that entirely because we are doing exactly what we should be doing in your Lordships’ House: going through line-by-line scrutiny and making sure that the Bill is as good as it can be before it leaves this House. We saw the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, at the very beginning of Committee and he then dashed off to Australia to do various things, no doubt not unrelated to sport. He has had time to come back and introduce these amendments—but, meanwhile, the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and I were debating who was going to pick the straw that would require us to introduce them. We were very lucky not to have to do so because they were introduced so well on this occasion.

Our amendment in this group is a probing amendment that picks up on some of the points already made. It raises the issue of why we are restricting this section of the Bill to “sport”—whatever that is. If we are concerned about performance enhancement, we have to look at other competitive arrangements where people gain an advantage because of a performance-enhancing activity such as taking drugs. For instance, in musical competitions, for which the prizes can be quite substantial, it is

apparently possible to enhance one’s performance—perhaps in high trills on the violin or playing the piano more brilliantly—if you take performance-enhancing drugs. Is that not somehow seeking to subvert these arrangements? Since that is clearly not sport, is it not something that we ought to be thinking about having in the Bill as well? I say that because, although the narrow sections of the Bill that relate to sport are moving in the right direction, they do not go far enough. As a society, we are going to have to think more widely about this as we go forward.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

785 cc1827-8 

Session

2017-19

Chamber / Committee

House of Lords chamber
Back to top