---

Sporting Events Bill [HL]

My Lords, I agree pretty much with what the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has already said. As somebody who was present 60 years ago at every England match in the World Cup, including the final and the somewhat controversial Argentina game, I do not want to hold up the House for very long, but, as she said, I have tabled Amendment 48. I have engaged with the Minister, and I thank her for what she has said and for the meeting that she and her staff held with me yesterday.

It was not quite the explicit endorsement of what Amendment 48 requires that I was hoping for, but I think I can reasonably deduce that the Minister is saying that, when the major events strategy emerges, it will be clear that environmental sustainability, including explicitly climate change mitigation and adaptation, will be referred to there, and that the work the Government are already doing will appear in their approach to major sporting events. I do not know why that cannot be made explicit in the Bill and, as one who very much supported the Climate Change Act’s provisions at the time, I am assuming that I can stretch the Minister’s words to say that what they are doing will, in effect, be what is required by the Climate Change Act.

5 pm

I hope so, and I hope that other departments do the same, because simply saying that we are doing it anyway is not enough to ensure that sporting events, which, for the reasons that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has already spelled out, are seen as important parts of our attitude towards climate change, and the major sporting organisations, Sport England and UK Sport, actually reflect that.

I think that is what the Minister is saying to me; I would like her to confirm it. Therefore, I am not going to move my amendment tonight, for obvious

reasons. I would have liked the Government to be slightly more explicitly forthcoming, but I thank the Minister for her engagement in any case.