UK Parliament / Open data

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 147A, to which I have added my name. The world of sport, as the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, mentioned, is a complicated one that fits into all the other strands here. He spoke about Cheltenham most passionately. I live in the village of Lambourn, which has a mass exodus to Cheltenham. However, round it are other things that are not, say, France and Ireland. When you come to the show-jumping world, there are other countries coming there, with other workers, and you have travel from other nations such as Germany and Holland. It gets more complicated the more you look at it. The employment rights of professional sportsmen get more and more complicated and tap into the other things we have spoken about. It comes into the creative industries. All of these come across.

Are you going to stop the expertise of Parliament getting into this? Government departments and Ministers tend to be very bad at picking up on these concerns—and that is effectively the function of Parliament. How many of us here spend our entire lives saying, “You hadn’t thought of that. You haven’t spoken about that”? It is virtually all we do. Civil servants do not

have a limitless supply of crystal balls, and neither do party hacks backing up the machine of government. Unless Parliament gets in and we have comprehensive agreements, when we do something this complicated we are going to make mistakes. Sport is just one example. The creative industries is another. It was not that the list was long for this group; it was not long enough. There must be a way of getting this information in. The way to do that is to aim to get Members of both Houses of Parliament to get through, because there is nothing else that can start to do it.

The main amendment here—and those supporting it—point us this way, and unless the Minister can make some response that tells us how that is going to happen, we are going to have major problems. I hope this will be the first and last time I have to speak on this Bill—but if the Minister does not give a proper answer I will be back.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

789 cc1598-9 

Session

2017-19

Chamber / Committee

House of Lords chamber

Subjects

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