Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Lord Bassam of Brighton

Committee stage
Wednesday 15th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, there stands a contribution that does not know how tedious, time-consuming and expensive it is to write reports. Now we are putting on the same people, whom we have just said are going to be drowning in bureaucracy, another report for which they have to compile all the information and write. That was my view.

Although that is a simple point, it should be in the Bill because it is an underestimated threat of the Bill. I have no doubt that the Minister and the Government do not intend—

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

I made this point at an earlier part of our considerations. Put simply, all these clubs are limited companies and are regulated effectively through an audit process, so all of the financial information that will be required will be accumulated as a process and a product of their annual audit. I do not see that as excessive.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I will carry on and make my point and we will see whether we can agree. I am concerned about it being excessive, but if it is not, this proposed new clause will prove the noble Lord right and me wrong, and that would be fine.

I wanted to start with the way that fans have really gone along with the Bill because they see it as something that will save smaller clubs and keep them from going under. Everybody knows about Bury and other clubs such as Chester City, Hereford United and Halifax Town. One of the most compelling things about the need for the regulator and the Bill is this notion that we will be able to save unsustainable, smaller clubs from going under. That is what gives it its moral force. People can rail against the big bad Premier League in some ways, and I understand that the Premier League, with its fans in the Chamber, is all we have talked about. I am glad that in this amendment we have started to talk about those smaller, poorer clubs, because I am worried that they will suffer as a consequence of the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Hayward, explained that very well, and I just want to just tease that out a little more.

It is not just about operational costs in terms of compliance in a direct financial way. It is also the amount of energy and time that is going to be taken to comply by these very poorly staffed clubs, which have, say, two full-time members of staff plus volunteers. We know that time is money. I remind your Lordships of the speeches that we heard earlier on in Committee. The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, made an excellent one about what it takes to write a corporate governance plan. I try to illustrate what it means to comply with equality, diversity and inclusion policies—forget any ideological disagreement on that. It costs time and money. By the way, to fulfil the EDI plans, you have to send all your staff on training. For example, the Civil Service at the moment spends 1 million days of Civil Service time on its civil servants going on EDI training. That is an indirect cost. The paperwork needed to keep this regulator happy—by the way, under the terrifying threat that you could lose your licence if there is non-compliance—really needs to be taken into consideration. It is not just money; it saps creativity and life out of the club, which in a way is a slightly different cost.

Recently, David Riley, who has moved from his role as legal director at the Competition and Markets Authority to become head of legal at the IFR, posted the following, rather boastfully, on LinkedIn:

“The first job is to recruit a team of lawyers to work within the shadow regulator as the legislation progresses. These lawyers will play a central role in shaping the IFR legal function, and working with others to help the IFR prepare to deliver on its statutory objectives”.


I read that out to a group of football fans, who said, “Oh my God, that sounds terrifying! Imagine if you’re running a small football club”. If you are a smaller, cash-strapped club hearing this, it is immediately about lawyers policing your work. You have no in-house experience to cope, so you think you had better bring in experts, consultants and third-party bodies. Again, that can lead to eye-watering costs, let alone your independence being undermined. I am concerned about that.

I will quickly take a step back, because sometimes we can get trapped in the specifics of football and all the passions and emotions associated with the game. I remind the Committee that one reason why so many of us are worried about this Bill is because of examples of other regulators created by legislation leading to damaging unintended consequences.

In terms of proportionality, a few weeks ago the tech journalist and academic John Naughton wrote an article in the Guardian bemoaning the terrible toll that the Online Safety Act and its heavy-handed regulator Ofcom were having on smaller, community-driven online forums, even though the Act’s stated aim was to target big tech and harms. I never really agreed with the censorious assault on big tech anyway but, as I argued with the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, when he was on the other side and taking the Bill through the House—just to show that I am not sectarian—there is always a danger that compliance costs associated with any regulator, in that instance with the Online Safety Act, will make it untenable for smaller platforms to bear the brunt of the law. As John Naughton explains, that is what is happening as we speak, leading to the potential closure of forums with benign purposes—his examples were those discussing cycling and cancer care.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Lord Bassam of Brighton

Committee stage
Monday 9th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, I have not had the chance yet to speak to my amendments but I am grateful to other noble Lords for participating in the debate and making their comments and views well known. I am slightly disturbed that the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, has rather overinterpreted my Amendment 156. I was not aware that I was in favour of imposing quotas, but it is an interesting point.

Amendment 156 is there simply to raise the issue of ensuring that in corporate governance, football clubs are obliged to improve the diversity within the club, not just among season ticket holders but among staff and senior managers. We have made great progress through football and its barrier-breaking approach to the world of sport over the last 30 or 40 years. I can remember some pretty unpleasant scenes at football grounds when I first started watching football seriously. Gladly, those have become much less frequent but there is a real and genuine issue about representation, particularly of black players then not getting opportunities in off-field representation at all levels of management.

I have received a useful briefing today from the Black Footballers Partnership, which points out exactly that. Only two of the current 92 league managers are black, despite black footballers making up 43% of the players. The Black Footballers Partnership data shows that despite achieving 14% of all FIFA pro licences and one in four of UEFA licences, black players secure only 4% of the coaching and other managerial roles. There is clearly something not right there.

It is important that clubs are obliged to think through some of these issues. Quotas may or may not be the way to do it but we have opportunity here for football to think about improving the levels of diversity, not just in football management but in all management positions and other roles within the clubs. As the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, said, clubs have led the way and have played a really startling and dynamic role over time.

With this amendment—and I am grateful to those who have signed it and spoken to it—I am trying to get football to begin thinking more widely about diversity in its broadest sense so that in the future it is just part and parcel of how it should be. I guess the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, would think that this is regulation creep, but I do not see it that way; I see it as setting standards for the future. Football has a proud reputation, and it is one it should build on.

In this amendment, we are seeking to encourage football to build on its reputation, because that is what needs to be done to make the world of football more inclusive and better reflect the society in which it is located. If we can do that, I think the values of football—competition and solidarity—will be much better represented. It would add to the fairness and equity that is there within a very competitive game.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I think the motivation behind the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, and the intervention by the noble Lord, Lord Goddard of Stockport, posits diversity as something you cannot possibly be against. Of course, we are all against prejudice—I hope—and that seems very commonsensical. In fact, the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, made the point that he tabled this amendment so we could have a proper discussion about diversity.

The problem for me is that diversity, in the context of governance of organisations, is already established across a wide range of organisations. I am afraid it has not been for the good of those organisations. I will address the problems of diversity as a bureaucratic intervention, especially in the hands of a regulator, and why I think it will not be good for football. That does not mean I am implicitly on the side of people who are racists or not interested in equal rights or fairness.

It is important that we have some perspective here. We might note that there are 64 different nationalities represented in the Premier League, as well as a myriad of religious denominations. For players in all the different football teams across the league, that is surely proof of meritocracy—rather than box-ticking diversity schemes—that provides the riches of talents, that is colour-blind and that is not interested in people based on their characteristics.

I also think we have huge diversity in fanbase, and it has not needed a regulator to organise schemes to ensure that English football is loved by hundreds of millions of people of all shapes and sizes, ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds across the globe. Meanwhile, female fans, players and popular momentum are propelling women’s football into the limelight. Therefore, I do not think that football is an example of a pale, male, stale institution that is waiting for a regulator to sort it out.

Both the amendments I am concerned about, Amendments 156 and 249, mention the clubs’ employees and monitoring and reporting on staff diversity. But I think we need to take heed of some of the negative lessons from other workplaces, particularly the public sector. Whatever the intention, too often an over-preoccupation with diversity is less likely to create more fairness for staff but does create an explosion of jobs for human resources—HR—apparatchiks, who manage the diversity and inclusion schemes that we set up.

It is worth noting that Britain has one of the largest HR sectors in the world. It is one area of growth that somebody somewhere might be proud of, although I am rather in despair at it. According to the British Labour Force Survey, there was an 83% increase in HR jobs between 2011 and 2023. As journalist Lucy Barton pointed out, that means that HR workers currently outnumber NHS doctors three to one. Let that sink in. A lot of this growth is due to job creation in relation to EDI demands. I do not think we should go ahead with these amendments on diversity and inclusion but, if we do, I propose some sort of cost-benefit analysis. The salaries needed for the hours and hours of paperwork that the regulator will be checking that the clubs do could be incredibly financially burdensome—even crippling—on many clubs.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Lord Bassam of Brighton

Committee stage
Wednesday 27th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

The noble Lord, Lord Jackson, made a point about Clause 11. I have read it and I have also read the previous Clause 11. As far as I can see, they are absolutely identical. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, can help us, because he would have been in the DCMS at the time. Was it the case then that Ministers sought assurances from UEFA and FIFA that there was nothing in the Bill’s powers that would have offended them? If that is the case, and if Clause 11 is so important in the argument of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, this argument is probably a bit of a non-argument in the end, because we have had that clarification and assurance through the exchange of letters that took place in September this year.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I think this is important. The last two contributions have just reminded me. I do not care what was in the previous Government’s Bill, which, to be honest, I would have stood up and argued against at that time as well.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

I entirely accept that the noble Baroness would have done that, but I was more concerned about the argument coming from the Official Opposition.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I agree, but I was going to appeal to us myself to try to tackle the Bill—which is so important in many ways—with at least a little of the spirit of what is in the best interests of football, rather than what is in the best interests of the political footballs of political parties. That is just an appeal—it might not work—because Henry VIII powers, for example, are anti-democratic and illiberal whoever uses them. I do not therefore want not to be able to criticise them in case somebody thinks that I am on the side of the Tories or that I am anti-Labour. That is not the point, surely.