Football Governance Bill [HL]

Baroness Fox of Buckley Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 13th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[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”.