Football Governance Bill [HL]

Baroness Brady Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 2nd December 2024 Lords Chamber

That aside, I ask the Minister to look very carefully at these amendments. They are designed to be helpful and to make sure that the independent football regulator can do its work in a most efficacious and efficient way.

[Baroness Brady (Con)]

My Lords, I refer the Committee to my interests, which are declared on the register. I support Amendment 12 in the name of my noble friend Lord Maude, especially proposed new Clause 1(3)(f). This would set a clear success metric for the IFR that it should incentivise

“industry-led agreements on the distribution of”

the Premier League’s broadcast revenue. This is absolutely critical for the future collective success of the football industry.

We already know that UEFA has written an alarming letter to the Government which said, among other things:

“Mandating redistribution which affects the competitive balance in the game and wider European competition would be of concern to us”


and

“would … prevent amicable solutions being found”.

This is why UEFA says that the backstop should be “carefully reconsidered”. I understand and respect that this is what Ministers genuinely believe they have done in relation to the backstop powers, which we will discuss in much greater detail later. However, I profoundly disagree that the backstop provides any such incentives.

I draw noble Lords’ attention to the fact that earlier this year Dame Tracey Crouch, the chair of the fan-led review, called the backstop powers “nuclear … coding” never to be reached for. However, the Football League chair disagreed, and said he fully intends to use the mechanism and that it is entirely logical. To extend the analogy, in the Bill the Government are doling out nuclear weapons to football authorities. They are doing so in the belief that these weapons will somehow create space for diplomacy. However, the evidence is already very clear. In the real world, one side is ready to press the button and launch its missiles. The powers clearly do not place the incentives in the right place. If they did, we would already have a new agreement and the football bodies would not have been driven so far apart.

This is why I have tabled amendments to rebalance the backstop, so it can create proper incentives and space for good-faith negotiations and diplomacy. The fact that the Bill has led one party to believe it can launch a successful first strike is proof that these powers have manifestly failed in their purpose already. That is why I am so supportive of my noble friend’s amendment.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

I have a couple of questions for the noble Lord, Lord Maude, but first, the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, said that the amendments provide clear metrics. I do not think they do; they are very subjective, particularly Amendment 12. What is

“globally competitive in relation to audience and quality”?

Regarding the phrase

“continues to attract significant domestic and foreign investment”,

what is “significant”? I do not think it is helpful to include words like that.

For what it is worth—my noble friend the Minister probably will not like this—I think paragraphs (e) and (f) of Amendment 12, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Maude, make sense, because we can clearly see what they mean. I would say the same of the Amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson. Amendment 7 is rather rambling and unclear and is not suitable for inclusion the Bill. We need something clear that can be measured, rather than words like “substantial”, which could mean anything or nothing.

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[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

It is absolutely worrying. These countries have the right to do what they like with their money, but we have a right to say, “I don’t really wish to engage with that”, because we become tainted if we do that to an unlimited extent. That is a slightly different argument from that of playing competitive matches in other countries. That surely is something that we all agree would be bad for the future of English football. There are plenty of ways of bringing money in from all sources—if clubs want to do that, it is up to them—but playing matches outwith this country is surely not where we want to go.

That impacts on the whole question of fans and my amendment, which is: what is a fan? I do not know whether my amendment is the way we should define it, but I think it is the narrowest definition of a fan that I have heard so far in relation to this Bill. How do you define the Liverpool fan in San Diego? What does she or she have to say about what is happening in the Premier League? They may watch it on television and that is fine. They may express a very definite preference for one club, and they are entitled to do so. But they do not have a vested interest in the club in the way that someone who pays their money to go and see a match does.

I will repeat the point that I made last week. Some people are unable to afford the price of tickets, particularly in the Premier League—although I have to say in all honesty that I bought a theatre ticket last week, which cannot really be equated with the cost of a Premier League football ticket. But the other question is whether some people are physically unable to go. It may be somebody who has been going since they were 10 years old; they reach the age of 70 and find they are no longer able to go. I would sympathise with that.

However, we have been talking in the Bill about the regulator ensuring consultation with fans. You cannot consult somebody if you do not know where he or she lives. There has to be a list somewhere of the people you are going to consult. You cannot just open it up online and say, “Anybody with an interest, let us have your view by email”. That is not consulting—or at least consulting properly. So people who have bought into the club by having a season ticket: that is a reasonable way of saying, “These are the only fans we can genuinely define”. You can put them in a box and say, when it comes to consultation, “That’s the group of people because they have put their names in”.

They do not go to every match, of course. I often laugh when I read the football results and they show the attendance. I do not mean any disrespect to Arsenal, but I will use them as an example. They are going rather well at the moment, but they were not going well five years ago in the latter days of the Arsène Wenger period. You would see a match the Emirates Stadium and it was perfectly clear that there were almost as many empty seats as filled seats, yet the next day the papers would say the attendance was 100 short of capacity. That means the club is saying, “Ah, now, but we’ve sold those seats. Season ticket holders have bought them but they’re not very happy at the moment so they haven’t come”. My argument is, “Okay, that’s fine, but the key to the attendance is the word ‘attend’. If people don’t go, there’s not an attendance”. Still, the point is that these people have made a financial commitment to the club, and that is a basis on which to go forward.

That is why I disagree with the other amendments in this group, particularly Amendment 26 from the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and Amendment 17 from the noble Lords, Lord Markham and Lord Parkinson, which refers to those

“who have an interest in seeing the club succeed”.

That is so vague; we have to have some way of pinning it down. If there is a better way of doing that than through season ticket holders, I am open to that suggestion and I will consider it. But, until then, I believe that is the only basis on which we can do it. I also want to see it in the Bill.

[Baroness Brady (Con)]

Suppose we base it on season ticket holders. If you take a club such as Bournemouth, whose capacity is 11,000-ish, it will probably have 4,000 season ticket holders—but they would not represent all the views of every Bournemouth supporter in the whole world.

In relation to supporters around the world, if a supporter gets on a plane from Sweden to watch Bournemouth play, are they a supporter or not? Some 5% of inbound flights to the UK involve taking in a Premier League game—I mean, the Premier League could run a successful airline. Putting that point to one side, though, it would be impossible for a regulator to try to rank supporters of the club in order of priority. We all know, respect and love our season ticket holders, but not everyone is lucky enough to get a season ticket—particularly if you are a Bournemouth supporter, because the capacity is only 11,000-odd.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

On the noble Baroness’s last point, I do not want the regulator to be doing this. That is why I want it in the Bill. This is not an issue where there can be any subjectivity. There has to be something tight.

Bournemouth may have season ticket holders in Sweden, I do not know, and if they come, they come. If they do not come, though, they are still a season ticket holder, so they are entitled to be consulted. But, if there is no financial commitment, I just do not understand how you can possibly meaningfully take the opinion of someone who just says, “Yeah, I’ve been at a couple of Liverpool games, I always watch them on TV and I’ve bought a scarf”. I am open to suggestions as to how we might pin this down better, but pin it down in the Bill we must.

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[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I have the last amendment in the group, which seems to be where my amendments are occurring today. I think we should have somebody at each club who addresses this issue. I am with the noble Lord, Lord Deben, on this; it is an undeniable thing. You could probably quote one person who has said, “No, it isn’t”, but you cannot list everyone else who says that climate change is real without being here all week. They will then disagree about its extent, but they will not disagree on the fact that it is real.

There should be somebody at each club doing exactly these things to make sure that the business is sustainable, and to address the various problems. If it is just one person, as was suggested, it is simply a question of saying, “Please pay attention: can we raise the issue and see what is going on?” This could be someone who is managing the flood risk; the fact that grounds are being flooded is unarguable. Someone should be saying things such as, “What is the least damaging type of cup?” All of these issues will be important at different levels to different groups, but they are important. If other regulations are coming up to deal with this, you would be an absolute fool not to bring them into your plan.

The noble Lord, Lord Deben, is probably right on this, and it is nice to see him on the Bill.

[Baroness Brady (Con)]

My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, I rise to strongly oppose the idea of adding environmental sustainability to the regulator’s remit, as this group of amendments seeks to do. I do so not because this issue is unimportant: of course, it could not be more significant for us all. My objection is both practical and principled, because barely has the ink dried on this revised Bill, and already we are seeing a litany of attempts to extend the regulator’s scope. This, I am afraid, is what many of us who work in football are so worried about. We are the first major country to introduce a government regulator for football, and immediately there is pressure to have it solve every challenge on the spectrum.

Let me remind noble Lords: this Bill already gives enormous power to the regulator. It can decide who can own a football club; how the club can spend its money; how it should organise itself as a business; how it must engage with its supporters; in what circumstances it can move location; the approach it should take to equality, diversity and inclusion; the overall flow of money; and even the continued existence of key competition tools throughout the ecosystem. However, even that does not seem to be enough. Today it is environmental sustainability; tomorrow it will be something else. We already have amendments tabled to mandate specific kinds of corporate social responsibility; to add the women’s game to the IFR’s scope; to meddle with free-to-air listed events; to require regulator consultation on political statements made by clubs; and even to govern football clubs’ relationships with sports betting.

It is a well-known phenomenon that all regulators significantly expand their scope and size over time but, if we start before it has even begun, imagine what this regulator would look like in a decade. Where will it end? I do not expect it to be anywhere positive for our currently world-leading football pyramid.

The Premier League and its clubs, as well as many EFL clubs, are already taking substantial action on environmental issues, as all responsible businesses should do. We already have comprehensive environmental regulations that apply to all businesses, as well as the aggressive targets of a country reaching net zero. In addition to serious and often innovative action to reduce their own carbon footprints, many clubs also campaign and donate substantial resources to environmental campaigns.

Premier League clubs also do a huge amount to help other clubs in this regard. Let me give one example: the Premier League has put in place a brilliant programme to provide grants of up to 70% of the costs associated with installing modern LED floodlights at stadiums across the National League system and women’s football pyramid. This has already helped dozens of community clubs both to lower their running costs and to minimise the impact they have on the environment, but it is fair to point out that Premier League clubs make these sorts of voluntary contributions while facing already unprecedented financial demands. Again, I will give one example.

The Budget increases to employers’ national insurance contributions will cost Premier League clubs an additional £56 million annually. That is an extraordinary new burden—more than £0.25 billion over the rest of this Parliament. This new bill also comes on top of the £1.6 billion in pyramid support that we already provide, as well as our significant investment in youth development and community programmes, and the constant need to maintain expensive infrastructure and build new facilities. The Government want us to spend even more on grass-roots pitches and, through the Bill, they may force us to give even more to the well-funded Football League.

All of this is before Premier League clubs can focus on their most basic and fundamental requirement—of which the Bill takes so little account—to keep their own teams strong and competitive on the pitch. Let us remember that that is what the fans really care about. It is our ability to do that which underpins the overall health and sustainability of English football.

We must not compel this regulator to interfere in areas far beyond its core purpose, adding yet more cost and complexity to what is already a set of implementation challenges. Every additional requirement we add dilutes its focus and risks its effectiveness, so this group of amendments surely cannot adhere to the basic principles of good regulatory design. Effective regulators need clear, focused remits. They need to do specific things very well, not everything poorly. Let us not undermine this regulator’s clarity of purpose before its work even begins.

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

My noble friend Lady Brady makes some very powerful points. Any business sector would not argue against or disagree with best practice in terms of the sustainable aspects of their business. In football, you need only look at the quality of the hospitality element and the work that goes on there or the maintenance of the grounds and pitches.

Carlisle United has been mentioned several times. The river is in the centre of town and it floods regularly, but that is a matter to do with the location of the club and the river in that city. This comes to my other point about the historic nature of football clubs and their grounds. Many of them were built in the Victorian period in the centre of cities. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, talks about sustainability and transport, but it is very difficult for many clubs—Premier League and other league clubs that are located in the centre of towns—to do the things that the noble Baroness is proposing to insert into the Bill.

I will just give a quick example of sustainability, and that is Old Trafford. It is situated between Manchester docks and a railway line, in Trafford Park. The carbon footprint of Trafford Park has significantly reduced over recent decades, and Manchester United and other clubs throughout the league have reduced their carbon footprint, because that is the right thing to do. It is good business practice and therefore we do not need these amendments, because the football clubs themselves know the benefits of offering good-quality hospitality and good performances on pitches.

Some of your Lordships will remember the summer of 1976. It was a sign of global warming, perhaps, but the quality of football pitches in 1976 was terrible. The grass did not grow and the technology of the day did not enable pitches to survive that drought. The technology is there now and it is sustainable. Football clubs have the power, technology and wherewithal to cope with climate change but, if they are located close to a river in the centre of town, there is really only one solution, which is to move that football club.

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[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I speak to Amendment 165 to which my name is attached. I declare my interests; I am chair of Sport Wales, I sit on UK Sport and I am a trustee of the Foundation of Light.

I start by thanking the Minister for answering my question from Second Reading on what would happen between the Privy Council and Senedd regulations with this Bill. I am not a season ticket holder, although I do spend a lot of time watching the Welsh women’s football team—good luck to them tomorrow night—and Thornaby FC women’s team.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Addington, I believe in the power of football to change lives. I realise that most of the amendments that I have my name to in this Bill will be considered out of scope, but I do share the noble Lord’s concern over academies. My 2017 duty of care report, commissioned by the then Sports Minister Tracey Crouch, has some answers on that which have not yet been taken up.

This is important in relation to understanding the communities of which football clubs are part. We have talked a lot about the big clubs tonight. Thornaby Football Club, which is very low down in the leagues, decided earlier this year to cancel the women’s and girls’ team. The community came together, people stepped in—partly due to the Women’s Sport Collective—and the team was saved.

This, to me, is the power of football at its best. There is a lovely interview online with a young girl called Lily, aged seven, who was asked what she thought about women’s football being cancelled. She indignantly said, “If girls want to play football, you can’t just not let them”. For me, the impact that these amendments would have all through the game is important; it sets an important tone.

In the original review, Dame Tracey Crouch said that equality standards were a non-negotiable part of the regulator. We have seen this in other sports. The code for sports governance, launched in 2016 by the sports councils, which covers over 4,000 organisations, has made a materially positive impact on the world of sport.

I believe that club governance should include these equality standards, because they link back to accountability and integrity. I can speak only for the Foundation of Light. I am biased, but it runs incredible programmes in communities as lots of foundations do. We are lucky that we have a good link to, and support from, the club. The aim of the foundation is to involve, educate and bring people together through football in Sunderland, south Tyneside and County Durham, and to improve education, health and well-being

This has a significant impact on the community. It is important that we can measure this impact in relation to the community it represents, to help develop and refine these programmes and get to those who they can have the most impact on. This is an important part of what we should be looking for in relation to football, to be able to make a real difference at the grass-roots level.

[Baroness Brady (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak against this set of amendments, which would add corporate responsibility requirements to the Bill. Before I do so, I want to say how much I respect and understand where the noble Lord, Lord Addington, is coming from. As a shareholder in the Premier League, I commit to him that we will meet with him to think about ways in which we can work together to deliver some of the aims that he spoke so passionately about, because we are all in agreement that they are important.

I want to make sure there is no misunderstanding in this House of the extraordinary social impact that football clubs already have in their communities and what drives this activity. Let me share some perspective on what football clubs already deliver. The Premier League provides over £500 million annually to support lower league clubs, fund youth development and invest in community facilities. We support every single football league club to provide its own community programmes, too. This is not a peripheral activity; it represents the most comprehensive community investment of any business sector in Britain. I cannot think of any other sector that voluntarily shares such a huge proportion—over 16%—of its central revenues in such a way.

The Premier League Charitable Fund’s £110 million three-year budget supports half a million people annually through targeted community programmes. Significantly, 45% of this activity takes place in our country’s most deprived communities. This April, the Premier League announced additional funding of £33 million per season from 2025-26 to further enhance this work.

The scale of impact that this work has is remarkable. Through the Football Foundation, Premier League funding has enabled over 70,000 grants to improve grass-roots facilities, supporting nearly 70,000 community teams last season alone. The Premier League Primary Stars programme reaches 84% of primary schools across England and Wales; that is 19,000 schools and over 18 million student interactions since 2017.

These are not isolated initiatives. More than 100 club-connected charities work daily in their communities. Programmes such as Premier League Kicks create opportunities for young people at risk of anti-social behaviour. Premier League Inspires develops personal skills and positive attitudes in young people aged 11 to 25. This work touches every aspect of community development.

Football has naturally evolved its social contribution without regulatory compulsion or diktats. What other business sector can demonstrate this level of sustained community investment? What other industry has built social responsibility so fundamentally into its operating model? Premier League clubs—indeed, all football clubs—understand their role as community institutions and deliver accordingly.

The Bill’s purpose is to address specific issues around what I think the Government mean by financial sustainability and governance. Adding layers of corporate responsibility requirements would not only duplicate existing good work but risk distracting the regulator from its core purpose. We have seen in other sectors how regulatory mission creep can undermine effectiveness. We must not let that happen here again.

Football clubs are not just businesses that happen to do some good work in their communities. They are the beating heart of those communities, woven into their very fabric across generations. When a child steps on to a Premier League-funded pitch in a deprived area, when a struggling student finds inspiration through Premier League Inspires, and when a disabled young person discovers the joy of playing football through a club foundation, these moments represent something profound about football’s role in our society.

Premier League clubs understand their power and their responsibility deeply. They live it every day through their actions, their investment and their commitment to their communities. I do not believe any regulation could ever mandate or compel this level of social impact; it comes from an authentic and deeply felt understanding of football’s unique place in our national life.

Let us keep the regulator focused on its vital purpose and trust instead in football’s consistent commitment to social good: not because rules demand it but because it is already so fundamental to what makes English football so special.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, that eloquent and passionate explanation of football at the heart of community sums up for me the tension when we are talking about this Bill. Football exists as a positive force in society and in communities. We do not want to kick the life out of it by turning it into a box-ticking exercise that imagines the only way football clubs will help a community is if they have a regulator breathing down their neck, saying, “You must be corporately socially responsible”. Noble Lords must not make me repeat that.

I had concerns in general when I read the details of all these amendments. For example, Amendment 165 calls for environmental sustainability requirements and increasing diversity and inclusion requirements. I will not repeat the points that I made earlier and will make more fully when I speak to my Amendment 155, opposing the imposed duties of EDI and so on. I want to look at one aspect of discrimination that I think is hidden. It is focused on in Amendment 247, which says that regulated clubs

“must facilitate football training for young women and girls”,

and Amendment 90, which says that the independent football regulator

“must include facilitation for both sexes and separate development pathways”.