Community Amateur Sports Clubs (Support) Bill [HL]

My Lords, community amateur sports clubs, known as CASCs, and their predecessors are about as close as we get in political debate in our society to motherhood and apple pie. The reason for that is that they can achieve all you would ever want from a voluntary body. They provide exercise, a sense of community as defined in the Title of the Bill, and most of all they bring people together with a common purpose. They make sure that volunteering activities can be expressed. They offer those who might not otherwise have them the chance of good adult role models. They encourage self-discipline and show you the cost of not having good self-discipline in the form of contempt among your peers. All these come together in community amateur sports clubs. CASCs can also act as informal job markets. I have to make a small admission rather than a declaration of interest. I have forgotten to pay my subs to a small rugby club of which I am almost a lifetime member and vice-president; I will rectify that. A lot of casual recruitment of labour would take place in the club. There was a support structure in place to which people could go for advice. All these things happen around amateur sports clubs to a greater or lesser extent. It has to be said that after a fair degree of nudging, but not the worst I have ever known, the Government created a tax relief in the Finance Act 2002 which offered some advantages. It was not a bad first step, which is supposedly the most difficult part of any journey, but equally you cannot say that the first step marks the end of the journey and come to a stop. We have to make sure that the journey continues, and that is what this Bill is all about. It seeks to build on the Government's acceptance that amateur sports clubs are good things and that they need help. This Bill looks at problems that were not dealt with in the first step and shows what can be done to enhance the status of these clubs, which are generally seen as a public good. All the major clauses of the Bill propose amendments to other Acts, which shows how difficult it is to encapsulate in one piece of legislation something like adequate support of amateur sport. It also has to be said that the Government—I refer to all parties and so also to my own party, although we have not been in government quite as recently—need a vehicle that can focus the attention of Ministers, who have their heads in other briefs, on the value of amateur sports clubs. That it is needed is shown by the fact that this Bill has to cross a wide range of legislation over many years. Probably the most topical issue is set out in Clause 1, which addresses the utility bills that amateur sports clubs have to pay. I suspect that I am not the only person who has had a number of messages about water charging of late. A classic example of the problem is this: Carlisle Rugby Club is facing a drastic increase in water and drainage charges, rising from £700 to £4,000. An amateur sports club is being asked to find an extra £3,000-plus. I do not know anything about Carlisle Rugby Club, but that is a heck of a lot of money to find. How do you do it? What is your membership? Do you up the subs? Do you exclude people? Do you lose the benefits of it from doing this? How do you help? The clause also asks for something that I very seldom ask for—that the Government take on a regulation-making power. This may not be the finished item, but we deserve an answer here. The same applies to other utility bills. Surely there is an argument for making special arrangements for people who are doing a public good that otherwise would not be done or the Government would have to do themselves. Perhaps the Minister can give a conclusive argument for why some form of control should not be placed on these excessive charges. I accept that United Utilities has put a one-year stop to the increase, but that is a one-year sticking plaster. I am sure that club secretaries, managers and trustees will thank it tremendously for having yet another year to worry about this. I hope that the Government can give us some idea of what progress they think can be made and that we can receive some positive assurances from across the political spectrum represented here. Now we come to a difficult issue in Clause 2, relating to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act. I freely admit that, when we are talking about copyright money collection, if you tell anybody in the music industry that you are going to restrict what they are getting, you might just get a degree of wailing in the wind from an industry that is suffering from tremendous piracy. Why do we have something that is very difficult for amateur sports clubs to collect? They have voluntary secretaries. I have a minor consideration here, in that I am secretary of the Commons and Lords rugby club, though not in a venue that hosts much live music. But we should look at the type and complexity of regulation and the fact that we are not quite sure which bits we have exemptions from. Can the Government tell me why they are not going to do something to help the volunteers who run these organisations, who often take on the most tedious, complex and least fun part of the process? We are not talking about people taking on an activity that directly enables them to take part in a sport, but people who take on something that enables others to have a framework in which to take on a sport. Why cannot we have a simpler form of collection? I would be open to any suggestions at later stages of the Bill if a better way can be found of doing this. Of course I wish this Bill every success, as it is my Bill, but if we can use it as an example of getting somebody in to say how this could be done better, I would be very receptive to that in Committee. Clause 3 deals with the Environmental Protection Act 1990. This is a slightly more straightforward swipe at nimbyism, primarily inspired by the long-running battle over floodlights. Modern floodlights do not cause a great disturbance or nuisance to people. They can be concentrated downwards. Let us face it, who wants to pay extra electricity charges, even if we get some government support on utility bills as I mentioned on Clause 1? I refer once again to my initial comments about what CASCs do. If people have objections, we must ensure that they are about something more substantial than just mild inconvenience. There is a public good to be had here. There will always be people who object to things. To take an extreme example, there is the Daily Mail version of the person who objects to a pub, having moved next door to it. We must make sure that it has to be on firmer grounds and that there is less hassle for those who run amateur sports clubs, as well as less expense on legal fees. These people are working as volunteers and supporting society. Clause 4, the last substantive clause, deals with something that I have a bit of guilt about because I have not made enough noise about it either when the Act was brought forward or subsequently—but we all know that we will miss something. If we start getting everything right, either we are going delusional or we have reached a deifatic state—that is not even a word; I mean that we have reached the status of a deity. We will always miss things. The Learning and Skills Act 2000 put the emphasis, when giving funding for skills, on to those who do not have skills at the moment, post-16. Unfortunately, a by-product of this was that many people who are involved in coaching and who already have some form of qualification towards a job found out that they had to pay for their coaching qualification. We should accept that they are doing something good and of public benefit. Being taught how to coach well and safely is important. Remember the safety aspect. In my sport of rugby union I have seen many an injury caused by somebody who could not quite grasp the theory that getting your head in the way of somebody's knee is a bad thing in a tackle. People need to learn how to make contact in that situation and how to move correctly so that you do not twist and injure. That type of thing is covered in the basis of coaching, as is how to restrict the amount of pressure you put on people so that you do not put them off. There are also legal requirements and duties of care when you take on these things in various places. The Government should seize the opportunity to change this. This particular bump in the economic cycle may not be very friendly to a request to give extra resources to something that is not directly related to the job market, but as we have proved and as was pointed out in the last debate, the cycle is a cycle and we will come out of it. We should also take on board the fact that running clubs helps certain people in employment hunting. Surely we could say that this is something we missed. I am sure it was the law of unintended consequences. Surely we can turn round and change this. Making sure that we get people properly trained and properly helped to develop others in their sporting aspirations might even create a long-term economic gain by encouraging people to stay in sport and exercise for longer because they are well taught initially. A number of injuries may be avoided. I do not have to go on much further. I would have thought that the Government really should act on this. If anybody thinks there may be a good case for expanding it, I wonder whether I have caught dance properly in this. It probably comes under the same heading. Will the Government give a clear idea of their thinking about this? Those are the substantive parts of the Bill. I hope that everybody who is listening takes on board the fact that I am not going into revolutionary territory. I am not asking the Government to address something that they have not already said is of benefit. I am merely saying that we should back it up. We have heard about the Olympic legacy; indeed, I have probably bored this House about it on several occasions. Surely this could be seen as part of that overall thrust and strategy of making sure that we encourage people to take part in sport at amateur level and making sure that it is easier to do. I hope that the House will look sympathetically on the Bill, and at least on its aims. I beg to move.