Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Birt and Lord Markham

Committee stage
Wednesday 27th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Birt (CB)]

I agree that that reassurance is essential, but the only way to get it is not through publishing the letter but through knowing that UEFA and FIFA have agreed that we would be compliant.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

On that point, I think that is the only way. We all agree that this would be such a big risk. I looked it up before the debate, because this is not just the equivalent of us scoring an own goal, it is like a hat-trick of own goals, so I looked at whether there has ever been an example of a hat-trick of own goals. I found out that the most own goals ever scored in a match was 149. We may go close even to that. There is a real point here, and it was very well made by my noble friend Lady Brady, but I really want to unpack it.

What we are talking about here is a lot more than what the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, was saying about the pure financial sustainability of clubs. The concern of UEFA is:

“A Member Association may … be suspended if state authorities interfere … in such a significant way that … it may no longer be considered as fully responsible”.


The Premier League has thought very carefully about how it wants to bring in such things as parachute payments in order to, as we were talking about before, have competitiveness right the way through the game. It is to encourage those clubs—again, I have spoken to clubs about this—to invest, even though they might be in the bottom half of the table, because if they get relegated, they have that safety net. Without that safety net of parachute payments, they would not invest, so they would not be competitive.

What we are talking about here is that if we start to alter those parachute payments and the regulator starts to get involved in that, that is fundamentally altering the competitiveness of the game, so interfering in a way that I feel that UEFA, given the comments it is making, is absolutely going to say that we are overstepping the mark. To my mind, the only way to overcome that, while it is helpful to have these amendments, would be to have a meeting with UEFA—I know meetings have been had—and having a letter from UEFA clearing it, saying that this is something it is happy with and that it will not cut across it. If we do not do that, there will be a fundamental danger of what I think all of us would agree would be the biggest own goal of all.

NHS Dentistry

Debate between Lord Birt and Lord Markham

Monday 19th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for raising this and declare my interest as my wife is a dentist, although she is not currently practising. It is accepted that we have made sensible improvements to the dental contract, but a fundamental longer-term overhaul is needed. In terms of the ability to get registered with a dentist, that is what the mobile trucks are all about. We realise that in certain areas it is difficult to get that registration. The idea is for mobile trucks to go into a neighbourhood where there is a particular shortage to resolve the problem.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, while working at No. 10 in the early noughties, I was involved in a strategic review of the NHS and was shocked, at the time, to discover how poor the long-term workforce capacity planning was. The total number of dentists currently working in NHS England—around 25,000—has not changed by more than tens or hundreds over the last five years. In that period, more dentists have left than joined. At the same time, fewer than 1,000 dental students have been enrolled each year. Precisely how many dentists do we need to bring NHS capacity in line with demand? In what year, again precisely, will that point be reached?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

The noble Lord is correct in talking about the supply challenges. That is what the long-term workforce plan is all about, and why we are committing to a 40% increase in training places by 2030. The other issue that he rightly raises is the balance between the cost-effectiveness of providing private versus national health dentistry. The problem is that it is often seen as more lucrative for a dentist to go down the private sector route. That is why we are trying to rebalance that and have introduced an increase in the minimum charge to £28 for a unit of dental activity, and £50 for a new patient, to try to bring services back more in favour of the NHS.