Football Clubs (Insolvency)

Debate between Jim Shannon and Justin Tomlinson

Tuesday 18th March 2014 Westminster Hall

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

I apologise for arriving late, but I had to serve on a Delegated Legislation Committee. It is a great pleasure to support both this debate and the private Member’s Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins).

I am an unabashedly huge football fan, and I have two brief points that are slightly too long for an intervention. My first point is on the Insolvency Act 1986. I represent North Swindon, and we have Swindon Town football club, which has entered administration twice and avoided it on many other occasions. We have had a number of owners, some good and some less good. The hon. Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) mentioned St John Ambulance, and his point applies to Swindon, too. We had a number of good local businesses—genuine suppliers—that were left high and dry each time the club’s ownership changed. Various wealthy people managed to get away completely unscathed while those who were working hard to support our vital community football club were left with their fingers burned, which made it a lot harder for the town to continue trusting the new owners.

My second point is on transparency. We have heard about the situations in Portsmouth and Coventry, and the same applies to many football clubs across the country. As supporters, we simply do not know who is responsible for the football club and who is ultimately making the decision to spend more money than the club can viably sustain. I have previously called for every football club to have an elected fans representative on the board. Ultimately, we need business people who are good enough to raise sufficient money, but stupid enough to go and waste it chasing domestic success when running the club, and an elected fans representative would at least always ensure transparency.

My hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt) described people trying to work out who the administrator was, but the fans representative would provide a link inside the football club. The football clubs would benefit, because at the end of the day, we long-suffering supporters are the customers. We buy the season tickets, the replica shirts, the Christmas presents, the programmes and the pies at half time. Having that rep on the board would offer a link to those customers. The rep could suggest where things are going right and where there are further opportunities to grow, as well as perhaps being the front that liaises with the local community, building trust in and support for the club.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I also apologise for not arriving on time for the debate. I was also on a Delegated Legislation Committee and I took a little bit of time to get down here. I am pleased to have the chance to support this debate. I support Leicester City, and have done since I was a wee boy. We are looking forward to going back to the premier league, but we have had difficulties in the past. The loyalty of supporters and their contribution to their club, whether socially, physically, monetarily or in time—they might attend all the matches—are important. I totally support the hon. Gentleman’s point that the clubs should have within their administration some method whereby supporters clubs, or individuals on behalf of supporters clubs, can have an input into what happens.

[Justin Tomlinson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments, which I agree with. I see that representative being elected through the supporters trust network. We have had a number of Supporters Direct events in Parliament, and we have all seen at first hand the fantastic work that it does.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Tomlinson]

I believe the individual ended up at Carlisle, and the club had a chequered time under his stewardship. Time and again, we are seeing people coming in for various different reasons without the interests of those football clubs at heart. I understand the world of business, but these clubs are valuable community assets. The Government need to apply pressure to the Football League and the Premier League, because it is in their interest to get their houses in order.

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Gentleman is being gracious and kind in giving way again. We are referring to the English Football League. Will there be an opportunity for the Minister to look at what is happening in Scotland and the other leagues? I think of Rangers FC, which is an institution. I have supported the team since I was a young boy. The club has dipped in and out of administration and still has difficulties in the board room. The club is important: at its past three matches, 115,000 fans have come to support it. Does the hon. Gentleman feel that we have to look beyond the English league to the leagues in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales?

[Justin Tomlinson]

I absolutely agree. The issue affects football clubs across the country. In Scotland, there is the worrying experience with Hearts. As with Portsmouth, people are trying to do deals, but even the club cannot identify the owner.

School Sport

Debate between Jim Shannon and Justin Tomlinson

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Westminster Hall

[Justin Tomlinson]

The point behind my remark was that when the Government were making their judgment about whether the school sports partnerships were delivering value for money, they looked only crudely at the number of children taking part in competitive sport, which was two in five children. That figure did not change. However, what did change significantly was the number of children who were not doing any sport at all who then took up sport. They might not have been playing in regular leagues outside school, but they were at least being active—whether that was just for the two hours a week or whether it led to other opportunities.

For example, when I was touring my constituency, we saw encouraging signs; people were doing things such as cheerleading and street dancing, which were incredibly popular but because they were not strictly sports in the traditional competitive sense, they were not included in those crude statistics on competitive sport. However, those people were being active. When I was the lead member for leisure, I did not care what people were doing, as long as they were doing something that increased their heart rate. I also say that with my hat on as vice-chair of the all-party group on heart disease. We are keen to encourage such activities.

The change in position allowed nine months for the school sports partnerships to, in effect, go to schools and secure funding. I do not recognise the point about cuts to the funding; it is just that the funding is no longer ring-fenced. The challenge that remains for school sports partnerships is that not every school necessarily identifies sport as a priority. The Swindon school sports partnership has managed to ensure that around 20 schools have signed up to carry on in pretty much the same format as before. However, a number of schools have decided that there are other priorities for that money and, by removing ring-fencing from the funding, they are free to make that choice. I think that such a choice is wrong for those schools and when I meet those who work in them, I regularly push the benefits of providing sport. We must deal with that challenge. It comes down to individual heads; it is fair to say that if a head has a personal interest in sport, it is certainly pushed to the forefront.

[Jim Shannon]

Does the hon. Gentleman consider that there is a role for private investment and partnership with schools as a way of getting more money for the programme? Is that something he has considered and, if so, how does he think it will work?

[Justin Tomlinson]

I absolutely do, and I will come to that point shortly.

There are some advantages to the changes that have been introduced, but we need to work out a way to ensure that schools continue to see sport as a priority. There was another reason why we had to look again at how the school sports partnerships worked. In my constituency, it was a very good partnership, but we heard in the debates on the subject that in other constituencies people who work in schools were saying, “They aren’t delivering very much. I am very passionate about sport as a head teacher. I would like to employ my own choice of sports coach directly.” To a certain extent, therefore, some schools now have better provision, because they have gone directly to the person they think can provide sporting provision in the areas where they had gaps.

It is also fair to say that the school sports partnerships that are still in existence, including my own in Swindon, have had to step up their performance, because that cheque is no longer guaranteed. They have to go to schools and make a pitch about how they will deliver additional benefits to them. There is still a role to play, however, in helping those SSPs to be in a position to deliver improvements, because, by and large, they are sports enthusiasts and are particularly good at organising sports events. They are not necessarily geared up to be a semi-business—a not-for-profit business—so there should be a role to provide additional help in that way.

In response to the intervention, I would like to see SSPs identify additional partnership opportunities, not just through the private sector, but through working with local authorities, the local NHS and sports forums and local sports clubs. To give a good example, if a school offered only football every week and wanted the SSP to bring in street dance, it should bring in not a one-off coach, but representations from street dance clubs, so that children who enjoy a taster session in school then have the opportunity to join a club and take up the activity on a regular basis. Local authorities can play an important role in that regard. The equivalents of the lead members for leisure and the key officers should sit down with the SSP organisations and say, “You can bring the following people to the table and we’ll help co-ordinate that,” so when the SSP then pitches to individual schools, it will be able say that it will not only provide two hours of street dance, but will bring in supporting clubs and give advice on nutrition and on how to do a variety of other beneficial tasks above and beyond the obvious reasons for it to go into the school. That is about asking what more we can do to make SSPs seem much more attractive to schools and to keep sport as a priority.

On what is happening in schools at the moment, I would like to see changes in relation to two particular challenges. The first is the cost of insurance, which is an issue that I have raised in a number of debates. The majority of teachers are relatively young, and young people are very expensive to insure. We need to be able to bus pupils around in order to promote school games and take them to learn outside the traditional school environment. Many teachers are young and new recruits are getting younger, so the cost for schools—it is a burden—is incredibly expensive. I keep urging the Government to consider a national deal; schools throughout the country purchase things, so surely, as a collective with huge economies of scale, we should be able to get a better deal from the insurance industry. I encourage that.

I have been told by an inspirational local physical education teacher, Julie Lewis, about a second element in relation to insurance. In order to drive a minibus, the driver needs a certain D-class element on their licence. Julie already had that—she is of a similar age to me—so it was a relatively simple process. She just had to go to the local authority and carry out a simple test. She passed and was then able to drive the minibus. The younger teachers now have to do three days of training, which costs about £2,000, so that is another burden that the school has to weigh up: when budgets are tight, is it worth releasing teachers for three days? All too many schools like the idea of doing it, but they cannot afford it, either because of the cash or because they do not have the time to release teachers. We need to look at that.

PE teachers also face a dichotomy in relation to their priorities. Julie told me that she is extremely keen to provide after-school clubs. The children love them and embrace them, and really want to take them up. If she could offer as many sessions as she would like, they would all be full. However, she has to plan them at the same time as she should be planning her lessons, and planning her lessons to make sure that they are delivered in the correct manner is what is judged by Ofsted to determine whether she is a good PE teacher and whether the school is a good school. There is a clash; one area is being judged and rewarded, but it is as if she has to magic up a way of providing the after-school classes that might be of most benefit to the children.

I have talked to other teachers. A friend of mine worked in a challenging school in Oxford. During his first year as a qualified teacher, he was full of enthusiasm and provided a huge range of after-school sports clubs. They helped with behaviour and with tackling crime in the local area, because the children were not hanging around street corners straight after school. They were doing something constructive and positive. My friend then had the opportunity to do one-on-one tuition, for which he was paid. He could not be in two places at once. His heart said that he wanted to do his bit for the children he was there to inspire and for whom he played a positive role, but his brain said that he wanted to go on holiday and that he needed to buy a new laptop. In the end, the financial reward prevailed.