Clause 17 - Advertising regulations
London Olympics Bill
10:30 am
Don Foster (Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media & Sport, Culture, Media & Sport; Bath, Liberal Democrat)
I am in some difficulty. I have a pretty lousy cold and, on the way to the Committee, the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Derek Wyatt) and I discussed the current sweepstake among Labour Members on how long I intended to speak to the amendment. Given that I have a vague idea of the length of time that the hon. Gentleman wishes to speak, I shall be going for a little while as we have agreed a 50:50 split of all his winnings. On that basis, I shall begin with a few words of preamble.
We shall be dealing in today’s sitting with some of the most important and potentially the most controversial parts of the Bill. We have debated many issues and we shall debate more on which there is total unanimity that are about the importance of securing the delivery structures to ensure that we deliver on time and on budget in 2012 the best ever Olympic and Paralympic games.
I hope that it is recognised by all members of the Committee that it is crucial for the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games to raise the money that it needs to protect those organisations and individuals who willingly agree to give money through sponsorship to support the Olympic and Paralympic games. They must be provided with appropriate protection. The LOCOG briefing on market elements stated that it was important to stress that LOCOG has to raise £510 million from UK sponsors and licensees as part of its £1.5 billion overall operating budget. Therefore, one third of LOCOG’s budget needs to come through sponsors, and we support the broad principle of the Government’s proposal.
However, I share several concerns that have been expressed about the detail and whether there is an element of gold-plating by the Government over and above that which is required in agreements with the International Olympic Committee, particularly in respect of the host city agreement. We shall deal later with clauses 31 and 32 when we discuss ambush marketing, but the summary of the host city contract demands that stakeholders
“take all necessary steps ... to prevent/or terminate any ambush marketing or any unauthorised use of Olympic properties”.
It states that the organising committee
“shall present the IOC with a detailed ambush prevention plan, in accordance with the terms of the Marketing Plan Agreement and the ‘Technical Manual on Brand Protection’, which forms an integral part of this Contract.”
Such details may sound like gobbledegook, but the host city contract refers specifically not only to the summary of the host city contract, but to several technical manuals that deal with the very details that we are discussing. Unfortunately, those manuals are not available to members of the Committee. They would have been enormously helpful had they been available during our deliberation of such issues. I accept that the Minister has been working hard with the IOC to find a way in which to make such information available, but it is important to place on the record that we do not have it. It is therefore difficult to determine whether the claim that is being made by some that the Government are gold-plating is true because we do not have the full detail to hand.
Clearly, there are issues in respect of ambush marketing, which we will return to later, but those areas that we are currently covering under clause 17 relate to other issues, such as time scale. At present, there is nothing in the Bill in respect of advertising that specifies the period of time for which these restrictions on advertising will apply. Of course, many of us presume that those rules will apply during the Olympic period and that that period can be clearly defined by reference to clause 1, which refers to “four weeks before” the start of the games until
“the fifth day after the day of the closing ceremony of the Paralympic Games”.
The first amendment in this string suggests that we specify that that is the period for which the rules in respect of advertising shall apply.
Clause 17 also refers to vicinity, but that is not defined in the legislation. Therefore, what do we mean when we talk about the area in which these rules on advertising are to apply? Another concern is the whole question of presumption of innocence as opposed to presumption of guilt; I will come on to that soon. Therefore, it is clear that there are areas of genuine concern in respect of advertising, and we have considerable difficulty with some of them, because we do not know what it is that our country has signed up to; we simply do not have the documentation in front of us.
I state again that I want to help LOCOG protect the sponsors so that that £510 million can be raised. That is important, and I put on the record now that I support LOCOG in respect of adhering to any of the terms and conditions that it has agreed with the IOC and that are contained within the host city contract, and also within the technical manuals, which I have not seen. That seems to me to be a done deal, whether or not we have been involved in it. However, it is important that we tease out some of the details through our discussion of these amendments.
The first of the amendments under discussion is a probing amendment. I am the first to acknowledge that it contains deficiencies. For example, although it talks about the area to be covered, it does not include any reference to locations around the transport network—for instance, along the side of the planned Olympic javelin train or around the Olympic route network. I also accept that the amendment does not make any specific reference to the area immediately outside stadiums or other Olympic venues, and it is important that that is included in the discussion, and also in the rules.
Therefore, I acknowledge at the outset that the amendment has deficiencies. However, I believe that the clause is too broad in both allowing regulations on advertising as a whole, rather than in terms of just a display as our amendment suggests, and in not making any reference to the time period, which our amendment addresses by giving a specific period.
I hope that the Minister will put certain things on the record. I want him to acknowledge the concerns of the advertising and media industries, to undertake to consult them and the Opposition parties in good time before any regulations are issued, and to make it clear that the regulations are not intended to apply and will not be applied above and beyond the tightest definition of the host city contract and any other binding documents. I also want him to acknowledge an intended light-touch implementation—in other words, that newspaper hoardings that do not breach association rules under schedule 3, such as one bearing the title of the Evening Standard, will not constitute a breach of the regulations that are brought forward in due course. In other words, the regulations governed by the clause should relate to the physical display of advertising; the clause should not go broader than that, yet at the moment it gives the Secretary of State additional powers relating to advertising, over and beyond current law and the British code of advertising practice. For example, even though the regulations referred to under the clause discuss only the display of advertising, subsection (1) opens the door for the Secretary of State to make provision regarding the content of advertising. It would be wrong to have that in the clause, not least because the issue of content is covered adequately under clause 31 and schedule 3.
The point is clearly made that we need an agreement on the time limit. We propose the “London Olympics period”, which I have actually defined. Incidentally, I notice that other amendments in this string have a similar effect; clearly, we are supportive of those amendments, but if ours were accepted, those would not be necessary.
There is also the issue of vicinity. I have said that we need a clear definition of what is understood by that. I appreciate the difficulty of coming up with a clear definition. Indeed, I will be absolutely honest—[Interruption.]—with you, Mr. Amess, if none of the rest of the Committee is listening: I had hoped to table an amendment that gave our own definition of “vicinity”. We spent a long time looking into what was proposed in Sydney and what was done in Atlanta and Athens, and we came to the conclusion that a definition would be extremely difficult to achieve. I, working with one or two members of my staff, am not capable of it, but I have absolute, supreme confidence that the Minister, with all his paraphernalia, back-up and support, is capable of coming up with something. We need such a definition, and it needs to be agreed by Parliament after consultation with all the bodies concerned.
Could the Minister be tempted to look into the Sydney legislation? I would argue that the Sydney proposals on vicinity were far too draconian and tight. It is all very well for the Minister to suggest that we provide something similarly draconian because we will have a light touch, and to say that there was only one prosecution in Sydney and so on, but until we know how the prosecution system will work, the situation will be very difficult.
Those are the key issues at the moment, but as I said, there are others to which we will wish to return, such as ambush marketing and being found guilty before evidence is provided—that seems to be suggested in the legislation, and we think it wrong. I hope that amendment No. 73, as a probing amendment, will at least persuade the Minister to tell us what he is doing on those various issues.