Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Lord Deben

Committee stage
Monday 2nd December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

It is good to get a laugh before you start. I genuinely worry about the overreach summed up in this particular group that, for example, requires football clubs to operate

“in a way that will achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050”,

or

“materially reduce their negative impact on the natural world and all species that inhabit it”.

That is just from Amendment 15.

We already know the potentially costly and devastating impacts such green policies can have for organisations and individuals, let alone the barriers on development and growth that they can pose. Imposing such regulatory requirements on football clubs seems ill-advised and could be financially draining. I appreciate that, as we may have heard from the response to my initial remark, the noble Lords, Lord Bassam of Brighton and Lord Addington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and many others, will not agree with me politically, but my main reason for speaking is that this group exemplifies what happens once the Government open the floodgates to political interference in football by adding, for example, equality, diversity and inclusion as a mandatory part of what the regulator must inspect in football. If EDI is in the Bill, others will argue “Why not ESG or net zero?” and mission creep will start in a dangerous way. Such politicised interventions threaten to make the game of football secondary to political priorities and jeopardise clubs’ autonomy.

We have already heard from a number of contributors about a kind of league table of worthy green clubs. Do not get me wrong: if football owners, or chairs, or the fans decide they want that to be the priority, that is up to them. But it should be nowhere near the role of a regulator to decide. We have already heard about the case of green multimillionaire Dale Vince, who is the major shareholder and chair of Forest Green Rovers; we have heard him lauded. Certainly, Forest Green Rovers are the world’s first all-vegan football team; they are also the world’s first carbon-neutral football club; but I note that, at the end of the 2023-24 season, they were relegated back into non-league football, coming 24th out of 24. It is not a scientific correlation, I am just noting it.

Also, does having green credentials benefit fans, who we keep being told this Bill is designed for? Note the controversy over Forest Green Rovers’ home strip. The traditional black and white stripes were swapped for a lime green shirt and black shorts, in line with sponsorship from an eco-friendly, EV-supporting, green YouTube channel, despite what the fans wanted. So the Green Army was not necessarily kept happy by the green politics of the chair of the club. I simply raise this because, if a club wants to go green and fans want their club to be more environmentally friendly, that is fine. But the regulator should have absolutely zilch to say on it and certainly no power to impose it.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I had no intention of speaking in this debate until I heard that last speech. I will, first of all, remind the Committee of my interest, because the company which I chair helps quite a number of people in football to meet the sustainability needs that we have.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Deben (Con)]

There is no scientific society of any major country that does not say that climate change is the biggest material threat to mankind. All of them say and support the view that by 2050, we need to get to net zero if we are to have any possibility of keeping within a 1.5 degree increase in temperature compared with pre-industrial periods. All of them say that, if we do not do that, the effects upon people will be enormously damaging. You only have to look at what has happened with just a 1 degree increase: the recent floods in Spain, for example, the wildfires and the rest. What my noble friend says is not true and it is very dangerous, because that kind of attitude is what allows people to get off the hook.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I do not want to get into a fight among Tories, but I want to clarify my position. I disagree with both noble Lords, in some ways. My point is that I want football clubs to focus on football and not to have rows like this. This is precisely the thing I am objecting to: the introduction of at least in some ways contentious political or scientific matters. I simply say that this should not have anything to do with the regulation of football. That is all, and that is the reason I oppose it—not because I am taking a particular view on climate change or net zero.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Lord Deben

Consideration of Commons amendments
Thursday 31st March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I think the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, is right to raise the important point about our constitutional obligations. I am tentative about what I am going to say because I am anxious not to act in defiance of an elected Chamber, not just for constitutional reasons but because democracy is very valuable, and we should have modesty in relation to our role in this place. However, I do feel that, at the very least, the Government are obliged to untangle some serious confusion about why the legislation in relation to protest is even necessary.

When it was originally introduced, there were grandiose claims that this was the Government responding to public concerns—a real clamour from the public—about dealing with new forms of protest. It is true that there has been a lot of anger in the public realm about new forms of protest. Anybody who objected to the amendments tabled by the Government was dismissed as “ignoring voters’ concerns”—just by objecting, in effect, they were being anti-democratic. Yet now the Minister comes back here and suggests that, in relation to the noise trigger, for example, it is a just a modest update of the law and it will not be used very often. It seems to me that the original motivation for these clauses has been lost, and we have ended up with a disproportionate and unnecessary commitment by the Government to deal with a non-problem.

There is perhaps some confusion because earlier this week, as people will have read in the newspaper, a mum was banned from driving for what was described as “nudging” some Insulate Britain protesters. She was trying to get her 11 year-old to school and was exasperated that the protesters would not move, and that the police were not acting to remove them. There was some popular backlash to the fact that this driver was the person who was prosecuted, and at a meeting I talked to people who said, “Well, the mum is not guilty of dangerous driving. The problem here was the failure of the police to police the protest.” They went on to say, “At least the Government are acting and bringing in a new law that will deal with this sort of thing.” When I explained the nature of the new laws that were being brought in, in relation to noise and static assemblies, they said, “What’s the good of that? That won’t deal with the problem of the mum and the motorway and the protester”, and they are right.

Despite reservations, I support the noble Lords, Lord Coaker and Lord Paddick, in the amended amendments that they have brought back, taking on board the modest comments that have been made. I think that these anti-protest clauses are being mis-sold to the public, who, when it is explained to them, do not see any connection between their clamour and these clauses being brought in by the Government.

If there is an issue with protest, it is possibly that the police have not consistently policed protests that have happened over the last few years with the powers that they have, and there is public concern about that. It seems to me that both these clauses, as illustrated by the points made from the Front Bench, will make the police’s job even more complicated and will compromise them politically because they will be accused of subjective interpretations of what is “too noisy” and what is the threat of a static demonstration. I think the Government will inadvertently help to politicise the police, and make the situation of protests more confusing, and they are not doing what I think they originally wanted to do, which was to assure the public that their concerns about new forms of protest would be honoured in legislation. These parts of the Bill do nothing useful for anyone.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I do think that we ought to consider carefully what my noble friend Lord Cormack said, but it might lead one to a different conclusion. This House is increasingly treated as if it does not really matter at all. The Government are not taking seriously very simple suggestions, when making them is our job—suggestions to make Acts work properly. Today we have had an example of what the Government can do. I thought the noble Lord, Lord Russell, put that extremely well. The Government have recognised that the sensible, continuous pressure of the House of Lords has brought them to make alterations—not exactly as the noble Lord would like, but a good way in that direction. It is notable that it has taken us all this time to do it.

What worries me—I say to my noble friend Lord Cormack that this is a serious constitutional matter—is that the deal works only if the House of Lords believes that its debates and discussions are useful and taken into account by government. What I have seen here is wholly different. This is nothing to do with my noble friend Lady Williams; it is to do with the Government as a whole. When I was Secretary of State, I would say to my Lords Minister, “These are the five things I need. Those are the 10 things I’d like to have, but if their Lordships produce good arguments for other things, then you must give way to them, because that is the purpose”. What Lords Minister today is able to do that? Yet that was the deal; that was why we were here. This is a really serious issue. It is no good the Government saying in the end, “Well, we’ll just use the majority in the House of Commons to shut you up”, when the arguments we have been bringing forward are not great arguments of state or great arguments which clash; they are about making the law work.

The other change that has taken place in the House of Commons is that Members there do not debate these Bills any longer. They do not have the hours that we used to have. When I was a Member of that House, we used to have to have 100 hours of debate before you could get a guillotine. Now we do not have to have anything like that; guillotines are automatic. So if this House does not do its job and discuss these things in detail, they will not be discussed at all. That is the constitutional issue we face today.

I will address only the one thing which I think is very clear. It is incomprehensible to have a law which gives the police the right to stop a protest because it might be too noisy. The Notes of course make it ludicrous. I am very worried about the domestic arrangements of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, if the only thing he can discuss with his wife is the laws as presented by this Government. If I started to discuss those with my wife, I think my domestic arrangements would be very unsuitable. I merely say that the reason you go on a protest is to draw attention to something. The noble Lord rightly said, and I think I said it myself when I intervened previously, that the more popular the cause, the more likely it is that there will be noise. If I had a protest about the unfair treatment of chihuahuas, I might not get many people with me and I probably would not be stopped—but a protest on, for example, the unsatisfactory dealings with Ukrainians coming to this country might raise huge numbers. Do the chihuahuas get a campaign but the Ukrainians do not—and who makes that decision?