Coronavirus Act 2020: Temporary Provisions — House of Lords, 2020-09-28
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Dominic Hubbard (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, this is one of those special debates. We have had two excellent maiden speeches so far, and I look forward to working with, and possibly against, both noble Lords at various points in the future. Coming to the nature of the legislation, it is one of those days when you are very glad you have somebody on your side who is on your side—my noble friend Lord Scriven. I am sure I disagreed with something he said, but I did not get it first time around. I will try to look at some of the effects that the measures we are discussing today are having on our society. I draw the House’s attention to the state of sport in this country at the moment. Elite-level sport has a wonderful thing called TV revenue, but not that much sport is elite level. It may be on our TVs a lot, but most football clubs, for instance, are not elite level. They may be professional, and elements of professionalism run a long way down that sport, but they generate their money from Saturdays, when people pay to watch in person, and their advertisers pay to have their advertising seen by those who are there. The same is true of rugby league and many other sports. But in football there is this big thing with lots of money called the Premier League, which may be able to save and support clubs for a bit, if we are going on just for a year or two. That has already been covered by many noble Lords I would like us to look at all those amateur sports, where the vast majority of the population who take part support others who go through and get involved. Here, you generate your money from people who pay a sub to play, and you generate it in your bar. These institutions are effectively stuffed. It is the curse of the bleeding obvious to say that, as the weather gets colder and wetter, those taking part in a winter sport—who will hit the ground and come up covered in mud and water—will need to change in a changing room. If these institutions are not allowed to use these facilities through this process—and I put up my hand as what is left of a rugby player who still occasionally plays golden oldies—and if we want them to be there in the future, we will have to make sure that they are looked after. If you have maintained a ground, on which you may have a mortgage, you will have ongoing things such as rates coming in, and you will have to be bailed out The irony of this is: what could we do to better prepare ourselves to survive the virus if we get it? Have a good cardiovascular system. We absolutely know that you can tell everybody to jog 2.3 miles every 1.4 days but, unless you give them an incentive to do it, this habit of exercise will never be established in the vast majority of people. They need a reason for getting in there. They need to know what it is like to be fit, so they can try to get back there. It is also a lot easier to do it then, because muscle memory is there. The health benefits are there. I do not have long enough now to go into the proven mental health benefits of sport and that social interaction but, unless we save this great tier of social activity, the sports clubs, we will be saving up a huge problem for the future. That is one of the reasons why a little bit of me sometimes says that this cure may not be worth it.