Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Brady and Lord Goddard of Stockport

Committee stage
Monday 9th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

I hear what the noble Baroness says about diversity. This weekend, a West Ham player, Antonio, had a terrible car accident and is in hospital now. If you had seen some of the vile and disgusting comments on social media about the player and the club, you would begin to understand why we need diversity.

I have just looked it up, and the dictionary says that diversity is

“the practice or quality of including or involving people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds and of different genders, sexual orientations”,

and that

“equality and diversity should be supported for their own sake”.

I do not have that rosy picture of football supporters. I lived through the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and heard the chants at various football grounds, which we cannot now repeat in this Chamber. Things are getting better and more acceptable, but it has not gone away. We need diversity to be brought to the fore.

As for the idea that we can just let the clubs do nothing and let this evolve, that just will not happen. We need to make statements. We need, via the regulator and via some of these amendments, to enshrine things in a regulator’s role. What is wrong with having a diversity report that a football club would produce once a year? It is not a tick-box exercise; it stops comments being made about certain footballers about gender, colour, creed or whatever. The more we can introduce that and embed it into football, the less vitriolic nonsense we will get. You still hear it, even on Sky, when they then say, “If you heard anything you shouldn’t have heard, we apologise for that”. That is what you get as an answer—but it needs stopping. These kinds of amendments are needed to enshrine in the regulator the ability to say to clubs, “You will give that report and commit to doing all those things around what diversity means”.

[Baroness Brady (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his comments about the West Ham player, Michail Antonio. It was a real shock to me on Saturday when I received a call from the police about his car accident, but I am pleased to report that he has had an operation and is recovering well. I take the opportunity to thank all the NHS staff and all the emergency services, including the air ambulance and the firefighters who cut him free from his car.

I agree with the noble Lord that the comments footballers are subject to is a terrible shame. It is absolutely horrific and that is a problem with social media. Clubs themselves do everything they can. At West Ham, we have the highest standard of equality and diversity; you cannot be awarded any higher standard than we have. We take it very seriously and that feeds down through our entire club. I thank him for making those comments. Football is trying to deal with those things, but there could be help from other places. We know about the Online Safety Act and that could really help.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Brady and Lord Goddard of Stockport

Committee stage
Wednesday 4th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brady (Con)]

I can confirm to the noble Lord that only seven were invited. They were selected.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

To be helpful to the Committee, could the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, give us the names of the seven clubs? That might shed some light on what is going on here. There seems to be an illusion that the Premier League was suddenly born out of the ether, and then provides for all. Players such as Ryan Giggs, Phil Foden and Alan Shearer do not just suddenly materialise; they come up from the other divisions. I get what the noble Baroness is trying to do, and I respect her position, but you have to look at this in a holistic way. This is about a regulator regulating for the five divisions, and if it is not blindingly obvious to anybody what those five divisions are, they may be sat in the wrong place.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. It has been worth while having it again, painful and irritating though it may be. I am sorry if that upset the Minister—it certainly was not my intention to do so. I did it because this issue matters.

By the Minister’s own admission on Monday, she did not know about the issue of hybridity until it was raised with her on Monday. Does she think that a few hours’ consideration, along with all the other matters we gave attention to in Committee on Monday, and a few minutes’ debate in Committee late on Monday evening, is sufficient to dispose of an issue as fundamental as this?

As I said in my opening remarks, the Government Chief Whip knew about this issue at the same time I was alerted by the clerks, on 26 November, almost a week earlier. I am grateful that he stayed to listen to our debate on this group. Maybe he, if not the noble Baroness, can tell us what discussions he had in light of that issue being raised with the usual channels on 26 November. This is about engagement with the people, organisations and businesses that this new law will profoundly affect. I was shocked to hear what my noble friend Lady Brady said about only seven hand-picked clubs being given just half an hour of—