My Lords, I support Amendment 147A, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, to which my name is also attached. I have a number of interests to declare in the area of sport, one of which is that I am the chair of ukactive. I am slightly disappointed that sport and physical activity has not had a higher profile within the debate on the EU withdrawal Bill. We cannot assume that sport will be okay just because sport is generally very good at looking after itself.
The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, raised many issues, and perhaps they are just the tip of the iceberg of the challenges we face as the impact on elite sport filters down to the grass roots. He talked about Cheltenham. It is not just the movement of horses that will be affected. That might be the very visible impact of the legislation, but there will be an impact on the local economy—on the provision of stables, food supplies, grooms and so on—that we will not see until it is too late. We might understand the impact of a high-profile player not coming to the UK or choosing to leave the UK, but we will not see the impact on associated personnel and coaches, on how it filters down to the academy structure, on the potential success of our clubs, and on whether fans choose to go and watch those sports. It will go right down to the individual owner of a burger van parked on the outskirts of a community if there is a huge impact on sport.
We know that the value of community leisure to the UK economy alone is £3.3 billion a year. That has been worked out via a social value calculator. The impact of sport amounts to many more billions. While I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, that it might be a pick-and-mix group of amendments, each of them has a massively important impact on the economic prosperity and international standing of our country.
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