Football Governance Bill [HL]

3rd reading
Wednesday 26th March 2025 Lords Chamber

Third Reading

Relevant documents: 8th and 16th Reports from the Delegated Powers Committee

15:53

Motion

Moved by

[Baroness Twycross]

That the Bill be now read a third time.

A privilege amendment was made.

Motion agreed.

15:53

Motion

Moved by

[Baroness Twycross]

That the Bill do now pass.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)]

My Lords, it has been over four months since the Bill had its Second Reading in your Lordships’ House. I have resisted football puns throughout, but we are now reaching full-time in your Lordships’ House, so I decided to make an exception today. I hope to get through this debate without any own goals or penalty shoot-outs. This is historic legislation that will ensure that fans are placed at the heart of our national game.

I pay tribute to the work of Dame Tracey Crouch. Her fan-led review highlighted how too many football fans have been left with nowhere to turn when faced with reckless owners, financial mismanagement and threats to their clubs’ very existence. It was this work that led to all three main political parties committing to introducing an independent football regulator in their manifestos.

We supported the previous Government’s Bill, though I strongly believe that the Bill that we presented was better and has been improved further throughout its passage in your Lordships’ House. We have made changes to refine and strengthen the legislation to ensure that the regulator successfully delivers for fans and communities while protecting the strength of English football. We are taking a proportionate and flexible approach to regulation to provide the certainty and sustainability required to drive future investment and growth so that English football continues to be a global success.

I thank my noble friends Lord Bassam of Brighton and Lady Taylor of Bolton for their invaluable contributions and for promoting greater transparency of the regulator and its work. As a result, we have added a requirement for the regulator to establish a system for all board members and expert panel members to declare relevant interests and to keep a register of those interests. I also thank my noble friends Lord Watson of Invergowrie and Lady O’Grady, who, along with other noble Lords, have championed the inclusion of players and fans. We have amended the regulatory principles to explicitly add players, fans and others who may be affected by the regulator’s decisions to the list of persons whom the regulator should proactively and constructively engage with.

I particularly thank my noble friend Lady Blake of Leeds for her continuous support and for stepping into the breach to offer me some respite on those extremely long Committee nights. Across the House, I want to give special thanks to the noble Lords, Lord Addington and Lord Goddard of Stockport, for their constructive and at times humorous engagement and for advocating for a social responsibility duty. Our addition to the definition of corporate governance for football clubs to include a club’s contribution to the economic and social well-being of its local community will help to shine a light on the good work that clubs do for their local areas.

I thank the noble Lords, Lord Birt and Lord Pannick, for their considered engagement and for the time they spent considering ways in which we could improve the Bill, not least the backstop process, for the good of football. I want particularly to mention the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, who raised issues about women’s football. While not envisaged as part of the initial regulatory regime, we fully support women’s football and the aims of the Carney review.

While we may not have agreed on every issue throughout the Bill’s passage, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay and Lord Markham, for their scrutiny and for ensuring that the niche but highly important issue of heraldic terminology is appropriately reflected in the Bill. I am also grateful for all noble Lords who have participated with a range of knowledge and expertise—not always on football—including but not limited to the noble Lord, Lord Norton, on post-legislative scrutiny and, clearly with expertise in football, the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, and the noble Lords, Lord Moynihan and Lord Hayward, for their unique perspectives and expertise, and for occasionally missing matches to take part in proceedings.

The discussions and changes that we have made in this House will guarantee that English football remains the best place to be a football fan now and in the future. The Bill’s passage through this House has been long and, at times, slow, so please excuse me for taking a moment briefly to thank the many civil servants who have worked so diligently and patiently. In particular, I am very grateful to the Bill manager, Bill team and policy team. My thanks also go to the numerous lawyers and my private office, who have been very patient—mainly with me, to be honest.

I am proud to stand here today being the one to pass this Bill over to the other House—so arguably it is half-time, not full-time, in parliamentary terms. This is important and much-needed legislation which will protect and promote the sustainability of English football in the interests of fans and the local communities that football clubs serve. Football fans up and down the country deserve and want this regulator. I beg to move.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, it comes to my turn to say a few words. It has been a very interesting experience, and I thank the Minister for her engagement and for a number of meetings when she made her time and her staff available to us. I may have walked past the department door on my first meeting, but I certainly did not do so for the next half-dozen. I also thank my noble friend Lord Goddard. It was nice to have a wing-man, and occasionally letting him fly the plane proved a very wise move as well.

I also thank the Minister for some of the specific things they brought in. I always felt social inclusion was lacking, and although football does good work, it is bitty. Making sure it is there means taking on something that has been outside the remit of government; but we have an interest in it and we have now secured it, in its current form or something like it, for the foreseeable future. Making sure that that happens also implies a duty to the community and I hope that, now we have that mentioned in the Bill, the two-way relationship will be expanded.

I was only shouting in the chorus for the inclusion of fans and players in the Bill, but I am very glad it happened. Players have only short careers and most of them, despite the myths, have short and not very well- paid careers in the lower divisions. They deserve some consideration as well.

I also thank many of the people from the Opposition Benches for enlightening me on a range of subjects. I never thought I would learn something about heraldry on this Bill, so I thank the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, for that.

I hope this Bill fulfils its functions and goes forward and I hope we do not have to come back to it.

16:00

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, the passage of this Bill through your Lordships’ House has indeed been a game of two halves—there are more puns coming, I am afraid.

We began our deliberations on the Government’s version of the Bill in November. At Second Reading, I joined the Minister in the thanks that she has just given again to Dame Tracey Crouch and all the fans who contributed to the fan-led review that initiated this process and set out our support for principles including conserving the heritage of football clubs and protecting against rogue owners. At the same time, I highlighted some of the concerns that we had about the changes that the Government had made to the Bill compared with the one in the last Parliament. I am sorry we were not able to persuade the Government about all those concerns, but I am very glad that, thanks to the careful deliberations of your Lordships’ House, the Bill will indeed go to another place in a better state than it started.

I know there was some criticism of the length of time taken in Committee; we certainly seemed to go into injury time before the first half of the match was over, but I do think that some of the cries of “Foul!” were unfounded. Both in Committee and on Report, the majority of amendments came from beyond these Benches, and I am glad that we found areas of consensus even amid the debate and disagreement.

I am grateful for the in-depth knowledge and passionate engagement from noble Lords right across the House and the generous engagement and time provided by the Minister, particularly between Committee and Report, and the many meetings she had—I know that the Secretary of State and the Minister for Sports made themselves available for meetings as well. We are grateful to them all, and I am pleased that we secured some two dozen important concessions on the Bill.

In particular, my noble friends Lady Brady, Lady Evans of Bowes Park, Lord Maude of Horsham and Lord Moynihan secured a new duty to protect the growth of English football. My noble friends Lord Markham and Lord Jackson of Peterborough, along with the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, consistently raised the importance of having light-touch regulation, which I am glad to see reflected in the changes to Clause 8. My noble friend Lord Markham and I also pushed for the interest rate the regulator might charge on unpaid levies to be capped; we are pleased that the Government accepted that.

I want to give particular thanks to my noble friend Lady Brady, who cannot be in her place today but who, as the Minister said, missed a number of important fixtures of her own club to scrutinise the Bill. She brought her extensive and first-hand experience of the commercial workings of football clubs to highlight some of the issues in the Bill. While it is unfortunate that we were not able to persuade the House to protect parachute payments from the redistributive backstop, I know that my noble friend will continue to highlight in your Lordships’ House and beyond how important they are for the financial sustainability of the whole football pyramid.

I would also like to highlight the role of the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, and the noble Lord, Lord Bassam of Brighton, from the Benches opposite. They probed many areas of the Bill with a perceptible love for the game and secured important amendments, particularly to create a register of interests for those appointed to the new board and expert panel.

I am pleased that the Government saw sense and removed the power of the Secretary of State to amend the definition of the “football season”, which always struck us as an unnecessary power. Of course, I am particularly grateful to the Minister and the Bill team for their considerable engagement with the College of Arms and me to ensure that the Bill avoided the incorrect use of heraldic terms. I am sure that this was not an issue that the noble Baroness and the Bill team thought they would be spending quite as much time on, but I am very glad that we got it right. I hope that, when she receives her own grant of arms, the noble Baroness will find a way to record this legislative monument in her heraldic achievement.

Finally, there was welcome vindication of the hard work of my noble friend Lord Goodman of Wycombe, who argued throughout for the need for post-legislative scrutiny of the Bill; he was joined by others, including the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor. We are glad to see the five-year statutory review that the Government have added. It may prove to be particularly important because, despite the many improvements that your Lordships have made to the Bill, a number of areas remain that we have not been able to resolve.

My noble friend Lord Moylan ably led the charge on trying to ensure that the regulator will not fall foul of UEFA or FIFA rules; I am sorry that we were not able to persuade the Government or the Liberal Democrats of the merits of his rather modest amendment. My noble friends Lord Maude of Horsham and Lord Hayward raised the cost of compliance; we remain concerned about that, and I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Ranger of Northwood, who highlighted the impact that this could have on ticket prices. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Birt, who was joined by an impressive team of his noble friends on the Cross Benches, for their hard work in trying to improve the backstop mechanism; I hope that the Government will continue, as I am sure they will, to engage with noble Lords on this matter, as they said they would as the Bill heads to another place.

This post-match analysis and focus on areas for improvement should not distract us from the considerable progress that we have made together. I am grateful to all the noble Lords whom the Minister highlighted. I am particularly grateful to my teammate—my noble friend Lord Markham—who saved me from describing football terms inaccurately, to the excellent Jamie Tucker from the Opposition Whips’ Office, and to the Minister, the Bill team and her excellent private office. I am sure that the Minister has spent longer on the pitch than she anticipated, but she can pass the Bill to her colleagues in another place much improved thanks to her patient and generous engagement with us all.

As I said at Second Reading, my knowledge of football does not compare with that of other noble Lords. It has always bemused me how a truncated icosahedron kicked around a pitch for 90 minutes can arouse such passion and anguish. We have seen some of that during our debates on the Bill, but, as the referee’s whistle blows, I think that all sides can look back with some satisfaction and say, “Good game”.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, from these Benches, I too thank the Minister, the Bill team and the Secretary of State for the exceptional level of engagement that they have shown in relation to the concerns and interests of noble Lords around the House. It has resulted in a much better Bill, which is of course the function of this House.

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I thank all noble Lords for their comments.

Bill passed and sent to the Commons.