Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Addington Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 13th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, to what problem is this Bill a solution? That should be the first question we ask of every piece of legislation but, not for the first time, I find that I am the only person —so far, at least—who has asked it. Here we are, a revising Chamber conceived as a check on the necessary radicalism of the popularly elected Chamber. It is precisely our job to uphold the principles of proportionality, propriety and property. As my noble friend Lord Goodman said, of course people are going to be angry about individual market failures now, but it is our job to foresee that their anger will be all the stronger when there are worse failures, as assuredly there will be once the entire business is taken into state regulation.

I ask again: to what problem is this a solution? Are we facing national bankruptcy as a result of the terrible failure of football? On the contrary: every speaker so far has acknowledged the success of English football. The Minister called it our greatest cultural export. I understand that not only is the Premier League the most watched in the world but the sixth most watched is the English Football League, and they are the first and second in terms of takings at the gate. So to what problem is this a solution?

There are plenty of things that need reform—we have a Civil Service that has stopped bothering to show up at the office since the pandemic and a healthcare system that is delivering fewer and fewer procedures despite getting bigger and bigger budgets—yet we seem to be going after all the things that work, whether it is the City of London, private schools or now, outstandingly, what everyone agrees is the most successful football league in the world.

What are we going to solve by doing this? The Bill talks about the one notional problem of clubs closing and being allowed to close. The one that everyone keeps mentioning is Bury, but I cannot help noticing that Bury is still there. It is a wonderful example of what Joseph Schumpeter would have called spontaneous order. Without any regulation, that was solved. Can we be certain that, with the full force of coercive law, we would have improved that situation and made it more likely that we would have had the investment to come back?

I used to work at the Sunday Telegraph—in fact I still write a column for it, as did my noble friend Lord Goodman for a while. We had a former colleague there who is now, sadly, deceased, Christopher Booker, who had the wonderful phrase, “using a sledgehammer to miss a nut”. I am afraid that is exactly what I can see this legislation doing. It is not going to succeed in its declared notional goal but, my word, it is going to have a lot of unintended and unforeseen secondary consequences.

Who has ever known a regulator to say, “Actually, our job is done, we’re going to dissolve ourselves”, or even, “Do you know what? We’re probably doing a bit too much. Let’s take a step back”? Has there ever been an example of any regulator that has volunteered to relinquish its power? Once this one gets going, who can say for sure that we will not have gender quotas, net-zero policies, ticket price fixing and any manner of things beyond the remit originally foreseen? That is what regulators do. One more time, what is the terrible crisis that is so severe that it justifies bringing in a measure of this magnitude?

I was very impressed last week during Questions by the responses of the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross. Those who were here will remember that there was a debate about boxing and about male-presenting boxers in female boxing rings. Despite a great deal of moralistic fervour in the Chamber, the Minister quite properly stood by the principle that it was not for Governments to tell independent sporting federations what rules they should follow. That has been a pretty good principle in this country.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, if the noble Lord will take an intervention, it was actually about two rival bodies with different definitions of what they were, one of which was corrupt.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

None the less, the principle surely applies that these bodies, whether they are for boxing, football or anything else, exist to serve their members, and they have done so extremely well—this is something that sets us apart from a lot of other places in the world—without needing state regulators. It would not occur to somebody setting up a sporting federation now to go to the Government for a licence, and that is in keeping with our common-law traditions, in keeping with the principle of free contract and property and in keeping with the history and temper of this country.

Let us not abandon what should be those core principles that have served us extremely well. Let us defend the freedom of private organisations, which have never asked the Government for a penny in support, to do what they do well. Let us not intervene in something that is working extremely successfully. There is a basic principle that is often attributed to Edmund Burke, and in fact I think you can trace it all the way back to Confucius, but I am going to express it in the words of the third Viscount Falkland, a Civil War royalist who, if he was not exactly the first Tory, may reasonably be said to be the forerunner—let us say the morning star—of Toryism: “If it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, the first thing that I must do is admit to your Lordships that I am possibly not of your tribe. Of those here, I would lose the least sleep if football disappeared overnight—or at least not very much. However, I am in the minority. I was brought up within earshot of Carrow Road in Norwich and when it was a good day and nothing else much was happening, you could hear the noise coming across.

I know most people identify with a soccer team, and even I still check whether Norwich have done well and wonder what things will be like at home. It does not go further than that—I am a person who thinks that the church might look nice in good light but I do not worship there.

I welcome the Bill, at least in its intentions and approach, because I have covered sport for a long time and am interested in it. For a long time, I have heard about bad managers, bad actors and people taking over clubs. It used to be a property deal: you take over a nice city centre ground somewhere and want to turn it into flats or something else, and you offer the fans a deal that is miles away. The world has moved on and the money is bigger, but that is where I came in on this. There has always been a tradition that football attracts those who are doing deals—and fantasists are in there as well—and who want to take advantage of tradition and structure. If the Bill is about more than a business, we need the regulator. We need something for those people who feel that football and being a supporter of a club is a vitally important part of their lives.

We have a long tradition and a lot of clubs in the English leagues—and in Britain generally, but we are talking about the English leagues here. I recognise the comments that Wales should probably be addressed in Committee. There are five full-time professional leagues. Most countries get away with two—and let us face it, their trophy cabinets are a heck of a lot fuller than England’s most of the time. Look it up. How many times have Spain, Italy and Germany won the European Cup? And let us not talk about the World Cup, as the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, pointed out earlier with incredible simplicity and directness. We have a lot of these institutions, which people cherish, and that is why we need the regulation.

These are not businesses in the traditional sense of the word but something more. They can be sweated as assets, but they are not businesses as most people would understand them. They are institutions. As they are institutions that are part of our society, I would hope that the regulator will be prepared to act; there is no point in having powers unless you act—a regulator that does not act is basically a waste of paper. We will have to have a regulator that goes in when somebody breaks the rules and bites hard enough to leave a scar. They have to remember that it happened. It may not have to do it very often, but if we have a regulator that does not do it or that holds back, we will have problems. It will become bluster or a threat. We all know that, if you want an enforcement capacity, making sure that something happens is infinitely more successful than a big threat or a reference to “maybe sometime in the future”. We will have to do something along those lines.

If anybody here agrees with me—my noble friend Lord McNally should have been here, and the rest of my colleagues do not seem that inspired by this subject—

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Addington (LD)]

I thought I would let that one fall.

If we are going to do this, what do we need to do to get out the great social power that this has? I would like to see a little more attention paid to using the great power we have in association football, or soccer—call it what you like—as a positive thread throughout society. If I remember correctly, Clause 1(3)(b) talks about that social power.

Would it not be wonderful if all these clubs that we are giving so much attention to and regulating properly did a little something that steps just outside football? I have a radical suggestion: why not have them run training schemes for people to be treasurers, secretaries and chairmen of voluntary groups and sports clubs—something small like that? That is my starter for 10. This would make sure that these clubs contribute to the society from which they draw their fan base and would make them an even better social asset.

There are many other things that have been suggested to me. For instance, should we be taking on the green agenda, as has been suggested by my own party? The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield suggested this also, along with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, who does not seem to be here at the moment.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I am here.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

She is a moving target— I appreciate that. If we are going through this structure, maybe clubs can be used for other social methods, but only if they are properly regulated.

The fact of the matter is that football—particularly at many of the clubs lower down—has been hanging on by its fingernails, and by tradition. What bank manager would have put up with some of the financial stresses we have heard about recently if they were dealing with anything else? Virtually none. There is something special about football. I hope that the regulator will put it on a firmer foundation.

As to my opinion on whether we should have parachute payments, and whether the arbitration is set to go through, football has had a chance to sort this out for itself. We would not be here if football had got a hold of it, spoken to itself—the various bits—and sorted this out. The previous Government brought a Bill forward only because football did not do those things. Football could have addressed this itself, so it should not blame others for its own inactivity. We have a situation where, as all noble Lords have said, a club going down will have greater costs than a club that is already down. Whether we use parachute payments or something else, that has to be addressed. I look forward to suggestions on that.

We have something here where we are trying to make sure that something fundamental to much of our society survives all the way down in its historical structure. That is what we should be worrying about. Yes, we must make sure that it remains a success—it will be much easier with football generating the money—but that social capital, that investment of faith in this game, is something that I hope all sides will say should be preserved. I look forward to discussions at later stages of the Bill but I hope we remember that we are not talking about a business or casual activity. We are talking about something that touches many people’s lives. I know that, and I am not part of it.