Football Governance Bill [HL]
Thursday 24th October 2024
(4 weeks ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Football Governance Bill [HL] 2024-26 Read Hansard Text
Football Governance Bill [HL]
Wednesday 13th November 2024
(1 week, 1 day ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Football Governance Bill [HL] 2024-26 Read Hansard Text Watch Debate
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)
My Lords, football brings joy to fans right across the country, as well as a shared sense of community. It is an essential part of the social fabric of our country. Growing up, I lived within earshot of the Manor Ground, Oxford United’s former home. My dad, who was a season ticket holder, took me and my siblings to games, including to Wembley when Oxford won the Milk Cup.
Loyalty to clubs runs through families and creates a sense of pride within communities across the generations. With apologies to noble Lords who support Bolton, I was delighted when my niece Talullah and nephew Winston got to experience the same euphoria I did as a teenager—and in May as well—when we went to see Oxford win the League One play-off final at Wembley earlier this year.
English football goes beyond family loyalty and local communities. It is a global success story and one of our greatest cultural exports. It is an industry we want to protect, for its economic value and for the fans who turn out to support every week, even when their team is down on its luck.
Despite its phenomenal success, we know that irresponsible owners, unsustainable financial models and inadequate regulation have cast a shadow over too many of our clubs. Too often, fans have had to fight to protect their club’s identity, heritage and even its very existence. In recent years, we have seen the devastating impact that losing these battles can have on communities, such as with Bury and Macclesfield Town.
Since 1992, there have been over 60 instances of professional clubs in the top four divisions going into administration, and two expert reports commissioned for DCMS have shown that the situation is not improving. In 2023 alone, clubs in the top five leagues faced pre-tax losses of over £1 billion, and net debt stood at over £4 billion. These are eye-watering figures.
Unfortunately, the football industry has not gone far enough in tackling these issues, despite many opportunities to do so. That is why we are bringing this Bill forward to establish an independent regulator, delivering on our commitment to make this country the best place in the world to be a football fan.
This is historic legislation which has been developed over several years, including by the previous Government, who recognised the need to regulate in this space. I give special thanks to Dame Tracey Crouch for chairing the independent Fan Led Review of Football Governance. It was her review that recommended an independent football regulator and laid the groundwork for the extensive policy development on this much-needed legislation.
Before I get to the details of the Bill, I thank all those who have engaged so constructively in its development, including many noble Lords from across your Lordships’ House here today. In particular, I thank the Football Supporters’ Association, the English Football League, the Premier League, the National League, the Football Association, UEFA, FIFA, the Professional Footballers’ Association and Kick It Out, as well as clubs across the football pyramid.
I turn to what the legislation does. The regulator will improve the resilience of club finances, tackle rogue owners and directors, and strengthen fan engagement. It will also set out a corporate governance code of practice and prevent clubs joining breakaway leagues.
Too many clubs are living beyond their means. Therefore, the regulator’s primary purpose will be to protect and promote the sustainability of English football. It will achieve this through a licensing system where all regulated clubs in scope will need a licence to operate as professional football clubs. That scope will be set out in regulations and is currently envisaged as the top five divisions of English men’s football.
The regulator will not be a fix for all football’s woes, nor should it be. It will have a very tightly defined scope and purpose to tackle the specific risks of significant detrimental impact on fans and communities. Legally, the regulator will not be able to act outside of this scope.
The football industry has shown itself incapable of addressing these failures. We have seen in other industries that, when done well, proportionate regulation still allows for innovation and ambition—financial services being a good example. Where clubs are already well run, regulation will be light touch to ensure sustainability without standing in the way of clubs’ ambitions. Indeed, compared to some comparator countries, this is not interventionist regulation.
To better understand the landscape of English football, the regulator will periodically undertake a “state of the game” report. This is expected to include a broad assessment of the financial health and economic issues of the industry.
Under its regime, the regulator will introduce new regulation to improve financial resilience in the game. Clubs will be required to demonstrate sound basic financial practices, have appropriate financial resources, and protect the core assets and value of the club, such as the stadium. This will reduce the risk of clubs facing financial failure and the huge knock-on impact and distress that that carries for entire communities.
This Government are committed to putting fans back at the heart of the game. As such, the Bill goes slightly further than the Bill debated in the Commons earlier this year. It will put in place a stronger minimum standard of fan engagement in decision-making on a number of key issues at all regulated clubs. The Bill also introduces important new statutory protections for key aspects of a club’s heritage, such as its name, home shirt colours and badge, because although most clubs have a strong relationship with their fans and actively engage them in decisions that affect club heritage, not all do. Fans at Cardiff City and Hull City will know this well, where they have had to battle to keep their club’s name or shirt colours.
Clubs will need to seek the regulator’s approval to sell, or relocate from, their home ground. Relocation from a club’s home ground will not be approved unless it both makes financial sense and does not compromise the heritage of the club. This will help to prevent a repeat of what we saw when Wimbledon moved from their home in south London to Milton Keynes.
Fans have also suffered the consequences of irresponsible ownership. We have seen some owners acquiring clubs without having adequate finances, or who were involved in criminality, or who had histories of financial mismanagement. The regulator will put in place stronger, statutory owners’ and directors’ tests to protect fans from the impact of irresponsible owners and decision-makers by ensuring a club’s custodians are suitable. All prospective owners and directors must pass the regulator’s tests before taking a position at, or acquiring, a club. If someone already in the system is found unsuitable, the regulator will have powers to remove them.
We have removed a clause from the previous Bill that allowed government foreign policy and trade considerations to be considered when approving takeovers. This change makes it absolutely clear that the new regulator will be independent from government.
One of the main triggers for the fan-led review was the attempted breakaway European Super League, which prompted a fierce backlash from fans. Clubs will be prevented from playing in competitions prohibited by the regulator. This will mean that fans no longer face the prospect of seeing clubs trying to join unfair, closed-shop leagues that undermine the fundamental principles of English football.
I turn now to distribution of revenue in the game. Since 2019, the leagues have failed to negotiate a new distribution deal—another stark example of the industry being unable to resolve key issues. So, while a football-led solution remains this Government’s preferred outcome, the regulator will have statutory backstop powers to intervene if necessary. The backstop mechanism is designed to incentivise an industry-led solution. However, in the absence of one, it will be robust enough to ensure an agreement is put in place to fairly distribute revenue.
Only one of the relevant football leagues can apply to trigger the backstop mechanism, if they feel that they cannot reach an agreement themselves. This does not mean, however, that the process will automatically be triggered. The regulator can decide to trigger the process based on such an application if relevant conditions are met. The regulator will then enforce a mediation period to try to encourage the leagues to come to an agreement themselves.
However, if an agreement cannot be reached, the final offer arbitration process will be triggered. This process requires both leagues to submit final proposals for a distribution agreement, and the regulator will choose the one most consistent with its objectives to promote the financial soundness and resilience of football. It can reject both proposals if they are unsuitable. This decision will be enforced via a distribution order. At every stage, this process is intended to encourage an industry-led solution, while ensuring an agreement on distributions will be reached. The Bill will also establish a corporate governance code, requiring clubs to report how they are applying the football club-specific corporate governance code published by the regulator.
As noble Lords will be aware, Labour supported the introduction of the previous version of this Bill, which was debated in the other place prior to the election. The new Bill is largely in line with the previous Bill. However, we have made key changes to ensure we deliver the best possible proportionate regulation that safeguards the future of our national game.
These changes will empower fans, keep clubs at the heart of their communities and ensure the financial sustainability that will protect clubs for future generations. As a result of the changes we have made, clubs will be explicitly required to consult with supporters on ticket prices. This, among other measures, will give fans a louder voice at their clubs on the issues that matter to them. Clubs will also be required to consult their fans prior to the regulator making a decision on relocation of a home ground.
Parachute payments will no longer be excluded from consideration as part of the backstop process. They are a significant part of football’s financial landscape, and if the regulator identifies them as a relevant factor, it will be able to consider them as part of the backstop.
Finally, the fan-led review identified that the game needs to do more to ensure it is open and welcoming to people of all backgrounds. There is therefore a clear commitment from this government to do more to improve equality, diversity and inclusion within football club governance. Clubs will be required to publish what action they are taking on equality, diversity and inclusion as part of reporting against a new football club corporate governance code, which the regulator will introduce to improve decision-making at clubs. The measures in this Bill have been carefully developed to ensure we are taking a proportionate and flexible approach to regulation that reflects the unique and special place football has in our society.
The regulator will be focused on financial sustainability as well as safeguarding the heritage of English football. But, crucially, it will also have duties to have regard to minimising its impact on important outcomes such as the competitiveness of our clubs against overseas competitors and investment into the game. This will provide a stable regulatory environment, providing the certainty required to drive future investment and growth, so that English football continues to be a global success.
If clubs have the finances to back up their plans, have suitable owners and directors, engage their fans on key issues and do not join closed-shop breakaway leagues, they should feel very little impact from the regulator. Given the ongoing issues at some clubs, we are determined to ensure the regulator is in place as quickly as possible once this legislation passes. This is why we are already putting in place a shadow regulator to do the preparatory work and lay the foundations of the regulatory regime.
The case for better regulation of our clubs is clear. This Bill will provide the much-needed reform to protect our footballing heritage. I am grateful to noble Lords for their involvement in and support for the Bill. I look forward to working across the House in the weeks ahead. I beg to move.
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, for moving the Second Reading of this Bill and for the generous and comprehensive way she set out all the work that has gone into it to get us to this point. I am also grateful, as is my noble friend Lord Markham, for the time she gave earlier this week to discuss the Bill with us. As noble Lords may know, and as the Bill team was warned when we were working on the Bill before the election, I am not the world’s greatest football aficionado, but it is a mark of the power and allure of the beautiful game that none of us can be mistaken about the central part that it plays in our national life.
In 2010, I had the pleasure of standing for election to another place in my native city, Newcastle upon Tyne. I was an eager, first-time parliamentary candidate and had been campaigning for nearly 18 months when the election was finally called, so it was a chastening reminder of most people’s priorities to see the front page of the local papers on 6 April 2010. That was the day that Gordon Brown finally went to the Palace to seek a Dissolution. More importantly, on Tyneside, it was the morning after Newcastle United had won promotion back to the Premier League after their relegation in 2009. The Newcastle Evening Chronicle that day was a commemorative edition, offering 10 pages of photographs, analysis and reaction from the fans. Tucked away in the corner was a tiny news in brief: “Prime Minister calls election—full story, page 11”. So I have never been in doubt about where football stands in the nation’s priorities—understandably, since it is one of this country’s greatest inventions and exports.
As we begin our scrutiny of this Bill, it is worth casting our minds back to 26 October 1863. On that date, gathered in the Freemasons’ Tavern on Great Queen Street—the same tavern, incidentally, in which the Conservative Party conference was held for the first time four years later—Ebenezer Morley, along with the representatives of a dozen other London clubs, came together in a spirit of camaraderie and shared passion to form a body that would unify the rules and practices of the sport they loved. From that meeting came the Football Association—the first association of its kind, and one which has formed the model for governing bodies around the world.
The year 1888 saw another key moment in the football canon. It brought the creation of the English Football League—again, a world first—followed a year later by the establishment of the Northern League. It was with this development that the professionalisation of football really took hold. Without that Victorian spirit of imagination and enterprise, the game of football as we know it today would not exist.
Since its inception, football has been a great unifier—indeed, even a peacemaker. It was a football match that famously brokered a momentary truce on the Western Front on Christmas Day 1914. Since the inaugural FIFA World Cup in 1930, football has brought nations together around one central purpose—the love of a game—in friendly competition. Over the years, football tournaments have flourished across the globe. It has become by far the most popular and loved sport in the world. All that would not have been possible had it not been for that evening in October 1863 here in England.
Why dwell so heavily on the history of this beloved sport? It is because history is at the heart of this Bill. Football is woven into the fabric of our nation. It is central to the identity of millions of Britons. It is the thread that binds communities together—communities such as my home town, where Whitley Bay FC are a source of great local pride, not least as the record-holding, four-time winners of the FA Vase. Football generates memories, creates its own traditions and is infused with the spirit of every player, every fan and every club.
Across the country, thousands assemble weekly in all weathers to cheer on their favoured team: the club supported by their parents, their grandparents and their great-grandparents before them. A football club is more than just a patch of soil; it is hallowed turf, nourished with the blood, sweat and tears of generations. The badge worn on the heart of every player is not merely a picture but a symbol—of hope, of heritage, of devotion. That is what English football is all about and that is why it is so important for us to get this Bill right.
A football regulator will work only if it is able to protect the beating heart of the game and if it strikes a balance between protecting the past and the future of clubs and competitions. There is much in the Bill that does indeed strike that balance, and I am proud that it was the previous Government who commissioned the review that led to its creation. I repeat the thanks the Minister gave to Dame Tracey Crouch and to the tens of thousands of fans who took part in that review and helped to shape it. The work has always enjoyed cross- party support, as the Minister noted, and I welcome the fact that the new Government have sought to continue it so swiftly.
As I have discussed, the Bill attempts to tackle the issue of heritage. The regulator will have an explicit duty to protect the unique history of each and every club and to ensure that the links between clubs and their communities are immutable bonds that can never be broken. But we must not ignore the fact that the Bill before us today, as the Minister candidly set out, is not the same as the Bill that was under discussion in the previous Parliament. Key safeguards that were intended to preserve elements of the independence and sustainability of the leagues have been changed. There are four areas of this new Bill that we on these Benches will be examining particularly keenly during its passage through your Lordships’ House.
First, in considering the principle of a regulator, we support the establishment of the independent football regulator. We are pleased that it will have a role in preserving the history and heritage of clubs and that it will protect against the threat of rogue owners, some of whom in the past have asset-stripped clubs for their own gain. But we remain concerned about the potential for regulatory overreach. We must be vigilant against mission creep, as is all too often the case with regulatory bodies. A key word in the Minister’s speech was “proportionate”. If this new regulator becomes too deeply involved with the minutiae of clubs’ finances, we risk damaging one of our most significant cultural institutions and greatest exports. If the regulator becomes too prescriptive in its requirements, how will clubs retain their competitiveness against their global rivals? Any outcome that sees a reduction in investment and creates a possibility for English football to lose its premier status must be seen as a failure. It is our job to ensure that this does not happen.
Secondly, the Bill brought before the last Parliament explicitly excluded parachute payments from the scope of the regulator. This Bill, as the noble Baroness outlined, has removed that exclusion. The Government have reasons for this, as she has explained, but we remain unconvinced. We know that payments to relegated clubs are vital for the financial sustainability of those clubs. When a club is forced into the Championship from the Premier League, its overheads do not decrease yet its income does. Football clubs are not like just any other business; they cannot simply cut costs. Without parachute payments, clubs facing relegation would be forced to the financial precipice. Surely any risk of a club being forced to enter administration because of action taken by the regulator would be the polar opposite of the aim of this Bill. That too is an outcome we must resist.
Thirdly, I turn to the backstop mechanism—a term that, I admit, still brings me out in hives after years of discussing Brexit deals. The backstop in this instance was first envisaged as a last resort, to be called on only should neither party agree on the distribution of revenue. But there are absolutely no guarantees that this will be the case. If one party wants to trigger this mechanism, it may do so whenever it wishes. The binary choice presented by the backstop, and the inclusion of parachute payments in that mechanism, could lead to a scenario where the regulator forces one business to give its money to another. Setting aside the financial risks in that, the potential for protracted legal action could have very injurious implications. If league organisers and clubs cannot be certain that they will receive the income they expect and if they cannot anticipate how often they may be bogged down by lengthy and costly battles in the courts, how will they be able to produce the business plans required by the regulator for licensing purposes? Of course, the financial sustainability of the whole football pyramid is of the utmost importance, but there must be at least some recognition in the mechanism of the unique role that the Premier League plays as the ultimate funder in the financial vitality of the English league system.
Finally, one of the laudable aspects of this Bill is the attempt to improve fan engagement. Given that the Bill was born of the fan-led review, it is only right that those who give their support to the sport should be engaged by the clubs they love so dearly. But there are important issues to examine here. How do we define who a fan is? Who decides? Will clubs be allowed to choose with which groups or people they engage? Will the regulator? What impact will this have on supporters’ engagement and on clubs? We must also grapple with the fact that fan engagement can go only so far. Once we have decided what constitutes a supporter, what role will they have? Perhaps the noble Baroness can elaborate on this, either today or as we go into Committee. Will fans come to welcome this regulator? Just as the referee on a pitch adjudicates between players and thus frequently draws the ire of both teams, will this regulator attract the same criticism from supporters?
Since that October evening in 1863 that established the foundations that have allowed football to flourish in this country, football clubs have become the nuclei of communities across the country, institutions steeped in meaning and heritage that have inspired generations. Football has become one of the central elements of our national identity but, like so much of our national heritage, it is a precious and delicate inheritance. If we do not treat it reverently, we risk destroying what makes it great. As we seek to regulate football, we must keep our eye on what makes it so special and act in the spirit of those who met in that tavern in Holborn 161 years ago. The motto of Whitley Bay FC is “Ludus est omnis”—“The game is everything”. Those wise words are worth keeping in mind as we scrutinise this important Bill.
Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)
My Lords, I draw noble Lords’ attention to my entry in the register of interests. I am chair of Sport Wales, I sit on UK Sport, I am a trustee of the Foundation of Light and I authored the independent Duty of Care in Sport review in 2017, which was requested by the then Sport Minister, Dame Tracey Crouch. I thank the many organisations that have been open and generous with their time in preparing for today’s debate.
Dame Tracey’s fan-led review demonstrated that self-regulation in football has failed, and the creation of an independent football regulator could strengthen the game that so many cherish. As we all know, football is deeply woven into our country’s cultural fabric. At its best, it provides incredible social value, health benefits and entertainment to many communities across the UK, as well as an important revenue stream into the UK economy. Therefore, the sustainability of football for years to come is important.
While an EDI strategy is included in the Bill, there is an obvious exclusion: the women’s game. I understand that many noble friends might suggest that adding the women’s game to the Bill would create another complex layer, but I think we should be open about what we are talking about today. It is a men’s football regulator, not one for the game of football.
I have been told that the women’s game needs a chance to self-regulate and that an independent football regulator might stifle investment opportunities that could become available to women’s football in the future, but I disagree. The fan-led review concluded that:
“Fair distributions are vital to the long term health of football. The Premier League should guarantee its support to the pyramid and make additional, proportionate contributions to further support football”.
If the aim of the Bill is to ensure financial sustainability for the future of football, should that not be for the whole game?
The women’s game is still connected to men’s football in many cases. Sadly, there are very few examples of independent women’s football clubs like the London City Lionesses, although we are slowly seeing more investment in women’s football. Many will say that no regulator is required, but I believe the exclusion of the women’s game from the Bill could hinder its growth so that it continues to be an afterthought when it should be at the forefront of football’s innovation.
Would it not be beneficial for the women’s game to avoid the fate that we have seen in the men’s game and to take proactive steps to ensure that the women’s game is protected from the same misconduct? Oversight and focus could ensure that the women’s game raises governance code standards in performance, medical and welfare provisions to drive positive change for the whole game so that football players could receive the duty of care that they deserve.
I intend to table amendments that would cover corporate responsibility and would require a club to consider the impact of the club’s operations and activities on society and the environment, in particular taking reasonable steps to increase diversity and inclusion of underrepresented groups; to eliminate discrimination; to have a positive impact on the community; and to establish, and keep updated, a target consistent with corporate governance best practice in respect of the gender diversity of officers.
In a survey by Women in Football in 2024, only 21% of women who responded said they felt supported to forge a path to the top, while 89% of women who responded had experienced gender discrimination in the football workforce. Systematic change is needed to accelerate progress, taking pockets of good practice and scaling the impact of gender diversity leadership across the professional game.
Any new regulator needs to have the voices of the players included. I urge His Majesty’s Government to ensure that appropriate consideration is given to the Professional Footballers’ Association as well as to the experience and knowledge of women in football. My work on the duty of care in sport has been across many sports, both amateur and professional, and the voice of participants enhances the outcomes that we would all like to see, so it is important that any fan consultation does not just become a tick-box exercise.
With my Welsh hat on, I understand that representatives from the Welsh Government have met colleagues from DCMS on the Bill. It was agreed that the Bill impacts Wales only in relation to those clubs that play in the English football pyramid, not Welsh football in its wider sense, so I wonder whether the Minister can say whether there is a need to include or add the regulator to the Senedd Cymru (Disqualification) Order 2020. As I understand it, it is an order of the Privy Council, but clarification on that matter would be helpful.
The Lord Bishop of Sheffield
My Lords, I congratulate the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Minister for securing this debate, and thank the previous Government for their efforts to ensure that the sport of football—a national treasure beloved of so many—is more effectively regulated.
I realise that I cannot claim that football was made in Sheffield but, in addition to the codification referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, in London in 1863, a second codification of the beautiful game took place in Sheffield in 1867—another early governance document for the sport that was influential for decades across the north. The city is home to the oldest football club in the world, Hallam FC, as well as to the two much better-known professional football clubs, Sheffield United and Sheffield Wednesday.
As Bishop of Sheffield, it gives me great pleasure to contribute to this important debate. It is a particular privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. I want to say, first, something about the relationship between football clubs and their communities; secondly, something about financial stability; and thirdly, something about the responsibility of football clubs in relation to the climate emergency.
On football clubs and their communities, we are right to celebrate the off-field successes of English football, including club community programmes and the work of the Football Foundation to support grass-roots pitches and facilities. In addition to the tens of thousands of jobs and billions of pounds of investment that the football pyramid channels into the UK economy, its social impact is profound. A recent report compiled by Substance using data from 2019-22 revealed that English football generated over £101 million for community investment, bolstering physical health, mental well-being, education and employment.
Football clubs have a clear and undeniable duty to their fans and their localities. In any conversation about the future of football, I hope these two groups will take centre field. Fan investment is the lifeblood of the sport and I applaud the Government’s intention to place fans back at the heart of the game. To name just one example, I was pleased to see that the Bill will ensure that fans are consulted on changes to ticket prices. I hope the Bill might also require football clubs to take their civic responsibilities extremely seriously. These go above and beyond those of charity foundations and extend to local regeneration schemes.
As a mildly obsessed fan of Newcastle United, I have rejoiced to see how the 2021 takeover of the club, following the deeply unpopular ownership tenure of Mike Ashley, has led to a wonderful reconnection of the football club with the fan base and with the city. Having said that, I acknowledge that the 2021 takeover raised significant concerns about the application of the owners’ and directors’ test, and I hope very much that the new Bill will tighten up that process.
Secondly, on financial stability, while acknowledging that the majority of football clubs are stable, the Bill rightly recognises the need to protect fans, players and club staff from costly club closures and the irresponsible mismanagement of club finances. My right reverend friend the Bishop of Derby, the Church of England’s lead bishop for sport, wishes she could be here to discuss the Bill. I know how much she cares about the high-profile collapse of Derby County Football Club in 2022. Ultimately, the club was, thankfully, rescued by local businessman and lifelong supporter David Clowes, but the turbulent negotiations with investors abroad exposed serious concerns and vulnerabilities. I hope the Bill will help to prevent such collapses in future.
Finally, and briefly, on the climate emergency, I particularly welcome the enhanced provisions in the Bill to improve transparency and accountability by requiring football clubs to publish what actions they are taking to improve equality, diversity and inclusion. May I suggest that this responsibility is extended to include actions that clubs take to reduce their carbon footprint and to move towards net zero? I look forward very much to hearing the views of other noble Lords and to following the progress of the Bill in the coming months.
Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Lab)
My Lords, I very much welcome the Bill and I congratulate my noble friend the Minister and, indeed, the Secretary of State on producing a stronger Bill than the one we were faced with earlier this year. I also have to acknowledge the work that Tracey Crouch did; I think we are all grateful to her for her review.
As a former business manager, I should also congratulate Ministers on finding time in the legislative programme for the Bill. I understand that some people might ask why we should prioritise football legislation when there are so many other problems the country is facing and so many other difficulties this Government have inherited. The simple fact is that, as we have heard, football has a profound impact on society as a whole and, if you care about communities, preventive health, mental health, loneliness and enriching children’s lives, you should care about football. Very often it is our football clubs which provide food banks, holiday clubs, schemes for young people and, importantly, a real sense of belonging to local communities. That is a factor up and down the country. Regardless of the clubs we support, football is a central part of our national life. Anybody who saw the remembrance services at football clubs up and down the country, with the remarkable silences, will understand just how much football clubs are important backbones of our communities.
Football clubs need to be recognised as having a wider role than just being a sporting venue. Indeed, they are an asset of community value. I wish that our football grounds were all classified as assets of community value. That is one safeguard that all clubs should have for the benefit of their fans.
Too often, as we have heard, clubs are treated by new owners as trophies or playthings, or as a set of assets which can be targeted for asset stripping. Very often this is done by people who simply do not care about the game or what the clubs mean to the many thousands of people who should be considered the owners of the club—certainly of the traditions of the club—namely, the fans.
We have seen over the last few years that football simply cannot regulate itself. Too many clubs have been on the brink of collapse. We have seen clubs tipped over the edge, breaking the hearts of fans and sometimes ruining the well-being of some of the local businesses that they have served. I must declare an interest, as one of the clubs that came close to oblivion was my own Bolton Wanderers, one of the founders of the Football League. My colleague the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Bolton, and I have shared our grief about what was happening five years ago when Bolton Wanderers was very close to collapse.
That was the consequence of going from a benevolent owner, who had been very generous and whose motivation was the best interests of the club, to a new owner whose motivation was, to say the least, questionable. It was noticeable that, when the club was going into administration, the administrator criticised the new owner, who had used his position to hamper and frustrate any deal that did not suit his purpose. It was not about what the club’s future should be; it was what he thought he could benefit from. Thankfully, since then the club has been rebuilt. Even when we lose, as we did 5-0 to Stockport recently, at least we still have a club to cherish.
Football fans expect to be tortured by what happens on the pitch. We should not have to expect it from what happens off the pitch as well, and too often that has been the case. Organisations such as Fair Game and the Football Supporters Association have fought to protect clubs for the fans. Individuals, such as Ian Bridge at Bolton, have been crucial in co-ordinating the efforts of fans. But we need more; we need a framework and structure for football which safeguards its future at all levels.
We have a football pyramid with the fantastic Premier League at the top, but it is a pyramid and the Premier League is not the be-all-and-end-all of football in England. We need regulation to make the football structure fit for purpose. Football in the UK is a big industry, and I understand that the Premier League has expressed concerns about killing the golden goose. No one is seeking to do that. We should remember that many Premier League players have come up from lower-league clubs or have been out on loan at lower-league clubs to help them develop. The EFL clubs are important to the Premier League, as well as to their own fans.
The financial imbalance in English football is dangerous to the future of football clubs at many levels. Current arrangements—I mention in particular parachute payments —are distorting the principle of sporting competition. That is just one reason why this Bill is so important. I know that, for many years, many people in football, including the EFL, had hoped that regulation would not be needed, but it is now obvious to almost everyone that this has to be the way forward.
The Bill, as the Minister outlined, establishes for the first time an independent football regulator. It will be a very important responsibility, and I am glad that the Bill is detailed on some aspects of how this will work in practice. There is much here to be welcomed, but that does not mean we will not press the Minister for more detail in Committee, especially on issues such as the parameters for financial distribution. There will be other areas where we will seek further clarification or assurances, such as vested interests, the women’s game, as has been mentioned, lower-league clubs, and ensuring that the individual ownership fitness test is exactly what we need. There is the issue of player welfare, with the PFA recently highlighting some of its concerns, which are probably worthy of consideration. Such points are not to undermine the Bill but to make sure that it is as effective and successful as it should be.
I hope the Minister will consider one amendment that I hope to push—namely, making sure that the regulator is accountable to Parliament, because I think all regulators should be. This will be very helpful to ensure the success of the new process.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a long-standing Norwich City season ticket holder and a supporter of King’s Lynn Town FC.
England is the home of football and English football is enjoyed by millions of people, as we have heard, who watch their team every week. The Premier League is the most-watched league in the world. It drives economic growth, generating £8.2 billion of GVA in the 2021-22 season, and supports 90,000 jobs across the country. The EFL is thriving; last year, one in four paid admissions to a UK sporting event were to an EFL match. Football is a much-loved, global British success story, and it is in this context that we should consider the Bill and its proposals to create a new regulatory structure.
This Bill is unquestionably novel. The Explanatory Notes themselves acknowledge that football
“was previously not regulated by statutory provisions”,
and explicitly state that
“the new regime and the distributions provisions in particular are unique and unprecedented”.
To avoid unintended consequences which could undermine the success story that football is, we need to be very careful in our deliberations to ensure that what is being regulated for and legislated for, as the Minister has said, creates a truly proportionate regime.
That means a light-touch regulator and clear boundaries to its powers to prevent regulatory creep and overreach. Indeed, we should assess the measures in the Bill against the words of the Prime Minister, who said at the recent investment summit that
“the key test for me on regulation is … growth. Is this going to make our economy more dynamic? Is this going to inhibit or unlock investment? … where it is needlessly holding back the investment we need … we will get rid of it … we will make sure that every regulator in this country, especially our economic and competition regulators, takes growth as seriously as this room does”.
Those seem very sensible benchmarks to me when considering a new statutory regime. We should make sure it fits within those parameters.
The key objectives of the Bill—particularly enhancing financial sustainability, preventing breakaway competitions, safeguarding club heritage assets and strengthening fan engagement—are all laudable aims for the regulator and will undoubtedly be an important focus of its work; I am sure that it can take things forward in that regard. However, the competitive and unpredictable nature of football must not be undermined by the new regulatory regime. We all know that football is about promotion, play-offs and passion. All fans dream of the possibility of their team triumphing against the odds, and sometimes they even get to see it happen. So football is clearly not akin to the typical regulated sector. As a result, the regulator in its actions needs to be mindful that football is a dynamic, risk-taking industry, with competition at its heart. That is a significant departure from the approach of other regulators, but it is imperative to protect this if the football regulator is not to unwittingly undermine the very sector it is there to support and help thrive.
The task of the new regulator will be considerable—for instance, to license clubs, it will have to review detailed business plans of all 116 and reach agreement on them. In addition to mandatory licence conditions, the regulator will have the power to impose discretionary requirements bespoke to a club. Clubs already deal with a lot on regulation, with the FA, the league and other bodies, so the new regulator needs to be careful that it does not overburden or duplicate requirements, adding unsustainable costs and bureaucracy, particularly for smaller clubs in the lower leagues.
All this will come at a cost, with money spent today by clubs on the game in future being spent on funding the regulator. Can the Minister provide reassurance that, in designing the levy, the regulator will be required to adopt a proportionate approach and ensure that costs to clubs, particularly those at the lower levels, are kept to a minimum? Can the Minister also give an indication of the expected costs or levels of staffing that will be needed for the regulator once it is fully up and running, to give us a sense of the scale of the task ahead?
How revenues are distributed through the financial pyramid is essential to the health of the game. The Bill introduces backstop powers to intervene in the currently voluntary distribution of the Premier League clubs’ TV revenues. These are unprecedented and untested powers, with the potential, if not carefully developed, to cause regulatory and investment uncertainty. It is critical that we consider the possibility of unintended consequences that may flow from this Bill and that we are confident there are strong checks and balances in the legislation to ensure that it sets out an approach that supports the continued success of football.
I am sure that we all find it disappointing that, since the introduction of a version of this Bill in the last Parliament, the latest round of financial negotiations between the Premier League and EFL have broken down again—and, to be honest, from talking to them it seems that both sides are anticipating that the backstop mechanism will be triggered. The use of these powers by the regulator may, rather than being a last resort as was hoped, be used quite quickly, once the regulator is set up. So when the process is introduced, it must not do more harm than good.
In that regard, I confess that I have some concerns about the process as set out in the Bill, particularly the binding final offer arbitration model. Rather than consider each proposal and determine the best overall approach, which may be a compromise between the two, the regulator instead must choose one of the proposals in front of it. To me, that does not make sense. In any negotiation, if both sides feel somewhat disappointed at the deal reached, it is likely to be fairer and achieve a balance between the two sides’ competing proposals. Yet in the current scenario, it seems that one side will take all. I am sure that we will explore this more in Committee, but can the Minister explain in more detail why the Government think that this is the best approach to include in the Bill?
Perhaps the most significant change to this Bill from its predecessor is the inclusion of parachute payments in any consideration that the regulator may make in relation to financial distribution through the football pyramid. I am afraid that I take a different view from the noble Baroness who spoke before me. I am somewhat concerned that this change may inadvertently incentivise bottom-half Premier League clubs in particular—and, going forward, newly promoted clubs—to cut squad investment, given the greater financial risk that relegation would present. That would be hugely damaging to the competitiveness of the league and a massive blow to fans of the clubs involved.
Rather than improving the level of competition, uncertainty around parachute payments could do the opposite and weaken the competitiveness of the Premier League—the very attribute that attracts the revenues that sustain the game. I know that that is not the intention and I look forward to more detailed discussion around these issues as the Bill goes through Committee.
To conclude, the reforms in the Bill mark a step change in the regulation of our national game. To ensure that they do not do unintended damage to the game millions of us love, it is essential that the board and those employed by the new regulator are mindful from the outset of the unique nature of football and the dangers that any ineffective regulation, or overregulation, may pose.
Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)
My Lords, it is an honour and a privilege to speak in the debate on the Football Governance Bill, which is fundamentally a good Bill and one that the Government should be proud of. We should give thanks in that pride to the previous Government for doing much of the hard work in preparing it. I also personally thank the Minister for her careful introduction to the Bill and the Premier League, the EFL, Fair Game, Women in Football, the LSE, Civitas, the LCP, the FSA and the PFA for their informative briefings. I apologise to anybody I have missed out.
Many of us have waited a long time for this Bill and then, of course, we get two Bills in a year. Both major parties have edged towards increasing the level of regulation of our beautiful game. Some say that we do not require it, others that existing regulation does not go far enough. But, for those of us who have been watching football for a long time, the current system is failing both clubs and fans and is no longer financially sustainable.
The desire for a degree of regulation to make the game more sustainable has a long history. Back in the 1990s, Labour had a mini-manifesto for the game. Once elected, our efforts were of necessity focused on countering disorder and hooliganism. Tackling racism and violence were a priority for me in my role as the football hooligan Minister back in the late 1990s, and our actions were key to ensuring that we were able, as a nation, to continue participating in international tournaments.
In 2019, both the Tory Party and Labour made a commitment to football regulation in their manifestos. As we know, to their credit, the new Tory Government invited Tracey Crouch to lead the fan-led review, and this in turn led to a White Paper and, earlier this year, the first iteration of the governance Bill. Now it falls to Labour, as ever, to complete the job. The post-election gap has enabled the improvement of the Bill in several respects, including the regulation of the financial distribution payments system across the football pyramid and the issue of parachute payments. Changes relating to fan engagement and the equalities, diversity and inclusion provisions are also welcome, as is the shortening of the time for the production of the first “state of the game” report, which will help put football on a more sustainable financial footing.
While we produce some of the world’s best clubs and fantastic football, the Premier League is becoming a closed shop, dominated by the money generated by TV rights. The top of the league is the preserve of a few clubs, primarily the richest. The rest of the Premier League is made up of clubs trying to get into two of the three European competitions or struggling to retain their place in the Premier League. In 2022-23, 25 clubs, 20 Premier League clubs and five EFL clubs, received 92% of the distributable revenues of the English game, £3 billion, while the other 67 clubs shared just 8%, £245 million. The football regulator’s task will be to ensure that there is a more equitable distribution of football revenues across the pyramid.
Football must remain a sport about risk, reward and fair competition. The current relegation payments scheme prevents this. In the last seven seasons, two of the three promoted teams from the Championship have been those relegated the season before, bolstered as they were by their financial protection following relegation. Back in 2010-11, parachute payments were just £30 million. By 2020-21, they had grown to £233 million, an eightfold increase at a time when wages had merely doubled. In the Championship, the non-parachute payment clubs are forced to overspend on players to compete effectively for promotion, creating a risk of bankruptcy, relegation and often a long, painful recovery period. We need the regulator to come up with a system that softens the financial blow of relegation, but in a way that does not distort competition. Change will need to be gradual and carefully managed, so that club viability and competitiveness are preserved, and the strength of the leagues protected.
I welcome greater fan engagement and the protection of the heritage and culture of clubs. The devil will be in the detail on how best to achieve this. The prevention of breakaway competitions will, of course, benefit players and clubs at a time when I think we are reaching the limit of what extra competitions can bring to the game.
Finally, where would I like to see improvements and changes? The first “state of the game” report will set the tone for the future development of the regulator. The last Bill gave the regulator three years to complete this work. That was too long, so I am pleased that it has been reduced to 18 months, but see no reason at all why it should not be six months or perhaps, at most, a year. Shadow staff, already in place, will have access to data and football market intel sufficient to hit the ground running. There are urgent issues to be resolved and, if they want to demonstrate change by the time of the next election, the Government would be wise to listen to those supporting faster progress. A shorter period for the initial report would justify a longer gap before the second.
In relation to the regulator’s scope, I am strongly sympathetic to bringing the clubs in the top two women’s leagues into the regulatory framework. The rapid growth in women’s football brings with it the same issues and risks, and with this Bill we have an opportunity to address these before they become a problem. It might also help tackle discriminatory behaviour and the macho culture that can impact on the game. It does seem odd, having strengthened the EDI commitment, to then exclude the women’s game from the regulatory framework. Access to even a small element of the solidarity payments produced currently would be transformational for the game.
Similarly, we should look to include the regulation of all clubs in National League North and National League South. It seems odd to regulate one-third of the National League clubs and leave the sixth tier unregulated. Some of these clubs are significant community assets and businesses with turnover figures of £4 million, £5 million and £6 million a year. More fans are turning to watch grass-roots football, and here again is an opportunity to ensure consistency in our approach at all levels.
I have a small but significant point for the Minister. Can we ensure that, among the statutory consultees, we include the players’ union, the PFA? Try having a football match without its staff.
The Minister will no doubt have read the press coverage of the Fair Game report pressing for changes and the strengthening of the Bill. I am sympathetic to many of these, some of which I have referred to. I hope she will continue her already-begun engagement with Peers so that we can improve the Bill as it goes through its Lords stages.
The Government are to be congratulated on the progress so far. This Bill is a bit like a Brighton and Hove Albion substitution at half-time: a potential game-changer. It works. When I reflect on how close my club was to going out of business for the want of effective regulation in the mid-90s, I do not want to see other clubs and their fans put through that experience. It is my belief that this legislation, with its owners and directors test, a licensing and financial control regime, and a commitment to a system of fairer competition and financial fair play, will go a long way to putting an end to the era of irresponsible club ownership.
Lord Triesman (Lab)
My Lords, I thank many noble Lords for their good wishes and for allowing me to speak sitting down. It is a bit of paradox to be talking about a football Bill when you cannot stand up: none the less, I will do my best. I declare my interests as the first independent chairman of the Football Association, and I have had a long and warm relationship with football supporters’ organisations.
I am wearing “the blazer” largely to illustrate what is meant—rather disparagingly, I suspect—by the press about the members of the Football Association Council. We are often described, pretty accurately, as “the Blazers”, meaning old and decrepit—and wearing a blazer—and sometimes, more kindly, as the “parliament of football”.
When I first attended the Football Association Council, there were 127 people—men and women—all but two of whom were in blazers. Two were women, and neither was ever allowed to the chair the women’s football committee. That may very well reflect the point made about how women vanish when we come to look at the issues here. There were two people of colour—they were called “black faces” by the then chair of the Premier League, the amazing Herman Ouseley, whom I miss greatly—and one gentleman from Japan. One coach, the redoubtable Howard Wilkinson, refused to wear a blazer, as you would expect, and Lord Mawhinney would never knowingly wear anything that approximated to a uniform. In the “parliament of football”, there was not one footballer. Aside from very vigorous discussion on the poor quality of the tailoring of the blazers and, on occasion, on who should be on which committee or attend which dinners, some serious discussions took place about the existence of on-the-field and off-the-field regulation, prejudice and the events that compelled clubs occasionally to play with no fans present and behind locked doors—all important issues.
On one occasion, and at my instigation, there was discussion about whether people who were born men should play post-puberty against people who were born women. In my day, the issue was straightforward. It was clear that it tended to produce an unfair competition and a very significant number of serious injuries. It led us to banning those kinds of competitions because of those reasons—no other reasons. I say with regret: shame on the Lancashire County Football Association, backed up by the FA itself, because an autistic 17 year-old girl has been banned for 12 matches for asking whether a large, really quite aggressive, bearded trans woman was authorised to play in the competition in which she was playing. She was immediately accused of transphobia and the Lancashire FA seemed to take no account of her neurodiversity. She seems to me to have been treated in a shabby way, and I do not intend to let it rest.
The FA cannot be accused of reluctance in many ways. It works within the global football market, and it works to achieve a mandate for regulating pretty much everything that happens in on-field situations, but it does not regulate anything else—and it will not. When I and my successors, David Bernstein and Greg Dyke, wanted to persuade the trade association—that is what the Premier League is—that it was too parti pris and that its CEO was too close to those who were to be regulated for that to have a real effect, it was with little surprise that he would say to me, “Just look at the FA. Do you really want it to do the regulation? You must be joking”. When I looked around, I thought that that was not an unfair point in many respects.
The EFL and the EPL did not do the job either. In fact, the trade association has been allowed to fall apart. It is suing a number of its member clubs, which are in turn suing each other and the trade association. I suspect that it is great news for the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, but all of them are energetically bashing each other with multi-million-pound cudgels—less solidarity, more Vinnie Jones. The reasons for that are clear. In many cases, the clubs do not feel that they need the federation to look after their interests—although maybe the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, will say something different. Many of them are massive brands in their own right. The basis of the breakaway super league was largely due to that and because they had become distinctive.
Lest anybody tells you that it could not happen now because of this legislation, let me tell you, from being inside football for such a long time, that while you may think that that is the case, the truth is that it has already happened. The first big reorganisation steps have been taken by UEFA, with the support of the giant clubs, and recent law cases will consolidate the supremacy of the giants in this respect. The Premier League will tell you that it is the natural regulator. It plainly believes that it should do that job unrestrained. But all regulation can threaten consumer and commercial innovation. I do not believe that this will be the case, however, and this is why I welcome the Bill so much. If you tell that story to people in many other industries, they will tell you that relevant rules of engagement are possible.
It is true that the Premier League has been an extraordinary achievement. It has built a successful global business, and that is not easy to do. They say you could kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Few of the businesses that are owned by Brits and are making money in this way are keen on anything that might alter it. However, I hope it will be appreciated in the House—I say this without any rancour—that in football circles generally around the world, there is a strong feeling that we are also seriously disliked. I do not mean everybody but quite a number of people. They feel that we hoover up many of their best and aspiring players, we bring them to this country and they play in clubs which are often owned by people from other countries—that is all probably the way of business but they are seen in that way. If you really want to aggravate them—I say this to the noble Baroness the former Leader of the House—start saying to them that England is the home of football. Say that to people in Brazil who have five stars on their shirts, or to people in Germany or Italy with four stars on their shirts, or to people from Argentina with three stars on their shirts. They will say, “Do you think we’re not homes to football?” If you want to sing “Football’s coming home”, I guarantee that it will be the last time they will ever talk to you.
The test about who we should have as a regulator is a very important one, and an independent regulator is absolutely critical.
There is one other thing; I promise that I will say this very briefly. I welcome the legislation, but still missing from it is any real attempt to regulate some of the bodies that sit across football aside from the regulator. They are the bodies that will negotiate the television and other rights, and the financial arrangements that will be made will be unbelievably complex. We all think we know about football. I do not mean to upset anybody—I really do not—but I bet that your Lordships really do not. Only one specialist company ever conducted the negotiations over the financial rights—Reel Enterprises did it on behalf of the football authorities. Its complexity means that whoever the regulator is will need to understand finance. You can tinker with the regulation all you like but it will not alter some of the fundamentals about where the money flows are. Those money flows will be understood only by people who have done that job, and there are probably no more than 10 of them in this country.
I conclude on that point because I would like to see this as a possible addition to the Bill. If we really want to do the job rather than to take a step towards it and then find we failed, we ought to do the whole of the job.
Baroness Brady (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest: for more than 30 years, I have lived and breathed English football. As detailed on my entry in the register, I am currently the vice-chair of West Ham United. Throughout my 30 years of working in this industry, I have experienced both the magic and the harsh realities of the football pyramid. I have sat in EFL and Premier League boardrooms, making difficult decisions about finances. I have celebrated with supporters through promotions and trophy wins, and consoled staff when relegation meant jeopardy and job losses. So, when I speak about the dangers lurking in this Bill, I do so not from ideology or theory but from practical, real, lived experience. I also speak, like so many millions in our country, out of a love of, and real passion for, the game.
The Bill’s intentions came from a good place. Who would not want to protect their club’s historic heritage assets, prevent breakaway leagues or strengthen fan engagement? But aspects of this legislation risk suffocating the very thing that makes English football unique: the aspiration that allows clubs to rise and succeed in our pyramid system; the ambition that means fans can dream.
I want to focus my remarks on one specific area: the backstop power on financial distributions. Premier League clubs would have no fear of the regulator making an independent determination about whether the funding we voluntarily provide to the EFL—in addition to our own substantial revenues—is sufficient to deliver financial stability for well-run clubs. This is because, by any objective measure, it is. For example, every single Championship club receives £7.8 million from the Premier League, amounting to between 20% and 40% of that club’s typical annual revenue. I will not dwell on the fact that the EFL has just signed a near-£1 billion domestic broadcast deal, helping to increase its own revenues by 50%, or £100 million, a year from next season; or that the Championship is already the sixth-richest league in all of European football.
However, a regulatory determination is not what the Bill delivers. Instead, it outlines a legally untested “pendulum arbitration” mechanism related to funding, conditions, financial system and term. The regulator can only choose the Premier League’s final proposal in its entirety, or that of the EFL; it has no ability to compromise between the two. In other words, the Bill has designed a mechanism that throws all the pieces of the pyramid up into the air, with huge uncertainty as to where they may land, and it does so every five years.
The Government have now added parachute payments, which is a competitive tool that provides the scaffolding and incentives for strategic investment in both the Championship and the Premier League, into the scope of these powers. This hugely expands the likelihood of the regulator becoming directly involved in competition tools and structures. UEFA and FIFA have already warned the Government against doing that.
The Government appear, wittingly or unwittingly, to be enabling the radical redesign of the pyramid that the EFL executive has been openly promoting. This would involve extreme redistribution from the bottom-half clubs in the Premier League to competitor clubs in the Championship; large reductions in parachute payments; and the levelling down of the Premier League to bring the Championship much closer to it.
Some advocates for this—on a frankly comical basis—think it can be done without any impact on the Premier League’s world-leading status. The vision is for a German-style system where most clubs in the top two divisions can become essentially interchangeable, just going round and round in a washing machine, while a few privileged clubs are allowed to float away and entrench their financial dominance. It would replace our brutal but brilliant meritocracy with the likelihood of a closed shop, where survival—not aspiration—becomes the ceiling. It would make it harder for stories such as Leicester winning the title, Brighton’s journey from League 1 to Europe, Aston Villa beating Bayern in the Champions League and West Ham United winning a European trophy, to ever happen again. A less exciting and unpredictable league would disappoint and turn off fans, meaning reduced broadcast interest and, in turn, diminished revenues.
The Premier League shares our success—to the tune of £1.6 billion, or 16% of our total revenue—with the whole pyramid. If we stunt the ability of the Premier League to maintain its growth and revenues, ultimately there will be far less investment in the whole of football, including the grass roots and the women’s game. That would be a very bad outcome.
I struggle to believe that Ministers would deliberately put at risk the continued success of the world’s most-watched league: what our Prime Minister recently called “our greatest cultural export”. I urge the Minister to improve the backstop mechanism so that it incentivises football-led solutions, recognises the contractual and property rights of the Premier League clubs and, above all, eliminates the possibility of extreme outcomes that would damage the success of the Premier League.
Let us protect our clubs without suffocating them. Let us regulate the game without removing its aspiration and ambition. Let us ensure that English football remains not just financially stable but vibrant, competitive and full of possibility.
Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Triesman and the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, who knows so much about the regulation of this game. I welcome the Bill. It is rare that a Government inherit a Bill from their predecessor and reintroduce it in a form that overlaps so substantially with the previous proposal. According to YouGov, 80% of fans across England—across all clubs and regions—support the idea of a regulator. Of course, there have been—as the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, mentioned—governance structures in place for more than 160 years, and in many ways it is crowded territory. However, although the FA, Premier League and EFL have a range of powers, their governance is centred on the integrity of the leagues rather than the activities and sustainability of the clubs themselves.
There are many reasons why a regulator covering the leagues should be put in place. Many of these are to do with the economics of football. It is a huge industry, contributing over £9 billion to the UK economy, yet at the level of individual clubs, unregulated commercial behaviour can, and often does, have damaging consequences. Football clubs also provide significant public goods, cohesion and cultural benefits that may conflict with the desire for profit maximisation. The industry is full of very thorny collective action problems: wage spirals, debt spirals and excessively risky behaviour in the search for success. Clubs can be far too reliant on individual owners, who often use club assets as security on loans and debts. There is a lot of poor financing and overspending and a lot of debt in general.
On top of these general economic issues, we have seen a range of recent cases mentioned earlier, where relegation combines with these ownership practices and weak governance to produce existential threats to clubs that have been at the heart of their communities for a century or more. Finally, as the regrettable Super League episode showed, the lure of greater profits, particularly at the top end of the Premier League, can threaten the integrity of the competitive leagues themselves.
Given that something has to be done, therefore, the proposals set out in this Bill seem to me to have much merit. The proposals on licensing and on powers to challenge bad practice among owners should, at least, help financial stability and deter some of the excesses of bad practice. The duties on clubs to engage with fans, including on ticket pricing, as well as fundamental changes in club practices, have been widely welcomed. The backstop provision to enable the regulator to compel a financial settlement—although we will return to some of the detail of that later—should ensure that there is no recurrence of the really regrettable impasse that has now been going on for far too long between the Premier League and the EFL.
I want to flag four areas where I think this House could add value in scrutinising the detail of this Bill when we get to Committee. The first is propelled by fans’ concerns about the continuing interest of elite clubs in moving domestic league games overseas, something that the chairman of my own team—Liverpool—is still keen to make happen. Clause 48 rightly imposes a duty on regulated clubs both to consult with fans and to seek regulator approval before any domestic league or competition match is relocated. However, some fans worry that the definition of a home game needs to be much more robust. Back in 2008, fans in this Chamber will remember that the Premier League tried to introduce the idea of an extra game—the so-called “39th game”—on top of the full home-and-away fixtures. Would this extra game have been covered by the Clause 48 provisions, centring as they do around the term “home game”? I think more comfort on these clauses being watertight would be good.
Secondly, there is the vexed issue of the backstop, which we have heard a lot about already. This is a fraught area, but everyone can agree on a few things: that the revenue that is at stake in the distribution and solidarity payments is vital for the health of clubs across England; that the EFL is an extremely commercially successful organisation in its own right even before these payments, with one of the most lucrative TV deals in Europe; and that solidarity payments must not be used to subsidise bad management by club owners down the football pyramid.
I have two quite different and, your Lordships might think, conflicting concerns about the backstop provision. First, on the relevant revenues in question, detailed in Clause 56(2) as
“revenue received by a specified competition organiser”,
one of fans’ worries is that this definition of the relevant revenue does not include revenue earned by elite clubs outside of their participation in the league. Money earned from, for example, UEFA, commercial revenues, overseas tours, pre-season friendlies and FIFA Club World Cups, is the revenue that often lies at the root of many fans’ worries about competitive balance and sustainability. The fans worry that if this is excluded from the scope of the regulator, clubs will seek to expand these revenues even further, impacting on domestic competitions in much the way that saw FA Cup replays scrapped earlier this year so that big clubs could earn even more in the expanded Champions League, for example.
My second worry is quite different. The mechanism proposed by the Bill in the event of an impasse involves, as we have heard, a triggering process, the requirement of mediation and, in the event of a continuing stand-off, the ability of the regulator to pick one of the two leagues’ proposals. From my economics background I know that there are good economics game theory reasons for why this is resolution process is in place. However, the politics of redistribution of money from the wealthy Premier League looms large over this sound proposal. It is worth us taking care to ensure that we are not, as the noble Baroness, Lady Evans of Bowes Park, mentioned, introducing a mechanism that gives the EFL no incentive to get a deal, so as to force the regulator into a politically pressured choice for more money for the EFL. That would be bad for good faith bargaining but would also put English football in bad odour with UEFA, which has already expressed concern that these proposals should not politicise football governance, saying specifically:
“Mandating redistribution which affects the competitive balance in the game and wider European competition would be of concern to us”.
Lastly, there is the relationship between the regulators and the existing leagues. The Bill stipulates a range of regulatory interventions in the event of misconduct and licence breaches, but it says very little about the regulator collaborating with the existing Premier League, English Football League and National League authorities. In any governance arrangements, you would want collaboration with existing league authorities to be a presumption of the regulator, and perhaps a principle of subsidiarity embodied in the legislation that the regulator will step in with its remedies only when the relevant league has shown that it cannot or will not take the steps required.
The reason for this is not to dilute the powers of the regulator but to stop politicisation in ways that should be avoided, to avoid duplication and inconsistency in the governance regimes of the leagues and the regulator, and so that regulatory interventions on finance and licence conditions should come only at the end of a menu of options for responses that also includes the sanctions that the leagues themselves control, such as sporting sanctions. It is worth us considering language at key points in the legislation that requires more explicitly co-operation between the new regulator and the league authorities.
Lord Londesborough (CB)
My Lords, my background is not in football beyond being a lifelong Hammers fan—the club which your Lordships might remember won England the World Cup back in 1966, with captain Bobby Moore, hat-trick hero Geoff Hurst and midfield dynamo Martin Peters, all products of the famous West Ham academy. It is a pleasure to follow the vice-chairman of my club, the Irons, the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, and, of course, the former chairman of the FA, bedecked in his splendid blazer, the noble Lord, Lord Triesman.
I am a supporter of the Bill but with several caveats. I feel, in the broadest interests of the game, that the time for regulation has come, although we must be very careful. Football’s financial sustainability is my number one concern. That is a perspective I hold first as a fan, but it is tempered by my experience as a CEO and entrepreneur and now as an investor sitting on the board of start-ups. Wearing those hats, I have not been a great fan of regulation. I am also privileged to sit on the Economic Affairs Committee, where the subject of financial sustainability, which runs through the Bill, looms large in all our inquiries, whether it is scrutiny of the Bank of England, our public finances or our £3 trillion national debt.
I declare a personal interest in that my son’s father-in-law is chairman of the upwardly mobile Worthing Football Club, currently challenging for promotion into our fifth tier, the Vanarama National League. Also, for 20 years I lived in Wimbledon and witnessed the appalling destruction of my local club, which went from winning the FA Cup to being forced to relocate to remote Milton Keynes. We must never permit that to happen again.
Some key questions hang over the Bill and the game of football itself which, let us be honest, are divisive. How do we balance promoting the Premier League as the world’s greatest league—which it is—while protecting our domestic competitions? Should we treat football as part of our social fabric and football clubs as community assets even if they are privately owned and run as limited companies? How do you balance competition with fairness? Football is inherently unfair. Do we continue to allow market forces to turn English football into a global product, resulting in fewer English players, fewer English coaches and fewer English club owners?
These are fraught and difficult questions. I have looked long and hard at a broad range of research and data. I have also talked to chairmen, board directors and supporters. The result is that I am firmly of the view that self-regulation will not deliver financial sustainability. Football’s finances are hair-raising, from the Premier League to the Championship through to Leagues One and Two and the National League.
I will start with the Premier League, which, as we know, is by some margin the richest league in the world in terms of revenues. Yet 16 of the 20 clubs generated pre-tax losses in the 2022-23 season, each club losing on average £60 million. Total debt across the Premier League has risen to £3.6 billion. It is probably over £4 billion now, with Man United and Spurs each clocking up almost £700 million. Even well-run Brighton carries £390 million of debt. West Ham, to its credit, is one of the least indebted clubs. Looking at the clubs’ trading history over the last 20 years, only three clubs look financially sustainable: Brentford, Bournemouth and Brighton. The financial reporting of Chelsea and Man City is opaque, to put it politely. They depend on the deep pockets of their owners, without which their balance sheets would implode.
In the EFL Championship, finances are even more precarious. Over 80% of the 24 clubs have negative equity. Not one of the clubs generated an operating profit outside player trading last season. Wage costs alone exceed revenues for many of the clubs, so the clubs are propped up by owner funding as they scramble for promotion to the Premier League and its parachute payments or fight to avoid financially disastrous relegation to League One. Look at what has happened to Birmingham, Bolton, Charlton, Derby and Wigan. Five of the Championship clubs, those in receipt of parachute payments, have average revenues of £66 million per annum, while the other 19 averaged £22 million. Cash flow is volatile and unpredictable, with cliff edges all around.
In League One and League Two, the majority of clubs generate losses, with increased dependency on owner funding, and not all owners are scrupulous. I learned yesterday that one club in League Two is paying 45% annual interest on its debt to the owner—financially sustainable this is not. When TV revenue falls, as one day it assuredly will, clubs could fall like dominoes.
Turning to the Bill briefly, I support introducing financial regulation to improve the financial resilience of clubs across the all-important football pyramid. In my view, to do that effectively the regulator must have a role in ensuring proportionate financial distributions between the leagues, as covered in Part 6 of the Bill, especially the level of parachute payments—I support these, but I feel the degree distorts competition. Our football ecosystem depends on this pyramid. The ongoing failure of the Premier League and EFL to reach agreement on financial distribution underlines the need for a regulator. Of course, there is devil in the detail. I will listen closely to what others have to say on what powers the regulator will have regarding mediation and last-resort resolution and how that is structured.
Time is short, so let me finish on the well-intended measures to give fans a greater say, ranging from consultation to representation at board level. As a fan I applaud this, but as a former CEO and chairman I have some concerns. We must be careful that the Bill does not overreach itself or, indeed, overregulate or overcomplicate the running of our cherished football clubs.
Lord Maude of Horsham (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as someone who, 57 years ago, became a supporter of Tottenham, largely to annoy my best friend at school, Matthew Harding, who even then was a passionate Chelsea supporter. As a Spurs supporter, I am accustomed to disappointment, and I have viewed the trajectory of the Bill from review to the first iteration, then to this version, with some disappointment—although in this event it was not preceded by the brief period of optimism that accompanies the life of a Spurs supporter before the disappointment sets in.
I start from a position of scepticism about whether the introduction of a state regulator is likely to improve the position of an incredibly successful activity. We have heard from many about how the Premier League is the richest and most-watched league in the world; the EFL is immensely successful and wealthy, and all credit to it. That is despite the lack of regulation, and it is not obvious that self-regulation has failed. My position is also one of disappointment at the outcome of the review, because it was not clear that the introduction of a regulator was needed; dismay that the previous Government’s Bill added significantly to what Dame Tracey had recommended; and consternation that this Bill adds yet more burden. Listening to this debate so far, I hear contribution after contribution suggesting that it should go even further. You need only to listen to the debate to know how real the risk of mission creep and scope creep is. There is a risk that serious harm will be inflicted on an activity that gives pleasure to millions in this country and to more than a billion people worldwide. We have to cherish what has been successful.
Apart from anything else, this is a huge export, with huge soft power benefits for the country as well. If we look at the ills around financial stability identified by Dame Tracey in the fan-led review, it is an unusual area of commercial activity where we can say that, overwhelmingly, most clubs in operation 100 years ago are still around. Show me another sector where that is the case; it is an unusual degree of financial and commercial stability. She identified as a crisis the effect of the pandemic, but football survived it. The noble Lord who spoke previously was talking about the amount of debt that my own club, Tottenham, has, but that was to build a world-class stadium, generally acknowledged to be the best in the world, which was then condemned to have a year and a half with no gate money coming in, so a bit of debt was not surprising. The benefit to the area—one of the most disadvantaged areas of London—of that investment, and the activity that has been brought to the area around it, is astonishing.
Then there is the concern about the ESL. What we forget is that it was killed off within hours of being announced, and not by the Government nor a regulator but by the fans: they made so much fuss about it that its promoters and the clubs that had signed up to it rapidly drew back. It is not obvious that there is a deep problem that needs to be solved by the introduction of a state regulator. It feels to me as if this is slightly like what Sir Humphrey described as the politician’s syllogism: something must be done; this is something; therefore, we must do it. We know that the things that come most readily to hand are legislation, regulation and intervention.
We have to be very much aware of the dangers of unintended consequences. I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, who said that no one wants damage to be inflicted. Of course not, but that does not mean that damage will not be inflicted, because there will be huge costs involved in introducing this regulator. There will be the levy, which will be levied on the clubs to pay for the cost of the regulatory body, and the compliance costs on clubs, which reduce the pot available. It is all very well to have a perfect mechanism—if this turns out to be that—for distributing the goodies through the pyramid, but if you are reducing it by virtue of the intervention being promoted in the Bill, there will be less to distribute. We need to be very aware of that.
I will not add to what my noble friend Lady Brady said about the backstop powers and parachute payments. I will say only that, if the parachute payments were to be interfered with, there would be a danger of creating a greater gulf between the top of the Premier League and those lower down. It is really important to maintain that competition. Ironically, it was concern about the effect of loss of jeopardy and the lack of competitiveness that the ESL might introduce that led to it being rejected, so we need to be conscious that we are not recreating that.
I urge the Minister to look again at some of the provisions in the Bill and ask whether this is a sledgehammer to crack a rather small nut and whether there may not be better ways to ensure that there is genuinely light-touch regulation and we do not inflict great damage on an activity that gives pleasure to many but also makes a lot of money for this country.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, it is good to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, emphasising again and again that the Government want proportionate and flexible regulation. Despite these reassurances, I am still nervous. As the noble Lord, Lord Maude, has just indicated, regulation has a tendency to run away with itself and lead to unintended consequences. Yes, we are all seeking to tackle problems in good faith and, yes, I understand that many football supporters feel frustrated by mismanagement and dodgy ownership of their own clubs. Still, the Bill is ultimately the state interfering in civil society.
Why football matters to so many of us was perceptively explained by Luton fan and writer Dr Rakib Ehsan in his Playing by the Rules report for ResPublica, which I read in preparation for today. Clubs that are supported by families over generations, especially in provincial towns and left-behind areas, are civic institutions that provide a sense of pride, belonging and identity to local communities. Crucially, they are the epitome of free association by free citizens, a core activity for their free time. The passions of football fandom are authentic precisely because they are organic and spontaneous, not the product of top-down statist curation by regulators. We restrict and undermine football’s freedom at our peril.
I probably would not intervene in the Bill if the legislation was confined to a focus on financial sustainability. However, my worry is that once the independent football regulator is established it may well expand its mandate and indulge in the sort of interventionist mission creep we have heard about and seen from other state-appointed regulators. What is more, the clauses added to the original version of the Bill point in this expansionist direction. My dread is of politicised attempts at shaping football clubs and their fans, continuing a broader trend of what has been, frankly, an elitist colonisation and sanitisation of football over recent years.
We are told that the proposed regulatory regime is all being done for the fans—I am rather sceptical. Yes, it is popular with many fans, but many other fans are suspicious about being used as a stage army to justify interference in what they consider to be “their” game. New provisions now require explicit democratic engagement with supporters to amplify the voice of the fans, but which fans and whose voices? I remind noble Lords that, over recent years, politicians have expressed a rather ambivalent attitude to football fans’ voices.
As the Minister explained, the plans to set a minimum standard of fan engagement and decision-making about key club heritage assets, such as home shirts, club badges, the name and so on, is important to the Bill, but it seems that not all heritage assets beloved by fans are to be protected by the Bill. What about the heritage football chants and songs? They are assets too. They are most likely to be silenced by the Government’s ever-expanding football banning orders, with the state laying down strict rules on proscribed lists of words or subjects never to be mentioned—let alone sung about—at matches. Politicians have targeted and punished those they consider to be the wrong kind of fans. Too often traditional working-class supporters—the heart and soul of British football—are viewed as “the deplorables”, in need of re-education.
Another government addition to the Bill is the demand that clubs improve their commitment to, and report annually on, their actions on equality, diversity and inclusion, or EDI. It sends a shiver down my spine. This seems to contradict the Government’s claim that they want to stop the culture wars. If so, why oh why would they introduce one of the most divisive culture-wars-type policies into football? As we speak, EDI policies are political trip-wires in all workplaces across the public and private sectors—the vehicle for identitarian ideologies and assaults on free speech. Regardless of whether noble Lords agree with my hostility towards EDI, we can surely agree that these are politically contentious policies—just look at the toxic row going on at the Bar Council at the moment—so why are the Government using legislation to foist them on football clubs?
A couple of examples may act as cautionary tales. The first is the shocking case of lifelong Newcastle fan, 34 year-old Linzi Smith. Superfan Linzi, who over the years must have handed over tens of thousands of pounds to her beloved club in tickets and merchandise, has been banned by Newcastle United from attending home and away games until the 2026-27 season. What was her crime? She did not get into a fight on the terraces or abuse a steward or fellow fans; the ban was for expressing her belief in the biological reality of sex—not at a match but on X, or Twitter. In an example of remarkable EDI overreach, she has been punished for breaching the club’s trans-inclusion policy by posting her opinions outside the ground. Linzi’s story is now in the public realm because, with the support of the Free Speech Union, she is taking the club that she has been loyal to all her life to court.
It is worth reading the details of her ordeal—the way that NUFC’s EDI team worked in cahoots with the Premier League’s mysterious investigative unit to set up surveillance and compile a dossier that was handed over to Northumbria Police. Even when the police declared that no crime was committed, the club banned her anyway for breaching EDI policy. Not all clubs have such overzealous EDI officials but, if the Government use the Bill to push EDI as proof of good governance, does this not incite clubs to target and make examples of any number of fans for expressing views at odds with EDI’s rigid orthodoxies?
The second case is of a 17 year-old autistic female footballer, which has been highlighted in the media and articulated so well here today by the noble Lord, Lord Triesman. His persistence and courage in pushing this issue of fairness and safety in women’s football is to his credit and to be commended. This young 17 year- old’s “are you a man?” speech crime was reported by a member of the opposing team and the NGO Kick It Out for breaching trans-inclusive EDI rules. Ironically, she was put in the dock by the FA in the same week that it announced its new disability policy, entitled Football Without Limits—no limits unless you are a young autistic woman who offends gender ideology it seems; so much for inclusion.
EDI policies are regularly a political minefield. I urge the Minister to kick it out of the Bill. If the Government persist, and refuse to listen, perhaps it is because, to reference one bit of fans’ chanting wisdom, “You don’t know what you’re doing”.
Lord Moynihan (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a former Minister for Sport, having piloted the last major football legislation through another place to enact safety measures and a football licensing authority to make our grounds safe again after very dark years. I know how challenging that can be and my sympathy, admiration and very best wishes go to the Minister.
Fast forward 30 years to 23 April 2021, when Prime Minister Boris Johnson proved decisive in taking down the European Super League. As fans, players and pretty much everyone except the breakaway club owners reacted with outrage to the idea of the European Super League, the Prime Minister called for a “legislative bomb”. However, this is more than a legislative bomb to take down a European football super league. It is a hydra of a Bill that is, as we have heard today, in danger of growing and growing.
It is a Bill eagerly seized upon in the DCMS to deliver 150 pages of new law, with 100 clauses, 12 schedules and a raft of delegated powers turning what should be light-touch regulation focused on one issue into far-reaching government and regulatory financial control of our national game. The Bill is so far-reaching that, in Clause 92, the Government believe that they, not the regulator, should have the power to amend the definition of the season. I quote from the government memorandum:
“In order to future proof any changes to the footballing calendar, the Secretary of State has the power to amend the definition of ‘season’”.
Why does the Secretary of State, by law, have to make a Statement to Parliament on the governance of football every three years? That is a far more onerous responsibility than those of the Ministers responsible for Ofwat, the Office for Road and Rail, Ofgem or Ofcom.
We have the potential—this is a very sad reflection—for government intervention marching straight through the front door. My concerns are found not just in the Bill, and I ask noble Lord to please read the memorandum from the DCMS to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. The Government and the Secretary of State have delegated powers to alter the Bill in secondary legislation—after we have passed it—on the purpose, overview and key definitions of the Bill, the work of the independent football regulator, the operating licences, the suitability of owners and officers, the distribution on revenue, and the list goes on. These are not powers to the regulator; they are powers to be retained by the Secretary of State through secondary legislation following the introduction of the Act. We know how tough it is to amend secondary legislation and that is what really concerns me.
If we take the memorandum into account, we have a Bill peppered with financial uncertainty and interventionist powers, which, as my noble friend Lord Maude said, could potentially, and tragically, split the Premier League, putting at risk the £1.6 billion that goes into football and damaging the much-envied Premier League that has successfully supported the five tiers and the rest of the game in our country.
All of this is without a clear answer to the following question: what is so broken about a professional sport which has seen only seven liquidations since 1945? What is so broken with the highly successful Premier League that has led the Government to create a regulator so large that the impact assessment says it would require operational costs, initially paid by the taxpayer, not of £1 million, nor of £10 million, but of up to £106.8 million over this and the next Parliament? Much to the delight of the competing leagues in Europe and the emerging football nations in the world, we stand, unless we are very careful, on the precipice of a new era in football governance, with potentially onerous financial regulation being introduced, as set out in this memorandum. I am seriously concerned and genuinely hope I will be proved wrong.
I believe that this is no longer about the super league; it is a far-reaching and potentially intrusive affront to the very principles of competition and spirit on which the national game thrives. To demonstrate that, the Secretary of State, who tries to persuade us that the Bill simply provides the framework for the independent regulation of sport, has, in the memorandum from the department, put a total of 42 delegated powers in the Bill, including Henry VIII powers. It is maybe not surprising that we have not heard back from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee in advance of Second Reading. I declare an interest: I had the privilege of serving on that committee. The members are probably taking the rest of the government-defined season to recover from the plethora of secondary legislation and Henry VIII powers, each one of which I would urge both sides to consider in detail in Committee.
We already have the laws of the land which provide the legal framework in which professional sports and businesses operate. Football is a wonderful game of passion, innovation and excitement. It should not be the role of government or any regulator to impose its financial will on the Premier League or dictate how clubs should operate. Turn down that route and we are, sadly, in danger of choosing an uphill path to mediocrity, to the disbelieving pleasure of competitor leagues around the world. Place arbitrary restrictions on how clubs can invest and you risk depleting them of the very oxygen that allows them to thrive. Let us be clear—and here I agree fully with the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor—that the essence of football ownership lies in the relationship between the club, the community and the fans. Ownership is something we should be very careful about if we are asking government to dictate powerful regulatory decrees outside competition laws. If a club prospers, let it be allowed to enjoy the fruits of its success.
It may be unpopular to predict, and I do so with a heavy heart, but I anticipate, sadly, that those who front up the regulatory authority will one day become the despised target of tens of thousands of fans as the ownership structure of Premier League clubs comes under strain. I am not against measures to support the aspirations of the fans, which I think are important, but against untrammelled government and regulatory financial interference, which has the potential to reduce the levels of finance reaching down through the pyramid.
This country has an outstanding record of success in sport. It has built an international reputation on the understanding that government intervention in sport, amateur and professional, must be minimal. Because of this Bill, our involvement in international football is now for the first time under laser-focused scrutiny in FIFA and UEFA. As we have seen, if UEFA does not agree with clauses in the Bill which threaten football’s autonomy—the clearly implied objective of too much of the Bill, as set out in the memorandum—when asked to jump, the Government will have to say, “How high?”
Nobody denies that there are problems to be solved in football, just as there are in all sectors of the economy. The introduction of this football regulator with the unprecedented financial powers set out in the Bill and the memorandum will, I fear, be a blight on the game and see the steady decline of investment in our clubs, to the ultimate detriment of the Premier League, the EFL and our standing in world football.
Regulation and onerous legislation are no substitute for existing competition law, and threaten autonomy. The Bill has the inherent danger of suffocating the role of ownership and accountability. The backstop and the proposals on parachute payments provide a false promise of financial prudence. Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson launched the idea of a legislative bomb. We in this House have a duty to do our level best to defuse any layers of financial regulation that could damage the success of our pyramid structure in football—the EFL and the Premier League—and all those factors set out by my noble friend Lady Brady, who shares with me a passionate interest in the future of our success in the game, both nationally and internationally.
Lord Grantchester (Lab)
My Lords, there can be no dispute that the formation of the Premier League in 1992 has been transformative of football and has led to English top-flight football being the most dominant across European leagues. It has attracted worldwide audiences, the best players from all continents, international investment into clubs and unparallelled cash flows from broadcasting rights. Despite the success, and despite all the good outcomes—redistributions and investments in grass-roots development—serious problems have arisen, with widespread agreement and approval for corrective action. The spark for this came from the ill-advised breakaway proposals from six Premier League clubs in 2021 to form a new 12-team European Super League. Arriving at this point has been accelerated by some rogue, self-interested club owners ignoring the heritage and community aspects of football clubs; fans have rightly insisted that protections from abuse be enshrined in legislative regulations. I pay tribute to them.
I support the Bill. I am pleased with the enhancements the new Labour Government have brought to the previous Bill of the Conservative Administration. All political parties agree on the need for reform to counter inadequate corporate governance resultant from inadequate and ineffective regulation, such that the structure and dynamics of the market create incentives for financial unsustainability.
This new Bill strengthens effective engagement with fans and their representatives; it brings income redistributions from broadcasting rights within scope; it makes the regulator fully independent of industry and government’s foreign and trade policies; and it will create a new football club corporate governance code to improve equality, diversity and inclusion, and decision-making at clubs. I thank Katie Nixon from the Premier League, Rick Parry from the Championship and EFL, Sophie Levin from the Football Association, Kevin Miles from the Football Supporters’ Association and the Bill team for all their engagements on the Bill.
I declare my interest from a lifetime of experience in football and, most pertinently, from having been a director of Everton Football Club and, presently, chairman of Everton’s football memorabilia collection charity. I hasten to add that these remarks are wholly my own and not made on behalf of or representative of anybody else.
The football industry must agree to make this legislation and regulation work effectively and successfully. It is important for the whole game and to the lives of so many. I do not share the widespread general disapproval of the Premier League or of the exaggerated risks its briefings draw attention to. In many respects, the legislation may not go far enough, but it must be made to work, and we need to consider where it may lead and how it may develop and adapt to circumstances.
The immediate issue the regulator will face is in regard to the backstop Clause 57 and the divergent proposals on parachute payments and redistributions between the Premier League and the Championship. I understand the distortion of competition this brings to the Championship. However, I contend that the internal distribution between clubs in the Premier League also requires consideration and is pertinent to this. Should the Premier League distribute income more equally between the top and the foot of the table, those regulated clubs would have improved cash flows and potentially be better able to sustain the change. They can already limit exposure through their player contracts. Redistributions could be better made to Championship clubs; the sheer volume of broadcasting rights receipts counters the argument that the effects of the multiples of distribution between clubs at the top and bottom of the Premier League are less, in percentage terms, than elsewhere across other UEFA leagues.
Volumes are also pertinent. Indeed, the sheer dominance in cash terms from broadcasting rights to the Premier League leads top European clubs to consider that the Premier League is setting itself up to be the super league. In contention to this, there are fears of an emerging super league being created from the expansion of the Champions League and other UEFA competitions attracting more Premier League clubs into their participation. Protections against the super league in Clause 45 need to recognise these concerns. The cancellation of replays from round 1 of the FA Cup competition, and thereby the Premier League increasing its dominance by taking over the Football Association’s income streams, has been the result.
There are many concerns over competition law that are relevant not only within the football pyramid but internationally between England and both UEFA and FIFA. Both have issued statements of concern. It is a complex area. I highlight the conflict of interest that arises to the Premier League in relation to its being both a regulator and a marketeer of broadcasting rights.
I turn to how competitive the Premier League is. It can be argued that merit payments and their size will create elites, especially where redistributions of broadcast rights are augmented from playing in European leagues and from worldwide rights. The probabilities of any Premier League club beating another reduce from disparities between all those distributions. Is the league actually competitive? It could be argued that competitive pressures to achieve a merit position drive incentives to unsustainable behaviour. Relegation is the ultimate cliff edge. Clause 1(1) states that the purpose of this legislation
“is to protect and promote … sustainability”.
All aspects of income distributions and their effect need to be borne in mind, and the regulator must pay due regard to them.
The present problems also include financial fair play and the Premier League’s litigation against its members. Investments into clubs, their stadiums and facilities have not been adequately appreciated in the Premier League’s PSR. Surely investment should not be discouraged and penalised. In contrast, it appears to some clubs that accounting norms and standards are challenges to be circumvented or reinterpreted. For example, one of these is the length of time over which players’ contracts can be amortised.
As an aside, the Women’s Super League has adopted a better approach by having a total salary limit—a model familiar to US owners. I assure noble Lords that Everton abides by one, even though other clubs may not. The amount that can be spent on players’ wages is limited to 40% of turnover. However, the parent men’s team can invest further sums into the club’s women’s team and thereby lessen that impact, as it can spend 40% of its investment on player wages. Further discussions are ongoing in both sections, men’s and women’s. I am also pleased that the Secretary of State has powers in the Bill to extend the legislation to apply to the women’s game, which it is correct to leave to develop itself at the moment.
I commend the provisions about fans’ engagement in the Bill. I interpret them as enabling rather than prescriptive, and they should be sufficient to be effective.
Once the legislation completes its passage through both Houses into law, the very next important step is for the regulator to set up the “state of the game” report outlined in Clause 10. Its terms of reference need careful drafting, the call for evidence needs to be wide-ranging and inclusive, and the consultations need to be extensive. The reduction of time to 18 months from three years for this to be concluded is also an improvement to the Bill. The “state of the game” report is fundamental for the independent regulator to understand a full economic and financial analysis and all the implications of the market structures of the game, to have a broad remit with wide-ranging information-gathering powers, and to enable effective consultation.
The Bill is broadly balanced in its approach, and the House can consider whether amendments may be needed to make the Bill more explicit regarding the regulator’s reach. I close with a remark from Carlos Hurtado, a sports lawyer at Baker McKenzie:
“If you have strong governance and financial controls, you’re creating the perfect environment for the sport to develop, investors to come in and create more value for the business. When you do that you’re going to have more competitive football”.
Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)
My Lords, I remind noble Lords of the advisory speaking time. We have a lot of Members who wish to speak and we want to finish at a reasonable time.
Lord Goodman of Wycombe (Con)
My Lords, as a member of the Delegated Powers Committee, I look forward to exploring in detail what powers Ministers seek to arrogate to themselves under the terms of the Bill, following the splendid series of points made by my noble friend Lord Moynihan. I point out to noble Lords in passing that if they look at Section 92(3)(b), they will find that Ministers propose by regulation to redefine what is and is not “serious criminal conduct”, which is a proposal I find startling.
None the less, rather than risk being lost in this forest of detail, I wish instead to pan the camera back, look at this Bill as a whole and ask a question that I think has haunted this debate, namely: who owns a football club—Wycombe Wanderers, say, where I have been a season ticket holder for the best part of 10 years? Noble Lords might think the natural answer is that a football club is owned by its owners. Not so fast if you read this Bill, whatever Part 1 or Schedule 1 may say. According to the Bill, an owner is really more like a custodian than an owner and the fans are more like shareholders or co-owners than consumers, because football is judged under the Bill’s terms to be simply too important to fail. There is a heritage objective written into the Bill because it is held, I think quite rightly, that a football club is part of the very life of its community—particularly, say, in an old former industrial town where some of that industry has gone. It is essential to the coherence and well-being of the place.
As a Tory, I have no objection at all to the argument that institutions trump markets, but I cannot help following the arguments of my noble friend Lord Maude—from not quite the Front Bench but the Bench where former Ministers sit—and wondering whether this end might be better and more naturally achieved in a more evolutionary way were football to devise its rules and regulations itself, backed up, if necessary, by statute in a system of co-regulation. But we all know that this is not to be.
The Bill proposes a state licensed regulator, so in addition to Ofwat, Ofgas and the Care Quality Commission we are to have Ofball, Ofgoal, Ofside or whatever the new regulator will be called. But those regulators that I named and all the rest of them are not uncontroversial. They are sometimes accused of mission creep, of regulatory overreach, or sometimes of simply getting it wrong, often in reports composed by distinguished committees of this House. I cannot help looking at this Bill and thinking: on the one hand, a new state regulator, on the other, millions of engaged football fans; what could possibly go wrong?
In fairness and in balance, I have to acknowledge, as someone who is sceptical about the Bill, that it has the Premier League, the Football League and other interested parties more or less lined up in the same place. It is the product of years of work, and aspects of it have been widely welcomed—for example, Part 4, which seeks to deal with rogue owners. Who could possibly quarrel with that?
I must say, however, that the attentions of the Premier League and the Football League are more engaged with Part 6 on the distribution of revenue. If you want to find out what really engages most of those who take an interest in this Bill, follow the old rule of follow the money. I have to say myself, as the fan of a League One team that is currently top of the table, I have no objection whatever to money flowing down the pyramid and I can see why the Bill is widely welcomed. There you have it.
None the less, I have to say to the Government Front Bench that it is of course widely said, and it is true, that fans are angry when the market fails, and I warn the Government that, if the fans are angry when the market fails, they will also be angry if the state regulator fails or is seen to fail. What will fans say if they support an ambitious Championship club and the regulator reproves it for running up debt? What will the fans say if they believe that the fee that the regulator is charging the clubs for its services is too high? What will the fans say if they do not like where the club has got to on ticket prices? And there are myriad similar examples. I will be told that these fears are exaggerated or mistaken. I would reply, “Let’s put that to the test”. Let’s have a review of this regulator after it comes into existence in, say, five years. Let’s even consider writing a sunset clause into the Bill whereby we can review where this Bill is going”.
In conclusion, we are told that the football pyramid is the envy of the world, one of Britain’s great sporting successes—and so it is. But we are simultaneously told that the whole system is so fragile that it needs a state regulator to support it. I find these claims very difficult to reconcile—or, if they can be reconciled, could it be that it is the very fragility of the system, the sense of risk, adventure, innovation and dynamism, that has made the pyramid the success that it is? And could it be that the regulator is putting all that at risk? Let us find that out, have a review and consider putting a sunset clause in the Bill so we can find out in due course whether the fears I have expressed are mistaken and whether the hopes that the supporters of the Bill vest in it have come to pass.
Lord Bach (Lab)
My Lords, like many others in this debate, I am a self-confessed football obsessive. I have been a Leicester City season ticket holder for more years than I care to remember and, even more sadly, I am an addict of Fantasy Premier League, too. I find the Premier League riveting and have admiration for its success over more than 30 years: shown, as we have heard, by its vast global appeal, its world-class players, its huge crowds and its employment of a large number of people. It is intoxicating, so intoxicating that one can be tempted—as many are, I fear, including many young football fans—to think that the Premier League nowadays is all that football is. It is not, and it is because it is not that this cross-party Bill is so necessary.
Many noble Lords will perhaps know the wonderful fictional description of football fans at a Bruddersford United match during the Great Depression. It is at the start of JB Priestley’s wonderful novel The Good Companions. It is too long to remind the House this evening of the full description, but let me use an extract or two. Priestley wrote in 1929 that football turns you
“into a member of a new community, all brothers together for an hour and a half … and there you were, cheering together, thumping one another on the shoulders, swopping judgments like lords of the earth, having pushed your way through a turnstile into another and more splendid kind of life, hurtling with Conflict and yet passionate and beautiful in its Art. Moreover, it offered you more than a shilling’s worth of material for talks during the rest of the week”.
Of course, football, like society, is very different today, but fans’ emotions, as described by Priestley, and their response to a game, whether they are watching Manchester City or the bottom club in the 12th division of a Leicestershire local league are, I would argue, still the same.
I make this point to support the need for sustainability and fairness, which I believe are at the heart of the Bill. It is at this moment of almost total Premier League control and success that we need to take stock, surely, and ask whether this level of success is ultimately sustainable and, perhaps as importantly, whether it is always a good thing for the vast football world that lies beneath the Premier League. Of course, this Bill deals with the top four tiers, but let no one be in doubt that this Bill’s effect will be clearly felt right across English football.
To me, the case for a regulator is overwhelming. An industry as large as this, both in numbers and in money, and as significant to our national life, involving 35 million fans a year and almost 40,000 football clubs, should arguably have had a regulator some years ago. Given the bad experiences, but perhaps even more the near misses, that football has been through in the past few years, it seems important to have a regulator with real powers who is prepared to use them. Of course, no one on either side of this argument wants the regulator to run football, but any signs of weakness will be bad news indeed.
By way of example, the problem of football ownership has to be tackled. So much depends on the owner of a club. My club, Leicester, has been incredibly fortunate. Our owners have been marvellous, model owners, winning the confidence of the fans from an early stage and helping the community around Leicester and its county for years and years. Not many clubs, I admit, have been that lucky. Others have had years of worry and concern for fans. This is where the regulator should be prepared to step in.
I want to say a quick word about parachute payments and how reform is pressing. The present position, as others have said, particularly my noble friend Lord Bassam, is just plain unfair on other Championship teams. I am not against them as a matter of principle, but they are too high in relation to what other Championship clubs receive. Recent figures show one club that had just been relegated receiving £48.9 million in its first year while other clubs in the Championship received £5.8 million in something called solidarity payments. That is too big a distinction and it should change.
There are other big issues in the Bill and I look forward to taking a small part in Committee, but I agree that the abolition of replays in the FA Cup from round one on is a sad occasion. We all grew up, whatever our views and whoever we support, with cup replays in the middle of winter. They were exciting, surprising and very much part of the English game. I still do not know why they have been abolished.
Whether it is true that the existence of football has prevented violent revolution in our country, as we used to be told at school, I do not know, but its importance can hardly be exaggerated and that is why this Bill is so vital.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, to what problem is this Bill a solution? That should be the first question we ask of every piece of legislation but, not for the first time, I find that I am the only person —so far, at least—who has asked it. Here we are, a revising Chamber conceived as a check on the necessary radicalism of the popularly elected Chamber. It is precisely our job to uphold the principles of proportionality, propriety and property. As my noble friend Lord Goodman said, of course people are going to be angry about individual market failures now, but it is our job to foresee that their anger will be all the stronger when there are worse failures, as assuredly there will be once the entire business is taken into state regulation.
I ask again: to what problem is this a solution? Are we facing national bankruptcy as a result of the terrible failure of football? On the contrary: every speaker so far has acknowledged the success of English football. The Minister called it our greatest cultural export. I understand that not only is the Premier League the most watched in the world but the sixth most watched is the English Football League, and they are the first and second in terms of takings at the gate. So to what problem is this a solution?
There are plenty of things that need reform—we have a Civil Service that has stopped bothering to show up at the office since the pandemic and a healthcare system that is delivering fewer and fewer procedures despite getting bigger and bigger budgets—yet we seem to be going after all the things that work, whether it is the City of London, private schools or now, outstandingly, what everyone agrees is the most successful football league in the world.
What are we going to solve by doing this? The Bill talks about the one notional problem of clubs closing and being allowed to close. The one that everyone keeps mentioning is Bury, but I cannot help noticing that Bury is still there. It is a wonderful example of what Joseph Schumpeter would have called spontaneous order. Without any regulation, that was solved. Can we be certain that, with the full force of coercive law, we would have improved that situation and made it more likely that we would have had the investment to come back?
I used to work at the Sunday Telegraph—in fact I still write a column for it, as did my noble friend Lord Goodman for a while. We had a former colleague there who is now, sadly, deceased, Christopher Booker, who had the wonderful phrase, “using a sledgehammer to miss a nut”. I am afraid that is exactly what I can see this legislation doing. It is not going to succeed in its declared notional goal but, my word, it is going to have a lot of unintended and unforeseen secondary consequences.
Who has ever known a regulator to say, “Actually, our job is done, we’re going to dissolve ourselves”, or even, “Do you know what? We’re probably doing a bit too much. Let’s take a step back”? Has there ever been an example of any regulator that has volunteered to relinquish its power? Once this one gets going, who can say for sure that we will not have gender quotas, net-zero policies, ticket price fixing and any manner of things beyond the remit originally foreseen? That is what regulators do. One more time, what is the terrible crisis that is so severe that it justifies bringing in a measure of this magnitude?
I was very impressed last week during Questions by the responses of the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross. Those who were here will remember that there was a debate about boxing and about male-presenting boxers in female boxing rings. Despite a great deal of moralistic fervour in the Chamber, the Minister quite properly stood by the principle that it was not for Governments to tell independent sporting federations what rules they should follow. That has been a pretty good principle in this country.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, if the noble Lord will take an intervention, it was actually about two rival bodies with different definitions of what they were, one of which was corrupt.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
None the less, the principle surely applies that these bodies, whether they are for boxing, football or anything else, exist to serve their members, and they have done so extremely well—this is something that sets us apart from a lot of other places in the world—without needing state regulators. It would not occur to somebody setting up a sporting federation now to go to the Government for a licence, and that is in keeping with our common-law traditions, in keeping with the principle of free contract and property and in keeping with the history and temper of this country.
Let us not abandon what should be those core principles that have served us extremely well. Let us defend the freedom of private organisations, which have never asked the Government for a penny in support, to do what they do well. Let us not intervene in something that is working extremely successfully. There is a basic principle that is often attributed to Edmund Burke, and in fact I think you can trace it all the way back to Confucius, but I am going to express it in the words of the third Viscount Falkland, a Civil War royalist who, if he was not exactly the first Tory, may reasonably be said to be the forerunner—let us say the morning star—of Toryism: “If it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change”.
Lord Mann (Lab)
If there were no crooks or conmen, Bury Football Club might not have been forced to go to the very bottom of the pyramid rather than staying where they were—a club with a huge history and a huge fan base.
I declare an interest as one of the deplorables. I am elected by the fans of Leeds United Football Club to chair their supporters’ club, the oldest in the world at 105 years old. I am a statistical economist by training, and I calculate that my members have spent in their lifetime between £3 billion and £5 billion following Leeds United Football Club. In reality they are investors in Leeds United Football Club. They meet a few government objectives on the way because, in that 105 years, they have provided green transport and taken cars off the road by providing buses to every fixture, home and away—and I mean every fixture. They have reduced the police bill, not marauding around the streets in any way but going point to point for every single match. That is another contribution.
What do we get for that? Let us look what happens in Germany. Germany was cited as a bad example because there is no competition in Germany, fans have a say and it is a bad model. Let us get our facts right. Here are entrants by success from German football into UEFA competitions for the first time in their history in the last 10 years: Freiburg, Augsburg, Mainz, Union Berlin, Hoffenheim and Heidenheim. The champions of Germany, the Bundesliga, for the first time ever last season were Leverkusen. There is fan involvement—unlike in this country—diversity of success and a growing business model.
Let us jump down the scale. I had to intervene several times to assist the fans of Worksop Town Football Club—the fourth oldest in the world, created in 1861—in preventing it going out of business. No one else was going to intervene—not the football authorities. We had to save the club not once but more than once. For a town like Worksop a football club of that age, however relatively unsuccessful, is fundamental to its very being. Should that club be allowed to disappear? Should Bury have to come in at the lowest possible denominator because of that?
I have some questions for the Minister. If Worksop Town at its low level were to be brought into any regulation, would that require action by the regulator, primary legislation or secondary legislation? If the players’ union had to be consulted, which of those three would that require?
What if women’s football were to be included? I shall cite Solihull Moors. Does the situation four weeks ago at Solihull Moors classify as potential action for the regulator under the legislation or not? If not, which of those would be required—regulation, primary legislation or secondary legislation?
Football has to report on modern slavery but not on footballers. The Commonwealth Parliamentary Association in co-operation with the Kenyan Parliament has a big project on this at the moment. It is a huge issue. If we want to require football to report on footballers, including under-16s, under the modern slavery requirements that apply to all other employees, which of those three does that require?
Paragraphs 8 and 9 of Schedule 5 talk of a requirement to consult representatives elected by fans, but a number of clubs are choosing who the fan representatives on their supporters’ advisory boards are. With the legislation as it stands, will that be superseded by the ability of democratically run fan groups to elect their own representatives?
There is good news on one of my other declared interests—anti-Semitism. In the last four weeks, we have had Jewish Fulham supporters able to go to a Hanukkah event at their club as a Fulham Jewish supporters’ group. Manchester City have agreed to a similar event in the last four weeks and Leeds United will have another Hanukkah event—one of the fastest growing, with significant numbers joining. Orient will have its first-ever such event in a few weeks’ time. Should those fan groups expect that their clubs recognise their existence and speak to them on relevant issues? I suggest that would be rather a good thing for society. How does that fit into how this Bill is worded? I am a Kick It Out ambassador on anti-Semitism. Will the reporting on equalities be better or worse than the requirements we put on the banking sector? They ought to be at least as good. Will they be?
Above all, there are two big questions that the Government have to answer. One is the Bury question. Bury was taken out of existence by a conman, and lifelong fans of Bury wanted to get hold of the assets in order to run it themselves and keep it alive. Will that be possible technically with this Bill? What they required was the asset of the ground, the name and probably a bit of cashflow in whatever capacity—loan or whatever—to keep the show on the road in the league they were in, if they chose to remain in that league. Is that possible?
I shall reference Leeds United Supporters Club for the other big question. We do not want to be called Red Bull Leeds by some of the new investors. We do not want to be like Red Bull Salzburg; in fact, I refuse to wear a shirt with red on. I am happy to wear a red rosette every election—and only a red rosette—but in my football I and many others do not wish to be Red Bull Leeds. Does this legislation give us the power—if we can persuade the rest of the fans—to vote yes or no to such a proposition?
They are the two key tests of this legislation. I hope to hear from the Government that, on both, those powers will be there.
Baroness Morris of Bolton (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Mann. I was born into a family of avid Bolton Wanderers supporters, married into another and am a long-standing season ticket holder. I see that, sadly, the noble Lord, Lord Bach, has just left, but my husband and my son both drive me mad every weekend with their fantasy football teams. So, I welcome the opportunity to speak in this Second Reading of the Football Governance Bill and thank the Minister for her clear explanation, despite her reference to the Bolton v Oxford result in the League One play-off final. I also thank her for her warm tribute to Dame Tracey Crouch, who through her work on the fan-led review of football laid the foundations of this Bill.
Like at Leicester, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Bach, we are incredibly lucky at Bolton Wanderers that since August 2019 we have had owners in Football Ventures and a chairman in Sharon Brittan who instinctively understand the right way to run a football club. From the inclusion of and communication with fans and the community, to the obvious care and support of staff and players, they have been a breath of fresh air. It has not been easy, and finances are still tight, yet their visibility at events and matches, turning up, showing up and embracing and understanding the highs and lows, have endeared Sharon, in particular, to fans and the wider Bolton family. If all clubs had been run this way, there would be no need for the Bill.
But it has not always been like this. As one of the 12 founding clubs of the Football League—as we have already heard—Bolton has a rich and proud history, but it has never been easy being a Bolton Wanderers fan. We have watched them play in all divisions from the old Division One down to Division Four, go back to the Premiership and play in Europe, and then fall all the way down again through the divisions of the EFL to our current place in League One. But through all these highs and lows we retained hope, and the next season was always going to be the season where things came right.
That was until 2015-16—as we have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton—when things began to go financially wrong and we came under new ownership. We reeled from winding-up orders from HMRC to unpaid wages, player strikes, Marc Iles, a much-respected local journalist, having his credentials withdrawn for asking questions about how the club was being run, threat of expulsion from the EFL and an owner who saw himself as a secured lender rather than a custodian of a much-loved club. So incensed were we that my good friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, and I wrote a joint statement addressing the then ownership of the club, fearful as we were that our families and future generations of Wanderers’ fans would be denied the pleasures and the pain we had enjoyed.
The long journey back from going into administration to being bought by responsible owners in Football Ventures was plagued by chancers, dreamers and time-wasters, all of whom placed the club in further jeopardy. We were not alone. Many other clubs have been through the same nightmare including, as we have heard, Bury, our next-door neighbour. I know there is a view that if a club is failing it should be allowed to fail, that fans will simply transfer their allegiance somewhere else. But the fortunes of a club have ramifications far beyond the football pitch.
In January last year, John Tribe, a senior lecturer in law at the University of Liverpool, published an article in The Conversation entitled “Football Club Collapses in Lower Leagues: How to Avoid Them for the Good of the Community” in which he said:
“Behind every collapse is a story of people losing their jobs and investors losing money, but the community uniquely suffers too”.
Supporters and wider communities are the lifeblood of football clubs and, correctly, have an interest, even a sense of ownership. Owners of football clubs have a clear responsibility to those supporters and to those communities. Too many failures to meet that responsibility bring us here today.
By instinct, I believe, wherever possible, in self-regulation; nevertheless, I believe a degree of regulation is now necessary. But football clubs are independent businesses, as we have already heard, and the delicate balance between precautionary oversight and stifling over-regulation must be protected.
How we regulate will be as important as what we regulate. Despite the reassurance of the Minister, we must ensure, as my noble friend Lord Parkinson said, that there is not mission creep. It would be tragic if the beautiful game went from being buffeted by the inconsistency and uncertainty caused by some owners and bad league decisions to reeling from the storms of a regulator whose actions smothered the ingenuity and brilliance that makes British football the great game it is.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Bolton. I did not realise she was a football fan. It is amazing how all these football fans have crawled out of the woodwork today. I am delighted I am one of them—I support Arsenal. I am sad to say that I am mostly reduced to listening to matches on the radio these days. Life is too full to do much else.
The Green Party welcomes this Bill but it wants, as others have said, the regulator to address the unfairness of the Premier League clubs getting nearly all the money, when 67 professional clubs share just 8% of the revenue. That does not seem like a logical place to be. We agree with the English Football League that there is enough money in football to ensure that all levels of the game are sustainable and thriving.
As other noble Lords have said, football in this country is part of nearly every park, sports hall, school playground, beach, empty piece of tarmac and patch of grass. It matters to the hundreds of thousands of parents, children and young adults who go along to play on their local pitch, or who travel for a couple of hours to the next match. It matters to the coaches and others who give hours and days to make it happen. It matters to the women’s teams. It matters to the pub teams. Whether it is pensioners or people with Parkinson’s, football is part of their lives and identities.
The Green Party wants to see football grow from the grass roots up. That means reversing the damage done by the last Government at a local level, with nearly 1,000 football pitches being lost since 2010. We want local authorities given the power to invest in their local professional football clubs and to reinvest the dividends back into sports facilities in their communities. We want to ensure that local authorities are able to maintain key sporting infrastructure, such as swimming pools, sports halls and playing fields, that can be used by all sections of the community.
Being a Green, I am going to bring climate change into this. Then noble Lord, Lord Hannan, is not in his place any more, but I agreed with one thing he said: he did not like the idea of net zero. I do not like net zero either. We are way past the time for net zero; we have to think about real zero. I know that this Labour Government have a real problem with understanding climate change. I am very happy to help them out at any time, with tutorials from scientists or meteorologists. In the meantime, this Bill fails to prepare football for one of the biggest challenges that it will face in the future.
Climate change needs to be part of this legislation, because the adapting of facilities to deal with flooding, drought and excessive heat is already starting to be a regular feature of football life. If you think this is a side issue, you should go and talk to soccer schools in Valencia, which are covered in cars, fish and mud.
There are 23 professional teams that can expect partial or total annual flooding of their stadiums by 2050. That probably sounds a long way off, but others will be vulnerable in the meantime. Zurich Insurance found that nearly one in four of the biggest stadia face major building work or crippling insurance bills simply because of trying to face up to climate change. Both the Bundesliga of Germany and the Ligue de Football of France include environmental sustainability as part of their licensing. Why are we not including climate change as a specific issue that our new regulator has to consider and deal with?
When Carlisle United’s Brunton Park was devastated by flooding caused by Storm Desmond in 2015, the club’s insurance covered its substantial losses. Following that claim, the club said it found it nearly impossible to renew its insurance. Climate change is happening, and it is already having a big impact at grass-roots level, where local clubs will need help to find the resources to cope. The chair of the FA, Debbie Hewitt, revealed that:
“We have something like 120,000 games a season cancelled because the pitches are not playable”.
In recent years, grass-roots teams have swung from cancelling games because the ground is baked like concrete to pitches being regularly flooded.
Giving the new regulator of the professional game a specific remit to consider climate change is a reasonable thing to do. It would send a signal to the Football Association that grass-roots football is also going to need resources to adapt to what is now happening to our climate.
Lord Harlech (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb.
Lord Harlech (Con)
Even if she is a Gooner.
This legislation seeks to overhaul football governance structures in England and Wales to make the sport more transparent, financially stable and responsible. Like any significant reform, it has both pros and cons, and has particularly sparked concern from the Premier League.
One of the Bill’s most significant provisions is the introduction of stronger financial regulation for clubs. The Bill aims to prevent the kind of financial mismanagement that has led to the collapse of several clubs in the past. The Premier League has seen several clubs run up huge debts. More than half of Premier League clubs reported losses in recent years. In the 2022-23 season alone, Premier League clubs collectively posted £1.1 billion in losses.
The issue of financial mismanagement is not confined to the Premier League. The English Football League has also seen its fair share of clubs that have gone into financial turmoil, leading to administration or outright bankruptcy. As the noble Lord, Lord Mann, explained, one of the most high-profile examples in recent years is Bury Football Club. In 2019, Bury, one of the oldest clubs in English football, was expelled from the Football League after it failed to meet financial obligations but could not find a buyer to stabilise the club’s finances. The collapse of Bury FC was a stark reminder of the financial vulnerabilities that can plague even historic clubs if the proper oversight is not in place.
As we have heard, clubs such as Bolton Wanderers, Macclesfield Town and Blackpool—clubs that are intrinsic, essential and at the core of their local communities—have experienced financial crises and been forced into administration. These situations affect clubs, their fans, local communities and the broader football pyramid. The Football Governance Bill seeks to address these issues by introducing stronger financial regulations and governance structures to ensure that no other clubs face the same fate as Bury.
The establishment of an independent football regulator is another cornerstone of the Bill. According to the 2021 survey conducted by the Fan Led Review of Football Governance, 92% of respondents supported the idea of an independent regulator, emphasising the desire for greater accountability in football governance. However, I would caveat that: 92% sounds like a lot, but the total number of respondents was 20,000. If you think about how many fans attend football across a weekend—on a Saturday afternoon or a Sunday—that is not a huge number. We have to think about what the fans who did not engage with the review want. That is just a word of caution before we proceed wholeheartedly down this track.
As other noble Lords have said, not all regulators in this country have been successful. While many are called independent, their accountability, particularly to Parliament, has been called into question. Can the Minister say how the Government will ensure this new regulator’s accountability to Parliament?
Proposals for more transparency in club ownership, and implementing a more rigorous owners’ and directors’ test, might help ensure that only financially responsible, ethical owners run clubs. This is particularly relevant given the history of some club owners who have brought financial ruin or unethical practices to their clubs.
An example is the Glazer family’s ownership of the club I support, Manchester United. Since the Glazers bought the club in 2005, Manchester United has been plagued by massive debt and a lack of investment in crucial areas such as infrastructure and youth development. The Glazers financed their acquisition of the club through highly leveraged debt, meaning that Manchester United was saddled with a debt of £500 million at the time of the takeover. Since then, the club has paid hundreds of millions in interest on this debt, money that could have been better spent on improving the club’s facilities or player acquisitions. Moreover, their ownership has been marked by a lack of transparency, with millions siphoned out of the club through dividends and “management fees”. This has sparked widespread fan protests and has contributed to a decline in Manchester United’s competitive edge despite its enormous global fan base. The Glazers’ negative impact on the club exemplifies the need for stricter ownership regulations, which the Bill proposes, to ensure that clubs are run in the best interests of their fans, their communities, and their long-term success.
However, the impact of these reforms will be felt not just in England; Welsh clubs that compete in the English football pyramid will also be affected. Welsh clubs such as Cardiff City, Swansea City and Newport County are integral members of the English Football League. These clubs will be subject to the same regulations and financial reforms as their English counterparts, meaning that they could benefit from increased financial solidarity payments from the Premier League and the EFL as part of the Bill’s redistribution proposals. However, there are concerns about how Welsh clubs will navigate their unique position within the English system. Welsh clubs are governed by the Football Association of Wales, rather than the FA, which adds a layer of complexity to any governance changes.
One of the main concerns from the Premier League is that the Bill represents excessive government intervention in football’s internal affairs. While the Government argue that reform is necessary, the Premier League contends that football should be governed by its authorities, not politicians or bureaucrats. Football, after all, is a global industry with complex dynamics, and many believe that government interference could stifle its autonomy and commercial success. According to a report by the Premier League, over £10 billion of commercial revenue flows into the English game each year, mainly due to the unique, autonomous structure of the league. Any increase in government regulation could jeopardise the commercial appeal of the league and its competitiveness, which might undermine the Premier League as the most profitable in world football.
As eloquently explained by my noble friend Lady Brady, another significant concern is the Bill’s proposed redistribution of football revenue. The Premier League generates substantial income from domestic and international broadcasting deals, and there are proposals to redistribute a more significant portion of this revenue to lower-league clubs. The Premier League earned £10.6 billion from broadcasting deals in the 2022-25 cycle. While this is a crucial source of income for the league, the Premier League argues that a large-scale redistribution could undermine its financial stability. Any reduction in this income could make it harder to maintain that competitive advantage.
In conclusion, while the Bill has some positive aspects, the dangers must be addressed. Redistributing wealth between leagues and introducing stricter ownership tests could have unintended and far-reaching consequences for the entire football pyramid.
Lord Hayward (Con)
My Lords, I feel somewhat of an interloper in this debate. I have learned an enormous amount listening to some very knowledgeable people about football and its structures. As I think many noble Lords are aware, I am committed, like the noble Lord, Lord Addington, to the game of rugby. However, I am an interloper not only because of that—a strong interest in another sport—but also because, unlike all the noble Lords who have been declaring their support for one team or another, I wear with pride my referee’s tie. I seem to be the only person who has an ability to be impartial in relation to elements of this debate.
Although the noble Lord, Lord Mann, is unfortunately not here at this moment, I should add that my brother and his wife are season ticket holders at Leeds. I am old enough that in the days when I did have a team to support it was Headington United—now Oxford United —formerly at the Manor Ground that the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, referred to in her opening comments.
My concerns are not, as the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, suggested, that there are no problems and therefore we should not do anything; he called into question whether this was the right route to follow. However, I am concerned, for example, by the opening statement in the notes of the overview of the Bill, which describes a
“regulatory regime, with the primary aim of ensuring the long-term sustainability and resilience of English football”.
There is no reference there to its success, about which we have heard over and again from contributors on all sides. Surely that must be an objective of this legislation. If it is not, one has to ask why.
I will not replicate the comments made by many noble Lords—my noble friends Lady Brady, Lord Maude, Lord Moynihan and Lord Goodman—in relation to questions that need to be put to the regulatory process. I have asked colleagues in meetings where I have been over last few days, in which a mixture of different industries were represented, to identify a successful regulator. With only one exception, I had nobody say, “Oh yes, we’re well regulated”. The exception was the MHRA, which has a very special role in regulation. A lot of people here this evening have referred to clubs’ financial problems. Did the road and rail regulator intervene in the failures of the rail companies? Did Ofwat intervene in Thames Water’s failings? We have to be incredibly careful about this regulator, because otherwise what should be in that first paragraph—success in English football—will disappear. I say “success” despite comments from the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, about World Cup victories; I wish England had had far more over the decades. I am referring specifically to the clubs, which are the subject of this Bill and the regulation associated with it.
I echo the comments made by a number of my colleagues, particularly on this side but also on the other side, but I will raise two other things. One was raised by my noble friend Lady Evans earlier. I am disappointed that we do not know what the cost of the regulation will be. That is a burden that will be carried by all the clubs covered by this legislation. Do not believe that they will be imposed just on the Premier League; they will be imposed on all the clubs covered. We need to know urgently what the burden will be— I deliberately use the word “burden” because this is not just financial; it is interventionist—as a result of the cost on all the clubs covered.
I certainly echo the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and others, on the need to cover women’s football as much as men’s football, because it will happen at some stage of another.
Having agreed with most of my colleagues, and a number of noble Lords on the other side, on different elements of their contributions, I conclude with the form of arbitration, which has been much commented on. I spent many years in industry, negotiating on behalf of management with trade unions. I do not foresee the problem of swing arbitration to the extent that a number of noble Lords identified today. In many cases, it can work incredibly well and is an alternative solution to battling it out in a stalemate that one sees so often.
With those few comments, I echo the view expressed by a number of noble Lords—that if we are to have a regulator, the regulation should be of an extremely light touch. I would not dissent from the suggestion by my noble friend Lord Goodman that we should have a sunset clause or some form of review clause to see how well it is working after a number of years.
Lord Birt (CB)
My Lords, may I take noble Lords back? In the 1980s, I scheduled ITV at the weekend, and among my responsibilities was football coverage of the then First Division. Of course, there was no Premier League then. This was the period that you now see on archive match footage, where the centre forward shoots at goal and the ball gets stuck in mud six yards away. All games were played at 3 pm on a Saturday, and ITV’s pitiful contract allowed us only to show highlights of a few games on Sunday afternoon, 24 hours later, long after the results had been thoroughly digested. Unsurprisingly, the football audience was bored and was drifting away.
ITV, and then the BBC, called time, and no football was shown on British television for some months until the then football authorities finally agreed that some live football could be included in a new deal. Not many years later, a breakaway league was formed, the Premier League; a little later still, Sky Sports made the live broadcast of games the staple of every football fan’s life. Later still, the Premier League became a global force. I hiked high up in the Himalayas with my wife about 10 years ago. There were no roads or vehicles but there was solar power, and in every single village, high up in the Himalayas, young boys, almost all wearing Manchester United or Liverpool shirts, could be found kicking a football around some rocky patch.
Let us be clear: the Premier League’s success is not an accident but an unrivalled achievement, forged over decades. A high proportion of the world’s best footballers play in it; a high proportion of games produce brilliant, scintillating football of extraordinary creativity; and, unlike in some other countries, there are no invincible superpowers. Every team in the Premier League plays to a high standard and, on its day, is able to beat any other team. Thus, in the past 12 months or so we have had Wolves 2-1 Manchester City and Liverpool 0-1 Nottingham Forest. Just this last weekend—the noble Lord, Lord Maude, is not in his place, so I am sparing him a moment of pain—we had Spurs 1-2 Ipswich.
Of course, success brings new problems, and I support the measures in this Bill designed to address them. Clubs are businesses, but they are not just businesses: they have long heritages, many from over a century. As everybody who has spoken today agrees, they are deeply embedded in our local communities; they have been followed by generations of the same family. One of my grandfathers, whom I knew, was brought up in the 1890s, only 200 yards away from Anfield football ground. Perhaps unsurprisingly, all my grandchildren are now impassioned Reds. The noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, has just left the Chamber, but I am mystified that he could have grown up in Whitley Bay in the north-east and managed not to be indoctrinated in the pleasures of supporting Newcastle.
Football’s very success has made clubs targets of responsible, capable, well-funded entities but also, on occasion, of owners with neither the skill, means nor financial acumen to run them properly. There can be no excuse whatever for any club in the world’s richest leagues suffering a loss; that is simply bad management—and the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, has just given us a very vivid example of that. The provisions in the Bill to protect clubs from rogue owners, promote effective board governance, mandate financial prudence and solidify fan engagement are all most welcome. However, I have some significant reservations about the Bill as it stands.
First, it fails to address some critical issues in the game—for example, player welfare, which the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, mentioned earlier. Football is now inducting talented players from a very young age, yet we know that 99% will not finally make it to the top tier. I know from personal encounters that not all clubs are scrupulous about ensuring that young players maintain their studies to the level of their academic ability or about preparing them for what can be the psychological trauma of ending up with no future in football. Moreover, Sheffield Hallam University and others have identified indefensible practices and behaviours in a minority of clubs across the leagues, with apprentices used as cheap labour, facing humiliation, enduring punishment regimes and exposed to homophobia.
The second major shortcoming of the Bill is that it does not explicitly address the issue of fan safety. We have had some narrow escapes in recent years. I feared for my life at the UEFA Super Cup in Istanbul in 2019. We experienced anarchy at Wembley in the 2020 Euros final, and the 2022 Champions League final at the Stade de France, which I also attended, was a well-chronicled episode of near-disastrous failure on the part of all the multiple organisations involved, inadequately supervised by UEFA. Let us heed these warnings: fan safety, at home and abroad, requires regulatory attention. The present system has not been working.
I come to the third shortcoming. Neither the Bill nor the regulator should inhibit the development of football. The proposal for a European Super League by common consent, as an exclusive enclave, was a significant misjudgment, but I see no objection in principle to the emergence of small, tiered European leagues that are purely based on merit. We must allow the game to continue to develop, as I hope my opening observations about life in the 1980s underline and illuminate.
Finally, like a number of noble Lords, I am wholly unconvinced by the mechanism in the Bill for regulating fund flow down from the Premier League to other leagues. The Premier League is not a closed shop: three of 20 clubs go down each year and three go up—and 51 clubs have been in the Premier League since its inception. In 1992, Bournemouth were in the old Third Division; they are currently bang in the middle of the Premier League, and so far this season they have beaten both Arsenal and Manchester City. This is a league where good club governance and effective management at every level can bring success.
In the 2023-24 season, the Premier League distributed around £500 million down the football pyramid, including to the grass roots and the women’s game. That is a seventh of its broadcast media pot, and it is by far the biggest transfer of funds by any league in any sport anywhere. Absent a regulator, that has been a purely voluntary act on the Premier League’s part.
The annual transfer from the Premier League to the Championship is itself a hefty £370 million. With rising revenues of its own, the Championship, as my noble friend Lady Brady reminded us, is now the sixth-richest league in Europe, notably larger than the tier 1 leagues in Portugal, Belgium and the Netherlands.
It is crystal clear that this model is very definitely not broken. Worse still, the method proposed in the Bill for resolving a negotiating impasse between the Premier League and the Championship is a form of Russian roulette. It is simply bizarre and will mightily deter investors of quality. A number of people have spoken on this, including my noble friends Lady Evans and Lady Brady, and the noble Lord, Lord Wood.
Lord Birt (CB)
I am on my closing remarks and the time is advisory, as the noble Baroness knows. I am about to conclude.
A regulator-backed land grab of Premier League funds risks undermining the extraordinary success of the Premier League, killing the goose that lays the golden egg and reducing the massive, beneficial impact that the Premier League has had on the whole of English football and on our national life. I ask the Government to think again.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, the aims of this Bill are laudable. It is legitimate to be concerned about issues such as poor financial and operational management, the inequitable distribution of funds, particularly broadcasting fees, and insufficient input from football fans. I concede that, for most people, their local football club is the heart of their community, town or city; it is part of their history, heritage and culture, and the fabric of everyday life. As a communitarian, I understand and applaud that these clubs are cultural icons and often community champions. One of the most memorable occasions I remember as a Member of Parliament in the other place was attending the civic reception for the back-to-back promotion of Posh at Peterborough Town Hall in 2009.
I am not a devil-take-the-hindmost libertarian; I believe that there is a place for government intervention. It is right to intercede in a dysfunctional marketplace where there is unfairness, oligopoly, monopoly, price gouging or barriers to entry, and it is appropriate to protect the consumer in extremis. However, this Bill, while potentially improving the financial sustainability of individual clubs and English men’s professional football, does so at too high a price, with its encroachment by the state in the form of a behemoth regulator and ministerial fiat into the operation of a free market, broadly successful and lucrative business model, and private associations and private enterprise.
The impact assessment tells us that, over a Parliament, compliance and operational burdens will cost upwards of £140 million. Even the non-monetisable and monetisable social benefits in the impact assessment are essentially unquantified. The Bill represents another example of incremental mission creep that, sadly, we have seen over the last number of years, outsourcing governance and policy to reviews and consultations, and specifically to regulators.
Naturally, I do not blame the present Government for bringing the Bill forward; they actually believe in big government, state interference, regulatory overreach and that Whitehall knows best. But this legislative process began under the Conservative Government, despite it being completely at variance, ideologically and philosophically, with our values as a party of localism, free-market dynamism, minimal regulation and entrepreneurial endeavour in order to deliver profit and tax revenues to drive improved public services.
This Bill should be measured simply against the key tests. Is it proportionate? Is it necessary? Is it justified? I would answer no. Football is not unique. Woolworths was at the heart of the high street when it closed in 2009, but we did not immediately legislate to have a sweet shop regulator in the wake of its closure. Football clubs have always gone bust: Aldershot in 1992, Exeter City in 1994, Chester City in 1998, Crystal Palace in 1999, Swindon Town in 2000, and so on. Invariably, the free market corrects where there is a local demand and community support to re-establish and reconstitute clubs previously in administration and insolvent. This bespoke Bill is therefore not necessary or proportionate.
That does not fetter the discretion of Ministers or their ability to improve the English game using other regulatory or statutory levers. Surely it is not an insurmountable challenge to enhance and strengthen the existing owners’ and directors’ standards and the fan engagement standards.
I will now move from the political and ideological background to the details of the Bill, in particular its earlier parts. As my noble friend Lord Moynihan said, the Bill contains 42 delegated powers and 10 Henry VIII clauses, giving Ministers sweeping powers, notwithstanding the use of the affirmative resolution in respect of statutory instruments.
The creation of a new regulator is for me problematic. Theodore Theodoridis of UEFA is quite right to highlight the dangers of overreach and scope creep:
“While the initial intent of the IFR is to oversee the long-term financial sustainability of clubs and heritage assets, there is always a risk that, once established, the IFR may expand its mandate beyond these areas”.
He warns, rightly, of “government interference”.
Clause 45 is particularly problematic. It is drafted so very loosely, and the Government’s memorandum to the Delegated Powers Committee explicitly references a “strong steer” for the Government in developing regulations on prohibited competitions. Even Dr Jan Zglinski of the LSE, an academic football specialist otherwise supportive of the Bill, believes that the clause will give rise to litigation and disputes due to its opacity.
It is difficult to legislate for something you cannot define. How can you protect and preserve important cultural heritage assets or engage with fans if you cannot define these terms in the Bill? If one consults Schedule 11 and paragraphs 82 and 83 of the Explanatory Memorandum, one finds that neither “fans”, “local community”, nor “heritage of English football” are defined. Perhaps the Minister will consider that issue. Furthermore, Clause 2, which gives the Secretary of State powers to define “specified competition”, is unprecedented.
I am concerned by other aspects of the Bill, such as encompassing investigatory powers and data sharing with public authorities, as well as the onerous powers under Clauses 28 and 29 on the suitability of ownership and officers, and the Minister’s powers therein. I am most concerned about the powers conferred in Part 3, and particularly Clause 22, on varying the discretionary licensing conditions. Clause 22 is particularly wide and loosely drafted, and contains Henry VIII powers to enable the most onerous and far-reaching interference by the IFR into individual clubs’ everyday activities. It would allow Ministers unlimited carte blanche to change and amend the licence conditions on a whim and without appropriate notice.
This brings us inevitably to the Trojan horse: the pernicious woke ideology of identity politics inserted into the Bill at paragraph (7)(2)(d) of Schedule 5—the EDI clause. The last thing football needs is primary legislation to embed identarian zealots into the operation of our national game.
I fear that the Bill is the Dangerous Dogs Act de nos jours; driven by anecdote and special interest, it is well-meaning but egregious. After all, in respect of Clause 49, on changing the crest, shirt colours or name, is this really necessary or enforceable, and is it really appropriate for primary legislation? We all want a successful football industry and we all support the aim of economic growth, but we must be careful about killing the proverbial goose with overregulation and legislative overkill, which I believe the Bill represents.
Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)
My Lords, I refer to my interests and to 65 years of attendance at Stamford Bridge. Your Lordships should oppose this Bill, root and branch. It is badly written, of course—it is a Christmas tree.
However, beyond this one very bad Bill, there is a major problem facing us: far too much regulation, with both major parties over the past two decades having succumbed to the impulse to interfere, to busybody, to regulate. Excess regulation kills economic growth, reduces wealth and suppresses human happiness. Fact-based academic studies from around the world confirm this, but, in the UK, regulation has mushroomed.
We cannot roll out a decent nuclear programme. We have demolished the London Stock Exchange, with so few companies now opting to list there. Policy Exchange cites 25 destructive Human Rights Act impositions, one for each year since its adoption. Then there is the £100 million bat tunnel: noble Lords, over the last few days, have expressed bemusement as to how it came about. People ask why these things happen. It is regulation and regulators—that is what goes wrong. My own recent book on economic growth estimates that reversing all of this would increase GDP per capita by some 13% in a decade.
If most of us agree that there is too much regulation, how come regulation has proliferated so much? It is because those few who love regulation have become adept at pushing it through. First, find yourself a problem—in this case, parachute payments and alleged financial incompetence, although it is odd to assert that about one of the world’s most financially successful industries. In phase one, cry that something must be done, and then create a further panic about diversity or equal pay and get to phase two, “The Government must step in”. Talk something about, “Football, blah, grass roots, blah, women’s football, blah”, and stir up a general feeling that a regulator would be a damn fine thing. Phase three is, “There ought to be a regulator”. So, a football regulator—what could possibly go wrong?
The Bill is actually an attack on the Premier League. It is driven by Willie Sutton’s philosophy, “That’s where the money is”. Are we so sure the Premier League will be unscathed? It pays £4 billion a year in tax and £1.6 billion to lower leagues and grass roots. With overseas TV deals, it is a great export success, and there are 90,000 Premier League jobs. It drives Britain’s soft power around the world: you can have a vivid chat about Arsenal or Liverpool in a taxi from Jakarta to Lagos. All of that raises people’s estimation of this country around the world. There are 3 billion viewers, in 900 million homes, in 189 countries.
Did this happen by accidental circumstance? No, it was private enterprise that created this. Would it have happened had a regulator had been suppressing experimentation and initiative over the past 20 years? You know that it would not. Free markets need competition, fair exchange, no rent seeking, no crony capitalism and private property rights. They wither when subjected to heavy-handed regulators. Do we really want to be known in future times as the Parliament that destroyed the global success of the Premier League?
Establish a compulsory governance code—because, after all, we know best—licences, the imposition of removal orders and disqualifications for life on not-proper owners. Look, I am as anti-oligarch as anyone, but why dissuade a billionaire from dropping a substantial proportion of their wealth into the UK to invest in a football club? Which bureaucratic regulator would be able to distinguish between a good owner and a bad one? Would Sheikh Mansour have been permitted to purchase Manchester City and turn it into one of the greatest teams of the modern era? Would Sir Alex Ferguson’s famous hairdryer have been allowed by an equality, diversity, inclusion-loving regulator? What possibly can the “E” in EDI—equality of outcome—mean in football? Football is a competition. Winning and losing is the whole point. You cannot have equality of outcome—or will the regulator require that all games end in a draw? Or perhaps, if we are to diversity, they will require that 50% of teams be women. That would be difficult when there are 11 in the team, but I am sure they can solve that, too.
Seriously, we know there will be regulatory creep. We have already heard this afternoon from a number of hungry, prowling Peers eager to add their own obsession to the regulatory Christmas tree. We are told that this is a fan-led initiative, but do these busybodies, incidentally demanding that they be put on the board of this regulator, truly represent fans? Public First’s poll asked which kind of regulators were needed. Least wanted of all was a cricket regulator, and second-least wanted was a football regulator.
Of course, with the artfulness of polling, when you offer a list of possible regulations, people say they are in favour of the most absurd things, which could eventually be added by the regulator. Force the whole club to go on mandatory EDI courses, cap footballers’ wages, give equal pay to women footballers, create quotas for English players in Premiership teams—all in favour. Just a few of those would destroy the Premier League’s success. There would be no more global supremacy, no more soft power and far less tax revenue—a depressing future to contemplate.
We must pull back from this overweening belief that we know best. We do not. Hayek’s book, The Fatal Conceit, nailed that error. I recommend it; Lady Thatcher loved it and I am sure noble Lords will, too. It is the free market that knows best. We should back off from so much regulation, and in particular from this attempt to plunder and distort that precious jewel in the economy’s crown, the Premier League.
I end by asking the Minister: has there been a request for a formal evaluation of this proposed regulator’s possible damage, both to football and to the economy? If not, will she conduct one?
Lord Hampton (CB)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a lapsed Torquay United fan and a “606” listener. I thank the Minister for her time, both in the introduction and in her very good briefing beforehand.
This Bill is badly needed and I congratulate both Governments on bringing it forward. It may have been triggered by the breakaway attempt by the ESL, but I genuinely think there is a need to regulate league football in this country. Let us not forget that, in the 1985-86 season, after the Heysel and Bradford disasters, when football barely appeared on television and attendance was at a record low, there was no European football as English clubs were banned. More recently, there were lessons from rugby union in 2022-23, when three of the Rugby Premiership teams—Wasps, London Irish and Worcester—went bust with debts totalling over £155 million. So, however healthy the game may seem now, disaster is only a few unfortunate events away.
According to Fair Game, 58% of the top 92 clubs are technically insolvent. Now, I am not an economist, but my noble friend Lord Londesborough gave us a pretty stark analysis—stark enough to give the noble Lord, Lord Hannan of Kingsclere, some problems to deal with.
Something needs to be done. Everyone has asked the question: can the IFR solve the argument about the levels of payment, let alone parachute payments? In the Bill, the badly needed scrutiny of owners seems to be toothless. The Explanatory Notes say that it can only have power over
“the suitability of an incumbent individual owner or officer where it is in possession of information which provides the IFR with grounds for concern about the individual’s suitability”.
This sounds suspiciously like a “don’t ask, don’t tell” situation. There is no barrier to politically reprehensible countries and no concerns about modern slavery or sportswashing.
We talked about fans when we had the briefing. The Bill enshrines fans’ right to be consulted. This is the best place in the world to be a fan—but what is a fan? It is easier down the leagues, where you can say that it is someone who regularly attends a game. I was passing the Emirates—I did not go in—and took a picture of the display of Arsenal Supporters Clubs. I estimated that there were 140 different clubs, including Japan, Nagpur and the rather unwisely named Iraqi Gunners.
The Explanatory Notes try to define “fans”, referring to them as
“individuals who follow and identify with the club”,
which can
“include (where applicable) but is not limited to: members of any Community Benefit Society”.
They also include
“any fans who regularly attend matches played by the club’s first team”,
which is clear. They add:
“Clubs should have due regard to the views expressed by the representative group of fans but will not, however, be bound by the views of fans”.
How will the IFR police that? Maybe it is for each club to decide what the definition of a fan is—as long as they do not go down the road of Serie A, where the hardline ultras, with their violence and often overt fascism, are courted and sometimes sponsored by the clubs.
As we have heard, one of the main drivers of the Bill seems to have been an attempt to set up a European super league, and it aims include regulating clubs so that they are
“not … able to enter into, be a member of, or participate in a prohibited competition”.
The A22 website now says that the new European super league will have:
“Participation based on sporting merit … No permanent members … Participating clubs stay in their domestic leagues which remain the foundation of European football”.
Could Premier League clubs join the new European super league? I ask the Minister: would the Premier League be able to join, according to the Bill? Far from throwing out English clubs because of the Bill, I think that UEFA will unite with the IFR to challenge any outside competition. As the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, mentioned, there could be a lot of legal work going on fairly soon.
The word “heritage” slightly worries me, too. As Jan Zglinski from the LSE points out:
“The sole issue on which support from a majority of a club’s fans needs to be established is the changing of the home shirt colours”
and the crest. He adds:
“For other changes, which can be just as significant for the fan community, such as a stadium sale or relocation, no such majority is needed”.
The Bill’s overview says:
“Heritage in this context refers to the tangible and intangible elements that define the unique historical identity of English football and its clubs, and which are passed on through generations of fans”.
This sounds less like law and more like a Hovis advert.
There is also a philosophical argument. I presume that the regulator is called the independent football regulator—rather than “Offoot”, the one name that the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, did not suggest—to avoid any taint of government interference. But will it have powers to inspect, rather like the dreaded Ofsted? I speak as a teacher when I say that you cannot accuse Ofsted of lacking teeth. Will it produce one-word judgments of a club’s performance? A RAG rating would be a good choice; it would be a sub-editor’s dream—imagine Man City getting a red card.
Currently, the Bill is a noble attempt to define the indefinable and tame the untameable. For that lucky person who becomes the IFR, three things are certain: they will need the wisdom of Solomon, the brains of Sherlock Holmes and the determination of Boudicca to succeed.
Lord Ranger of Northwood (Con)
My Lords, as a 12 year-old boy, my father took me to my first football match, the 1987 FA Cup final at the old Wembley Stadium: Tottenham Hotspur v Coventry City. It was a classic. I was thrilled just to be there. My father was not a football fan, but he had promised to take me if we got to the final. I inform my noble friend Lord Maude that we lost. Such is the lot of a Spurs fan, but I was besotted by the game and my club. So today I speak as a fan—one who watched this weekend as we lost again, this time to Ipswich.
Football is the beautiful game. It is simple, graceful and physical; fast and slow; and accessible to those who play and for the many who watch, support and listen. It is a game for everyone, which is why it has become the world’s most played and most watched sport. In that context, English football is the pinnacle of successful club football when it comes to commercial success, especially since the advent of Sky TV and its innovative partnership with the Premier League. Billions of pounds of revenue have flowed into English football. This has caught the eye of various types of club owners—some are in the game for their own passion, but, more so now, some wealthy owners seek to utilise football for other purposes, including making themselves wealthier—but the game and the fans have made our football the most watched and admired in the world.
This was never clearer than during Covid, when the world got to watch the Premier League being played without fans in the stadiums. That meant that, although we could hear the thud of boot hitting ball, there was a total absence of atmosphere, making the whole experience like watching a game in zero gravity—no noise and no atmosphere. This demonstrated how important and integral, and how much a part of the fabric of the match experience—or should I say the product?—are the fans and their passion and voices. It was so much of an issue that broadcasters started to play recorded crowd noises for the TV audience. Fans are not just for match days; they are for life.
Our football is steeped in communities, families, generations and the lifeblood of local residents. Clubs now have fan bases that span the globe, but it is the rich history that makes English clubs unique, as well as what fans sing on the terraces. Our football is not some fabricated, franchise-based, Monopoly board model where owners can have absolute power—such as in American sport, which is based on that; Major League Soccer has continued in that vein. Around the world, other sports, notably cricket, have adopted franchise-based models to turbocharge their development of leagues as commercial cash-producing machines, churning out games and merchandise in equal measure. Let me be clear: there is an audience and a market. By all means, create a product—but that is not the nature and history of our game. In our game, fans have power.
Modern-day owners can be loved, if they spend money to buy players and invest in the club—and, most importantly, if the team wins. They will be hated, if they do not win or are seen not to care about the club, and they will be hounded out. It has been said by the Premier League that its clubs have a virtuous-circle approach to their finances, investing in world-class players and facilities, in player development and local communities. But it seems clear that the old analogy to prune juice once made by the noble Lord, Lord Sugar, is still accurate, as ever-increasing amounts of money come in and go out of the game through huge transfer fees, player wages, agents’ fees and more.
So, what is the modern-day owner’s dream? What are they in it for? Maybe it is to buy a small, lower-league club, invest in the ground, buy smart when it comes to players with potential, use technology and data to inform their decisions, build a global fanbase by leveraging social media and even have a fly-on-the-wall TV show—basically, sweat the asset. Then, hopefully, you watch the value of your investment go up, with maybe a promotion or two to keep the fans happy. Is anything wrong with that? Football is now as much a business as it is a sport. We must acknowledge that. But it must still deliver for the fans, who also know that not everyone can win every game—because the magic ingredient of our game is competition and jeopardy.
Taking all this into account, and the unequal success of English football, means that an independent regulator must tread lightly—or, dare I say, it may undermine the magic pyramid. Football fans have already seen how the promised land of good intentions can end up mutilating the beautiful game. I speak of the video assistant referee—VAR. Ask any fan if they would like that genie put back in the bottle: the erosion of the undiluted joy of scoring a goal as fans in the stadium best-guess whether the goal will be disallowed, fans at home wait while watching endless replays, and the poor chaps at Professional Game Match Officials Ltd draw lines on screens. Fans are now rueing what they wished for, and I would go as far as to say that they would rather live with a few human errors than the suspension of the joy of a goal, the increased ambiguity and the removal of power from the official in black to the faceless operators miles away behind a bank of screens. Let us not let the good intentions of the excellent, fan-led review by Dame Tracey Crouch lead us into the unintended consequences of heavy-handed regulation that will potentially do similar damage to our game and its commercial success that is the envy of the sporting world.
Lord Shamash (Lab)
My Lords, I am delighted to be able to follow my dear noble friend Lord Triesman; he is now not in his place, but I was delighted to see him here at all.
I have to congratulate the Government and my noble friend the Minister on introducing this Bill so early in this Parliament. Listening to this debate, it is clear there is considerable interest across the House, and it is clear from the speeches that preceded my contribution that the introduction of the regulator will be, on the whole, welcomed.
I must declare an interest in that I am currently a director of Manchester United Supporters Trust and was its former chairman over the past decade. It is a substantial trust with over 100,000 members. It came into being following the takeover in 2005—which my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, referred to—by the American family, the Glazers, who used a leveraged buyout to acquire the club. I was the proud owner of a number of shares at the time of the takeover and I felt, like many other fans who held shares, that I owned part of the club—albeit probably only a blade of grass on the pitch, but it was my blade of grass. However, company law required that the minority shares had to be sold to the Glazer family. The funds received by the fans who were shareholders were in a considerable number of cases put into what was then known as the Phoenix fund, and the cash has been managed by our trust for the benefit of the fans as a whole.
In context, following the highly publicised leveraged buyout, the debt at the club at the time was £500 million, which I think was referred to earlier. As I understand from recent reports in the New York Times, that debt at the moment is approaching £1 billion. As I have said, I welcome the creation of the regulatory framework set out in the Bill, but a question I pose for the Minister and indeed the Government is whether the independent regulator would have the power to interfere with such a leveraged buyout of the kind that took place in 2005.
Regulation in football was first raised in 2014 in the lead-up to the 2015 general election. I was involved in setting up a specialist working party to formulate the policy that included fan ownership. Reform of football governance was subsequently in the Labour Party’s manifesto for the 2015 general election, and I subsequently learned that in fact it would have been in the Queen’s Speech if Labour had won that election. As has been discussed this evening, this new Government, following the fan-led review under the chairmanship of Dame Tracey Crouch, have now laid the Bill before this House.
At the core of football are of course the fans. There are many types of fans, and indeed the Bill does not seek to set out the impossible task of trying to define what a fan actually is. Fans range from those who sit on a sofa and watch matches regularly to others like me who have season tickets, have had them for many years and attend games, in my case not just at Old Trafford but at grounds across the country and indeed in Europe. I have been a fan for over 70 years.
The Bill sets out fan consultation as a condition on a club and the issues on which a club must consult. Consultation is to be with
“persons elected by the club’s fans to represent their views, or … persons otherwise appearing to the IFR—
that is, the regulator—
“to represent the views of the club’s fans”.
Quite rightly, the Bill does not seek to be prescriptive. However, it does not refer to the substantial network of supporters’ trusts that exist: of 92 league clubs, 73 have what could be described as community benefit societies in the form of supporters’ trusts. To be added to this number are similar trusts within the National League and below. I ask the Minister to recognise that supporters’ trusts in my experience are democratically elected, have a membership and constitution, and in many cases are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and operate under the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014.
Active trusts in many cases properly and fully engage with their clubs, and a growing number of them have fan advisory boards made up of members of the trust and those of the club. I am concerned that, if there is not a properly established trust that the club could deal with, there is the likelihood that a group of fans could set themselves up and the club could deal with them as they may offer a less critical view of the way the club is run. This of course will be a matter for the regulator through guidance and further consultation with those involved in the administration of various fan groups and the club in the future.
I am delighted that the Bill is now before the House and I am aware that most supporters will welcome the creation of the independent football regulator as being to the benefit of football in England, so that football can continue to make a major contribution to the economy of the country with its huge popularity across the globe.
Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her opening statement and for giving Peers, including me, the opportunity to discuss the Bill with her last week.
I am originally from Birmingham, which is renowned for its two leading teams, Aston Villa and Aston Villa reserves.
Lord Taylor of Warwick (Non-Afl)
I see that your Lordships agree.
I declare an interest as one of the founding members, in 2002, of the Independent Football Commission, I have been a patron of the Aston Villa Supporters’ Trust, and I was honoured to play on a number of occasions for the England parliamentary football team and indeed the Sky Sports Aston Villa All Stars team, which plays for various charities.
I support the key aims of the Bill, especially strengthening fan engagement, enhancing financial stability, protecting club heritage assets and stopping breakaway competitions. The issue is whether it will work. I am sceptical, which is why the Government should perhaps consider a sunset clause so that, at some time in the future—maybe in three to five years—the success of the regulator can be assessed.
The financial regulation model that has been chosen is based on the banking world. The Bill introduces a new concept of “backstop powers” to intervene in the distribution of TV revenue, but these are untested powers and could cause uncertainty. Banking is about finance, but football is about finance and romance. I do not hear much about an account holder’s undying love for a bank, but there are fans who will support their football club through thin and thin, through relegation after relegation. That is why I have so much sympathy for Villa’s main rivals, Birmingham City.
I note that women’s football is not currently covered by the Bill. However, I trust that the Government will keep to their promise to take forward the recommendations set out in Karen Carney’s review of women’s football, Raising the Bar. We must not forget that the first senior England team to win a major cup since 1966 was the England women’s team.
I am not in favour of EDI overreach. That is the last thing that I want to see, but we have to accept that prejudice still exists. If it did not, we would not need EDI. I welcome the commitment in the Bill to do more to improve equality, diversity and inclusion within the game. Among the 92 clubs in the top four tiers of English football, there are currently just two black managers. Noble Lords might say, “So what?”, but I do not think that is a good reflection on our multiracial nation. It should be about the colour of the shirt, not the colour of the skin. Furthermore, fewer than 2% of football governing bodies or club boards are black or ethnic minority. Again, I do not think that is acceptable.
The Premier League has many black stars—indeed, 43% of the total number of players. The new regulator’s role has been described as that of a referee. The noble Lord, Lord Hayward, spoke about being a referee, yet football referees are still woefully lacking in racial or gender diversity. Currently, there is only one black Premier League referee, 15 years after the first one.
After my father stopped playing professional cricket for Warwickshire, he became a qualified referee for the Birmingham County FA. I still remember as a small boy in the 1960s being with my father when he turned up to referee his first match in Sheldon Park. There were no dressing rooms, so he got out of his Ford Cortina in his black referee outfit, clutching his whistle. The 22 white players were waiting for the referee, not knowing who had been allocated. I will never forget the stunned look on their faces when they saw this black man coming towards them to be the referee. He said, “I want no nonsense. Get on with the game. I’m blowing my whistle”. During that match, there was not one swear word and none of his decisions was challenged. In fact, in the following months, the local FA would even get requests from club officials for “the black referee” to be appointed to their games. So, if this was possible in the 1960s, why does it remain so difficult more than 60 years later, when the conduct of top referees is in question this very week? I am hoping that the new regulator will at least look at this aspect of the game.
I asked the Minister when we met last week about cost. The cost of the regulator is unclear, and this is quite important because, if litigation results in relation to problems that this new regime might enhance, Manchester City has unlimited revenues.
Perhaps the Minister can confirm that the powers of the new regulator will not in any way conflict with or override the existing regulatory powers of the Premier League, Football Association, UEFA or FIFA. It is reported that, in September this year, UEFA contacted the Government, expressing some concerns that the new regulator would be in breach of UEFA’s rule that there should be no government interference in football.
Hopefully, the new regulator will solve the stand-off between the Premier League and the EFL concerning finance. However, we must not forget that the origin of football was not really about money. About half of the Premier Division clubs were started in the Victorian age by churches—including Villa, Everton, Man City and Southampton. Their remit was not money: it was to keep young men in particular out of pubs and into parks, keeping them physically and mentally fit. Since then, football has become the nation’s most watched and played sport. The Premier League is regarded as the best in the world. Football’s soft power brings nations together. Yes, I accept that it is now so big that this £8 billion industry cannot be left to regulate itself, but regulation must not become so tight that it creates stagnation.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a long-time season-ticket owner, indeed joint owner, of AFC Wimbledon. I say “joint owner” because AFC means “A fans’ club” and I am one of 4,000 in the Dons Trust, which oversees the general direction of the club, not the day-to-day management of it.
I go to a football match at least once a week—anything from level 2 in the Championship down to level 8, which is the Isthmian and Southern Leagues. I no longer go to Premier matches, for the reason outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Ranger: VAR. In my 65 years of watching football, that is the worst development that has happened. It sucks the spontaneity and excitement out of much of the game and leaves the fans, as the noble Lord said, confused. It is a blight on the game and needs to be removed—but of course it will not be.
I was interested to read the comments recently of Trevor Birch, who is the CEO of the English Football League. When asked about VAR in that competition, he said, “We won’t be having it”. He used a term that I think was very apt when he said, “We’re authentic”. Quite.
I welcome the Bill that noble Lords have been discussing today very much because it stems from the fan-led review and will ensure that the interests of fans are heard in a meaningful way in a sector—I suppose, necessarily—dominated by billionaire clubs. The Bill will introduce the independent regulator, which I believe is necessary, given the fragile nature, to which many noble Lords referred, of too many clubs in the EFL. The word “fragile”, of course, would never be seen in the same sentence as “Premier League”, which, by contrast, is vibrant. Self-styled as the premier league in world football, it is certainly the strongest—financially, at least, though not necessarily in playing terms, something about which I shall say more a little later.
The Premier League, though, is something of an anomaly as an English institution, because only four of the 20 clubs are English-owned and only three have an English manager. Russell Martin at Southampton was born in England, but he represented Scotland as a player. In the 32 seasons that the Premier League has existed, not once has the champion club had an English manager. At the start of the current season, just over a third—36%—of players registered in the Premier League were eligible to play for England. That probably explains why the competition is not called the English Premier League, because it is actually an international league that just happens to be based in England.
That begins to explain why—as highlighted by my noble friend Lord Triesman; what a delight it is to see him participating in this debate—the England team has not been nearly as successful as it should have been. As a Scot, noble Lords will understand that this does not keep me awake at night, but the Premier League makes it harder for the England team to achieve success because of the limited pool of top-level players from which the manager can select. There is an even more limited pool from which the FA can select when choosing the England manager. As far as we know, not one of the three English managers currently with a Premier League club was deemed by the FA to be good enough even to be interviewed for the post that went to Thomas Tuchel.
Therefore, having the world’s strongest league based in England is, to put it mildly, a double-edged sword. Yet even with the considerable number of world-class players that it contains, the Premier League underperforms. Since it was formed in 1992 there have been 32 competitions for the European Cup, now the Champions League. Spanish clubs have won 12, and English clubs have won seven. Only three of the past 12 Champions League semi-finalists have been from England, and last season there was none. It is legitimate to ask where the vast resources generated by the Premier League are going other than in inflated transfer fees and player salaries—and the inflated fees for their agents.
In its briefing for this debate warning against the backstop powers contained in the Bill when agreement on financial distributions cannot be agreed, the Premier League says that they are not necessary because the EFL is thriving, but that is not what the EFL says in its own briefing. The EFL’s briefing points out that its clubs will lose around £450 million this season and are reliant on their owners to fund this shortfall, which is unsustainable and affects not just clubs in the Championship but throughout League 1 and League 2. That is why, although he is not in his place, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hannan—frankly, he sounded as though he had stumbled into the wrong debate—that everything in English football is not well. An independent regulator is therefore very necessary.
The regulator must have the powers to decide on distribution deals between the Premier League and the EFL, not simply to choose one or the other league’s preferred figure. That assumes a genuinely independent regulator and board members without conflicts of interest, and the tests provided for in the Bill must be robust enough to make that a certainty. It is right that parachute payments, excluded from the first version of the Bill, have now been included. There is no reason why clubs relegated from the Premier League should be given a financial windfall from which to launch their bid to return to the top level, thus distorting the competitive nature of the Championship, which was set out clearly by my noble friend Lord Bassam. The parachute money should be added to the Championship’s existing solidarity payment on the basis of league positions the previous season. This would mean that the three clubs relegated from the Premier League would get the most and the three clubs promoted from League One would get the least, but it would be fairer, more equitable and would lead to a better competition.
The regulator must be genuinely independent and look after the whole of the football pyramid, because the importance of the pyramid cannot be overstated. I would like the Bill extended to level 6, covering the National League North and National League South, and the top two levels of the women’s professional game. It is worth noting that six current Premier League clubs have played at the fourth level in English football and a further four have played at level 3. I say to my noble friend Lord Bassam that although Brighton and Burnley were saved from dropping out of the English Football League on only the last day of season some years ago, prior to 2014 Luton Town spent five years in the National League at level 5; nine years later they were in the Premier League.
That is the most dramatic example of the pathway that the pyramid can provide and highlights why its sustainability is vital. The pyramid is not just about the professional game. There are 11 levels, stretching down to the grass roots, as exemplified by the story of AFC Wimbledon and—I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hannan—the resurrected Bury FC. Without any consideration for its loyal fans, Wimbledon FC relocated 60 miles away. When the fans appealed to the FA, it set up a commission which upheld the decision with the now-infamous opinion that allowing Wimbledon to remain where it had been since 1888 was
“not in the wider interests of football”.
That decision was proved spectacularly wrong because days later the fans formed AFC Wimbledon and the club entered the pyramid at level 9. After just nine years it won promotion to the EFL at level 4. This Bill will ensure that any decisions relating to changes to a club’s location or heritage must be subject to a vote by fans, meaning that the sequence of events that wrenched Wimbledon FC from its roots would be outlawed. Although there is much in this Bill to be welcomed, that alone makes it worthwhile.
That said, the Bill does have a couple of glaring gaps. Schedule 11 has a three- page index of defined terms. “A fan” is not one of them. That needs to be addressed in Committee, as does another glaring omission. This is a Bill about professional football yet not once in its 125 pages does it mention professional footballers. The independent regulator has the potential to impact the careers of those without whom there can be no game. The players have a right to know how the regulator will engage with them, which should be in the Bill. I very much look forward to getting to grips with these and other matters in Committee.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, the first thing that I must do is admit to your Lordships that I am possibly not of your tribe. Of those here, I would lose the least sleep if football disappeared overnight—or at least not very much. However, I am in the minority. I was brought up within earshot of Carrow Road in Norwich and when it was a good day and nothing else much was happening, you could hear the noise coming across.
I know most people identify with a soccer team, and even I still check whether Norwich have done well and wonder what things will be like at home. It does not go further than that—I am a person who thinks that the church might look nice in good light but I do not worship there.
I welcome the Bill, at least in its intentions and approach, because I have covered sport for a long time and am interested in it. For a long time, I have heard about bad managers, bad actors and people taking over clubs. It used to be a property deal: you take over a nice city centre ground somewhere and want to turn it into flats or something else, and you offer the fans a deal that is miles away. The world has moved on and the money is bigger, but that is where I came in on this. There has always been a tradition that football attracts those who are doing deals—and fantasists are in there as well—and who want to take advantage of tradition and structure. If the Bill is about more than a business, we need the regulator. We need something for those people who feel that football and being a supporter of a club is a vitally important part of their lives.
We have a long tradition and a lot of clubs in the English leagues—and in Britain generally, but we are talking about the English leagues here. I recognise the comments that Wales should probably be addressed in Committee. There are five full-time professional leagues. Most countries get away with two—and let us face it, their trophy cabinets are a heck of a lot fuller than England’s most of the time. Look it up. How many times have Spain, Italy and Germany won the European Cup? And let us not talk about the World Cup, as the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, pointed out earlier with incredible simplicity and directness. We have a lot of these institutions, which people cherish, and that is why we need the regulation.
These are not businesses in the traditional sense of the word but something more. They can be sweated as assets, but they are not businesses as most people would understand them. They are institutions. As they are institutions that are part of our society, I would hope that the regulator will be prepared to act; there is no point in having powers unless you act—a regulator that does not act is basically a waste of paper. We will have to have a regulator that goes in when somebody breaks the rules and bites hard enough to leave a scar. They have to remember that it happened. It may not have to do it very often, but if we have a regulator that does not do it or that holds back, we will have problems. It will become bluster or a threat. We all know that, if you want an enforcement capacity, making sure that something happens is infinitely more successful than a big threat or a reference to “maybe sometime in the future”. We will have to do something along those lines.
If anybody here agrees with me—my noble friend Lord McNally should have been here, and the rest of my colleagues do not seem that inspired by this subject—
Lord Addington (LD)
I thought I would let that one fall.
If we are going to do this, what do we need to do to get out the great social power that this has? I would like to see a little more attention paid to using the great power we have in association football, or soccer—call it what you like—as a positive thread throughout society. If I remember correctly, Clause 1(3)(b) talks about that social power.
Would it not be wonderful if all these clubs that we are giving so much attention to and regulating properly did a little something that steps just outside football? I have a radical suggestion: why not have them run training schemes for people to be treasurers, secretaries and chairmen of voluntary groups and sports clubs—something small like that? That is my starter for 10. This would make sure that these clubs contribute to the society from which they draw their fan base and would make them an even better social asset.
There are many other things that have been suggested to me. For instance, should we be taking on the green agenda, as has been suggested by my own party? The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield suggested this also, along with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, who does not seem to be here at the moment.
Lord Addington (LD)
She is a moving target— I appreciate that. If we are going through this structure, maybe clubs can be used for other social methods, but only if they are properly regulated.
The fact of the matter is that football—particularly at many of the clubs lower down—has been hanging on by its fingernails, and by tradition. What bank manager would have put up with some of the financial stresses we have heard about recently if they were dealing with anything else? Virtually none. There is something special about football. I hope that the regulator will put it on a firmer foundation.
As to my opinion on whether we should have parachute payments, and whether the arbitration is set to go through, football has had a chance to sort this out for itself. We would not be here if football had got a hold of it, spoken to itself—the various bits—and sorted this out. The previous Government brought a Bill forward only because football did not do those things. Football could have addressed this itself, so it should not blame others for its own inactivity. We have a situation where, as all noble Lords have said, a club going down will have greater costs than a club that is already down. Whether we use parachute payments or something else, that has to be addressed. I look forward to suggestions on that.
We have something here where we are trying to make sure that something fundamental to much of our society survives all the way down in its historical structure. That is what we should be worrying about. Yes, we must make sure that it remains a success—it will be much easier with football generating the money—but that social capital, that investment of faith in this game, is something that I hope all sides will say should be preserved. I look forward to discussions at later stages of the Bill but I hope we remember that we are not talking about a business or casual activity. We are talking about something that touches many people’s lives. I know that, and I am not part of it.
Lord Markham (Con)
Like other noble Lords, I begin with a declaration of interest—maybe a bit of a confession—in that I have been a Chelsea season ticket holder for the last 20 years. I also still feel a bit stiff from playing for the parliamentary team against the Army in the Remembrance Day game yesterday. Please do not ask me the score.
I join the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, in thanking the Minister for her inclusive approach to date. I am sure that will stand us in very good stead as we get into a lot of what I think we would all accept are the quite tricky issues in Committee. I also thank noble Lords for their contributions. As ever, they show how fantastic this House is in breadth of experience. Talking to us tonight have been club directors, former FA chairs, Sport Ministers, sports media experts, supporters’ clubs’ chairmen, and rugby referees—all passionate fans, even if some of us are misguided about our choice of clubs. I will not point those out.
We are all here because we know that, as Bill Shankly famously once said, football is not a matter of life or death; it is much more important than that. I prefer the more fitting phrase that football is the most important of the least important things. Why? It is because, as we all say, it captures our hearts and that often overrules our heads. To paraphrase the noble Lord, Lord Bach, during those 90 minutes all of us feel like brothers together in a community.
We would all agree that football clubs are a unique place. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Addington, that they are more than just a business. They are part of the social fabric of a community and a force for wonderful social good. That is why I believe there is a general consensus among all the stakeholders—the supporters’ clubs, the FAPL, the English Football League—that there is a role for the football regulator in some of those basic protections. I mean clubs not moving away, as in the MK Dons example, the names, shirts, logos, the fit and proper owners’ tests, and the breakaway league threat—although I note my noble friend Lord Maude’s point that it was the English fans that killed it, unlike those in the other countries.
We also need to be careful in any area where the heart often overrules the head. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, gave a cautionary tale. We all know that fans can be a fickle bunch. As the noble Lord, Lord Ranger, said, more than anything, fans care about the success of their club. If you ask those Chelsea fans whether they cared about their owner being a Russian, they probably cared the most about being very successful during that time. As the noble Lord, Lord Ranger, asked, how quickly will today’s regulator be seen as tomorrow’s VAR—not the solution to the problem?
The general consensus here is that the regulator should be light touch. The high degree of concern is for overreach—very eloquently put by the noble Lords, Lord Hannan, Lord Jackson and Lord Moynihan—and mission creep. Just in today’s debate, I noted at least eight new powers that noble Lords have suggested, and this is just the start of the process. As the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, pointed out, the £140 million of cost we are talking about for this regulator does not feel like a light-touch situation.
The biggest area for mission creep and the biggest potential involvement is the financial regulator being more and more involved in football financials. As noble Lords have said, the Premier League is the UK’s clear stand-out industry—number one in the world. Unlike any other industry, there is no doubt that it is number one. As mentioned, the Premier League is the richest and the Championship the sixth-richest, richer than the Netherlands, Portugal and Belgium. That has benefited all the clubs and all the tiers; it has led to investment in grass-roots facilities right the way through the game, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, mentioned.
The Premier League is the most attended worldwide of all football leagues; the second-most attended, as mentioned, is the English Football League. That is all founded on media rights value. I confess that, like the noble Lord, Lord Birt, I have some experience in TV media rights, having founded a pay TV company and been involved in many sports deals and seen worldwide the power of football. I have had pay TV businesses in Thailand tell me that they are going to have a big increase in subscribers the following year because they have won the English Premier League rights.
Why is the English Premier League so popular? It is because it has so many competitive games. Spain, Italy, Germany and France each has two or three top clubs. We would probably argue over which, but I can think of at least eight big clubs in the Premier League. As pointed out by noble Lords, we have many clubs—the Bournemouths, Leicesters and Brightons of the world—that have come in and shown real upward mobility and won competitions. That volume of competitive games really drives the viewership and the pay TV subscriptions, which drive the TV rights money, which funds everything else we are talking about here.
Fundamental to that, I believe, and if you speak to the Premier League, is the parachute payment element of it all. As the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, said, come February, any club that does not have the comfort—for want of a better word—of a parachute payment will suddenly be thinking that it has to cut back on wages and sell players because it will be in financial oblivion if it gets relegated the following season. It is not just the bottom three clubs but the bottom six, seven or eight that will be in danger of that. All of a sudden, you have a third of the games remaining, probably even more, and they become uncompetitive. The value that the world TV companies are paying for disappears.
Now, things are always a game of two halves. If you speak to the English Football League about this, which I have, it says that the flip side of these parachute payments is that relegated clubs are much richer and that two-thirds of the promoted clubs depend on those parachute payments. That distorts competition in the EFL. As the noble Lord, Lord Birt, said, the Premier League is the most generous in the world in terms of the big solidarity payments, which enables, among other things, the English Football League to be the sixth richest. So, in absolute terms, the English Football League is very rich. However, the English Football League would say that the issue is not about absolute wealth but about relative wealth: because it does not have nearly as much money as the Premier League, it is harder for it to compete.
Among all of this, we are asking the regulator to step in. That is the danger from all this, because we are asking this regulator—unlike any other regulator that I am aware of—to get involved in the redistribution of money from one entity to another. All the other regulators might talk about payments that they have to make, but they do not talk about taking money away from part of the industry and giving it to another part. Yet we are asking the independent regulator to wade into exactly that issue—the use of those powers—like some sort of super-referee. That is the danger, and I believe that we will get some unintended consequences.
There seem to be some elements in some of the detail that will actually prevent deals being done. We will put restrictions on deals being for more than five years. Again, the Premier League will say that if it is longer than five years, it is prepared to pay over more money. Is that not the basis of a potential solution? Maybe it is, maybe it is not, but surely it is not the role of the regulator to put in red lines that could stop those sorts of agreements coming in. I share the concern expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Hayward: surely, if you have only the objective of sustainability and not the objective of the success of the Premier League or the Football League, the predisposition of the regulator must be to think about redistribution between clubs in terms of sustainability, rather than their overall success. Should one of the objectives not be the success of the Football League and the Premier League?
Most of all, anything that reduces the competitiveness of Premier League and Football League games will decrease viewership and TV rights. That is a danger, because the Premier League has no God-given right to be number one. Spain and Italy used to be number one. As the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, said, the European Champions League has absolutely been set up to try to compete with the Premier League. We really do not have a God-given right and we need to tread very carefully. At the very least, as the noble Lords, Lord Goodman and Lord Taylor, said, we should consider sunset clauses as part of all of this.
Clause 7 says that the regulator must exercise its functions in a way that avoids impacting the sporting competitiveness of any club against another club. Is that not exactly what the parachute payments are doing? They are eliminating competition in the lower half of the clubs towards the end of the season. Is that not exactly what UEFA is concerned about? It says that any member association might
“be suspended if state authorities interfere … in such a significant way that”
the association
“may no longer be considered … fully responsible”.
Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)
The noble Lord seems to be obsessed with competition at the bottom end of the Premier League towards the end of the football season. What about the distortion in the English Football League as a product of the parachute payments that he accepts have a distorting effect?
Lord Markham (Con)
That shows why the subject needs to be considered in detail in Committee. Leagues are deciding payments between themselves and their clubs. We are asking about the regulator and about trying to change that structure—the competition between the clubs and the different leagues. As part of that, there is the risk that UEFA will be concerned about this, so will the Minister meet UEFA to try to get its approval in advance? The last thing any of us want is England being banned from the Euros because we have a Bill which oversteps the mark.
This has been a very good discussion. There has been a lot of passion, as we expect, and a general agreement that there is real social good. But we have the UK’s number one industry here and we need to tread carefully to make sure we have a light-touch regulator without the mission creep and the unintended consequences. I look forward to those discussions in Committee.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken today. I share the strong sentiments expressed about the importance of our football clubs and the central importance of fans, which is why we, like the previous Government, are acting in this space. I have particularly enjoyed hearing accounts of what football means to noble Lords on a personal level, and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Markham, recovers from his recent match soon.
As the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, outlined in his opening, football means more to fans than politics, which we all forget at our peril. Today’s debate has shown the knowledge and passion in this House for football and for improving governance in the game. It also highlights, as my noble friend Lady Taylor of Bolton articulated better than I can, why the Government have prioritised this legislation. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Addington, that had football sorted its own house out this legislation would not be required.
I respect the right of the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, to question the need for this legislation but I do not agree with him, and I note that nor did the previous Government, which is why they also bought forward legislation—
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
Fair enough. As I previously set out, the case for reform and for regulation is clear. Far too many of our clubs have been subject to poor ownership and financial distress, and it is ultimately the fans and communities who suffer when things go wrong. My noble friend Lord Bassam gave a useful overview of some of the issues with the financial distortion that occurs within football, as did the noble Lord, Lord Londesborough. The noble Lords, Lord Moynihan and Lord Maude, had a different view, one that in my view ignores the considerable financial risk that currently exists within the pyramid.
It is clear, with notable exceptions, that there is a degree of consensus across this House on key aspects of this legislation. It has the same motivation as the previous Government’s Bill, with very few changes. A number of noble Lords have raised the importance of preventing rogue owners, giving fans a greater voice, ensuring clubs have stable finances, and stopping another dreaded European super league—a point raised by my noble friend Lord Wood of Anfield. It is these issues that the Bill will deliver on through better regulation, ensuring the financial sustainability of our clubs, and protecting the heritage of the game. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, gave a powerful description of what the impact can be on a community when things go wrong. Unfortunately, the Bill will not deal with VAR—which is the issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Ranger—nor is it intended to.
While a number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Maude, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, question the need for regulation, and others suggested we could have taken a different approach—including, as my noble friend Lord Grantchester said, that we could have gone further—we think this Bill is proportionate and gets the balance right. It will tackle harms where they exist, while ensuring that English football remains the fantastic product we all know it to be. I will respond to as many of the questions and points raised as I can but I am not confident I will get through them all, so where I cannot I will write to noble Lords and place a copy in the Library.
My noble friend Lord Bach raised a number of near misses, as he described them, over the past few years in relation to football and football sustainability, and expressed surprise that the industry has not had a regulator up to now. The noble Lords, Lord Parkinson, Lord Moynihan and Lord Ranger, and the noble Baroness, Lady Evans of Bowes Park, asked whether the regulator might create additional burdens on clubs. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, questioned whether it was a statist regulation, I think, a point that was echoed by the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, while the noble Lord, Lord Goodman of Wycombe, raised concerns as well. I stress that the regulator really is genuinely designed and required to take a proportionate and flexible approach. That is made clear in the regulatory principles in Clause 8, which the regulator must have regard to in carrying out its functions. I hope that reassures those who are concerned about the regulation in this regard, although I know we will have a further debate on that in Committee.
The licensing provisions in the Bill are designed to deliver a bespoke, tailored licensing system. The requirements on each club should reflect the club’s unique circumstances, such as its size, financial health and risk profile. The noble Baroness, Lady Evans, raised the cost of the levy. That cost will be proportionate to the size of an individual club and the league it plays in. The regime is designed so that, where clubs are already well run, the regulator will not need to lay on extra requirements, so there should be minimal additional burdens.
The noble Lords, Lord Hayward and Lord Jackson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, asked about the cost to clubs of the regulator. The regulator is required to take into account a club’s financial resources and the league it plays in when setting the levy. That should ensure a proportionate approach where no club is asked to pay more than what is fair and affordable, so a National League or League Two club can expect to pay just a fraction of what a Premier League club would pay. The regulator will be committed to providing value for money and only charging costs that are absolutely necessary for it to function effectively. There are numerous checks and balances in the Bill to ensure that, including the requirement to consult the industry on the levy and the tightly defined set of costs laid out in the Bill.
In relation to UEFA, the noble Lords, Lord Moynihan, Lord Jackson, Lord Taylor and Lord Markham, and others raised concerns that might be raised by UEFA. The Government have engaged extensively with relevant stakeholders, including the FA and UEFA, and this week the Minister for Sport had a productive discussion with UEFA and they committed to continuing to work together.
The noble Lords, Lord Moynihan and Lord Harlech, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, among others, raised concerns that the regulator could negatively impact investment. This Government are pro-business and want to see football continue to thrive. That is why we have designed a proportionate regulatory system with intervention targeted only where necessary. It is also why the regulator has a specific duty to, where possible, avoid adversely affecting investment in English football.
In response to the noble Lord, Lord Markham, and others, we want football to be successful. Within the Bill, I point noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, to Clause 72 on the regulator’s general duties.
The noble Baronesses, Lady Evans and Lady Brady, and the noble Lords, Lord Maude and Lord Markham, raised concerns about regulatory involvement in financial matters relating to the backstop between clubs. We do not see the backstop as a first option, and we do not intend for the regulator to view it as such or for the leagues to view it as the first step they would take. Revenue distribution is crucial to the survival of many clubs; as a number of noble Lords referred to, it represents one-third of EFL revenue, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, highlighted how important that is to the game. I do not share her dystopian view of the model proposed, but I look forward to discussing that further in Committee.
If football is unable to reach an agreement on that distribution, it is important that the regulator has targeted powers to intervene as a last resort. Those backstop powers have been designed to incentivise an industry-led solution, delivering the right outcomes with the minimum regulatory involvement. However, given the importance of financial flows to the sustainability of the wider pyramid, if football cannot resolve this, the regulator will help to find a solution.
On financial distributions in relation to parachute payments, a number of noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Parkinson, Lord Londesborough and Lord Maude, my noble friends Lord Grantchester and Lord Bach and the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, spoke about changes to parachute payments being included in the regulator’s remit. It is right, in the Government’s view, that the regulator has the right tools available to solve financial sustainability issues. This change does not mean that parachute payments will necessarily be amended or abolished. If the regulator does not have evidence that they are a problem, it will not act. But, if it does have evidence that they are harming wider sustainability, it will have the power to address that through this legislation. There are also safeguards in place with this change to ensure that the financial sustainability of relegated clubs is provided for.
My noble friend Lord Bassam suggested that the “state of the game” report should be published sooner. This came up in discussions with noble Lords ahead of this Second Reading debate. Under changes to the Bill, the regulator will now need to publish its first report as soon as possible and no later than 18 months after the Secretary of State has specified that competition is in scope of regulation. Of course, the regulator could publish sooner than 18 months, but we do not want it to rush this important market study, which will lay the foundations for the regulator’s regime.
My noble friend Lord Wood of Anfield asked whether the regulator would be able to ban matches being played overseas. FIFA is currently reviewing its position on overseas league matches. It has committed to looking at how this may impact supporters and players, among a number of other valuable considerations. While the industry is still considering its position on this matter and there are no current plans to move English matches abroad, we think it is right to ensure that clubs consult with their fans on any changes to match days, including moving the location, rather than imposing a blanket ban.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield, my noble friends Lady Taylor, Lord Grantchester and Lord Watson and the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Warwick, raised the importance of more fan involvement in clubs, as did others. My noble friend Lord Mann articulated clearly what fans themselves put into clubs, not just in terms of moral support but in the financial cost to the fans. We have strengthened measures to put fans and communities back at the heart of the game and to protect football heritage.
My noble friend Lord Mann asked what would happen if a club wished to be known by a new name. The Bill sets out a number of protections for club heritage assets, including the club’s name. If, as my noble friend said, the club wishes to be known as Red Bull Leeds or any other new name, the club would be required to get the approval of the FA. The regulator would be able to act as an enforcement backstop for the FA’s approval process. The Bill will look to protect this decision process and protect club heritage.
The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and my noble friend Lord Watson asked how a fan of a club could be defined. As my noble friend Lord Shamash said, this might be an impossible task. I am sure there are as many views on this across the Chamber as they were noble Lords who spoke this evening—arguably more—and I would encourage colleagues to engage with the regulator on how this aspect of the legislation will be implemented in practice.
It is important, however, that the regulator itself is able to set out guidance on who may count as a fan and where it will vary according to club context. Providing a strict definition in legislation could risk excluding a number of the very fans that make football what it is. This Bill is intended to increase the fans’ say within the game.
The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, asked about action on corporate governance and the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Warwick, asked about equality, diversity and inclusion, with the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, taking a different view—one that, she will not be surprised to hear, the Government disagree with. This Government believe that equality, diversity and inclusion are an important part of good corporate governance and, as the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, said, there is an issue to address.
The requirements on clubs to report on modern slavery was raised by my noble friend Lord Mann. He asked whether action to bring players into scope of modern slavery reporting would require action by the regulator, primary legislation or secondary legislation. The requirements for which organisations should publish an annual statement on modern slavery are set out in existing guidance and legislation. As there is existing legislation on modern slavery, this Bill will not make separate provisions for it, as it is not within scope.
My noble friends Lord Bassam and Lord Mann asked about the scope of the regulator and whether it should or could include lower leagues and grass-roots football. My noble friend Lord Mann asked if extending the scope of the regulator to lower leagues would be via secondary legislation. This would indeed be the case. However, the Government’s view is that the regulator’s scope should be limited to where there are the most significant harms that the market has failed to resolve. Extending the scope further down the pyramid and into the grass roots would risk imposing disproportionate burdens on both the industry and the regulator.
The noble Lord, Lord Addington, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield raised issues of climate change, the climate emergency and sustainability. This will not be within the scope of the regulator because it will have a tightly defined scope, focusing on the issues causing serious harm to fans and communities and that cannot be solved through market regulation. Environmental issues are therefore not in scope.
On the topic of scope, women’s football was raised by a number of noble Lords, including my noble friends Lady Taylor, Lord Bassam and Lord Watson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. It is not currently included as part of the regulator’s remit. Clearly the women’s game has come a long way from when I was not allowed to play football at school, and this is a good thing. Karen Carney led an independent review of women’s football, which was published in July last year. We agree with its recommendation that the women’s game should be given the opportunity to grow and self-regulate, rather than moving immediately to independent statutory regulation. The regulator will be able to engage and share best practice with industry —for example, the Women’s Professional Leagues Ltd, which is responsible for the women’s game. My noble friend Lord Grantchester highlighted this and my noble friend Lord Mann asked if it was the case. If the picture changes, the Secretary of State will be able to conduct a formal review and, if appropriate, extend the scope of the regulator via secondary legislation— I will come to secondary legislation in a moment—to include women’s football.
The noble Lord, Lord Birt, raised player welfare. While this is not an issue that would come under the regulator’s remit, given its tight focus on financial sustainability, we recognise the point about the welfare of players exiting the game. They need to be better protected, particularly at a young age, as a matter of urgency. We are therefore encouraging the football leagues and the FA to work together to develop a consistent programme of support. We will continue to discuss it with them.
A number of noble Lords mentioned delegated powers, including the noble Lords, Lord Moynihan, Lord Goodman of Wycombe and Lord Jackson. They raised issues around the use of delegated powers in the Bill and I look forward to discussing these further in Committee. These powers are constrained through a combination of procedural, affirmative and legislative consultation requirement safeguards.
In determining which matters should be dealt with through delegated legislation, we have aimed to provide detail to give as much clarity to industry as possible at this stage, and to ensure that Parliament can scrutinise the detail of the regime. However, we also recognise the need for the regulator to have the flexibility to determine its own processes, which may need to adapt over time and will be subject to consultation with key stakeholders.
I have a response to the question about Wales, which I will speak to the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, about afterwards. I welcome my noble friend Lord Triesman’s contribution and support for the Bill. His recognition that the existing football authorities have failed to tackle the major issues in the game is welcome. That is why we are bringing forward this legislation.
As we bring this debate to a close, I thank all noble Lords again for their contributions. Given the wide-ranging and thorough debate, I know I will not have responded to every point raised by every noble Lord today. I will try to ensure that other points are responded to in writing. In a lot of ways, this has helped us tease out some of the debates we will discuss further in Committee. There are points of broad consensus, even if there are differences in how positively some of the measures are viewed.
This is really important legislation, which the previous Government first introduced. I look forward to working with Peers to ensure that the Government now get the job done. I sincerely hope we do not need the refereeing skills of the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, to work through any of the issues.
A strength of this House is the rigour and scrutiny that noble Lords bring to the issues before them. As we have seen today, that is precisely what noble Lords will bring to this Bill, so that we make sure it is the best possible legislation before it goes to the other place. It is through this legislative process we can ensure that we avoid some of the unintended consequences that a number of noble Lords have warned against today. I am keen to work with all noble Lords across the House as the Bill progresses. I invite noble Lords who wish to talk about any issues related to the Bill to contact me and my officials.