Lords Grand Committee

15 September 2026

Contents updated on 15 Sept 2026

The Chair opens proceedings, calls the motion on the Macolin Convention and the International Agreements Committee’s report, and Lord Johnson sets out the treaty’s background, UK scrutiny process, evidence base, and concerns over Northern Ireland, the jurisdictional reservation and treaty‑explanatory practice.

Chamber Tue, 15 Sept 2026 House of Lords

00:05 - 00:27

Speaker 1

My Lords, if there's a division in the chamber while we're sitting, this committee will adjourn as soon as the division bells are rung and we will resume after 10 minutes. Motion for debate. Report of the International Agreements Committee, Lord Johnson of Lainston.

00:27 - 02:55

Speaker 2

Well, thank you very much indeed, my Lords. I beg to move the motion standing in my name on the order paper. And I'm delighted as chair of the International Agreements Committee to lead this debate on the committee's report on the Council of Europe Convention on the Manipulation of Sports Competitions, better known as the Macolin Convention. People in the UK are passionate about sport and the integrity of sport competitions is fundamental to their appeal. Match fixing and other forms of competition manipulation present real risks to the integrity of sport as well as the UK's sports betting sector.

The Macolin Convention is the first international treaty focused specifically on tackling this important issue, which increasingly transcends international borders. It was signed by the UK back in 2018, but was only laid for ratification and scrutiny by Parliament in June of this year. We judged the convention to be politically and legally significant and as a result of which have decided to report it to the House. Noble Lords will be aware that the usual scrutiny period for international agreements under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act is very short. It's an extremely short 21 sitting days, which does not normally allow the committee time to take evidence on treaties.

We therefore requested an extension of the scrutiny period to allow us to take evidence, which I'm delighted to say the government granted, and we are very grateful to them for this as the extra time was vital for our ability to scrutinize the treaty properly. I'm also very grateful to the witnesses who gave up their time to give evidence to the committee, including senior officials from DCMS, and I would like to, as always, thank our staff team led by Dom Walsh, in particular Ben Orcal and Paul Berman for their excellent work in producing the report. I should also declare my interests as a non-executive director at Blocksholes Limited, which has a technology company, some technologies which are used by polymarket and prediction market companies. So competition manipulation in sport can take many forms. It can involve match fixing, which aims obviously to fix the outcome of a sporting event, but it also includes fixing in-game events, often referred to as micro-fixes or spot-fixes, as seen with some of the high-profile recent incidents relating to deliberate yellow cards in football.

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