Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Evans of Rainow and Lord Mann

Committee stage
Wednesday 4th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mann (Lab)]

My Lords, I have talked to quite a number of major new investors in English football and have not found one who opposes the general principle of having a regulator. They are quite relaxed about it, yet they are the major new investors. I think one reason is that, when people invest, they often find some hidden nasties that had not been disclosed about the investment and its finances. That extra element of transparency is not necessarily a discouragement to investors; it can be an encouragement, particularly to reliable, long-term investors.

If you talk to a random selection of football fans, one case that will always quickly crop up is the Glazers buying Manchester United, not with their own money but with leveraged buyouts. I am rather more benign about the Glazers, because their intentions were always very open: they were borrowing money from reliable sources and attempting to make a profit. I would not be too comfortable about that if it were my club, but it cannot be denied that what they did was clear, transparent and out in the open. Anybody who thinks that there are not people today who the fans believe are generous and beneficial owners who have put lots of their own money in, but who have in fact borrowed the money from sources that are not public, are being rather naive, because that is still a model through which people buy football clubs. Football clubs are easy to move money in and out of and speculative investment has proven over the last 20 years, particularly in English football, a reasonable bet and may continue to be so. Indeed, the whole case of the Premier League is that it will continue to be so, so the regulation being proposed is not necessarily an anti-business case.

There is another interesting aspect that does not come to light because we do not know about it. I hear from current and recent professional players about the impact and influence of agents. Are there now agents who are sufficiently powerful in the game, with the corporate entities they have created to own footballers and, more critically, footballers’ rights, that their unseen investment in a club could have an influence in ways that the wider public, including the fans, do not know about? It seems to me, from a fan perspective, that that is a problem for the health of the game. On balance, the good, long-term investor who could make good money —that seems to be a rational motive—will be in favour of this element of transparency and not against it.

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Mann, with his very pertinent points on agents and fans. I rise briefly to support my noble friend’s Amendment 27 and to make a point about owners being fit for purpose, fans’ interests and consultations and unintended consequences. Along with other noble Lords, I spent last Friday afternoon with the shadow regulator. I asked whether they were aware of how unpopular they could be. I used the example that has already been used of Newcastle United, which has a new owner and a sovereign wealth fund, and the fans are excited because of the potential that brings. That is great, but what would this regulator make of the new ownership? Compare and contrast that with the previous owner, Mike Ashley.

Noble Lords will be aware of what Newcastle fans thought about Mike Ashley: in their eyes the team was underperforming and he was not investing in the club and its players. However, he was probably being prudent and working within the constraints of the rules of the game, and the regulator might have judged him to be a perfectly fit and proper person to run and own that club. I ask noble Lords to imagine a situation where the regulator says to a sovereign wealth fund owner, a country such as Saudi Arabia, “I do not believe you are a fit and proper person to take over and own this club”, but the fans think it would be wonderful. The regulator could end up in a situation with literally tens of thousands of protesters going down to Manchester from clubs like Newcastle.

As the noble Lord said, Brighton and Hove Albion supporters are very passionate, and he clearly did a good job there as a council leader. However, we know that fans will travel all around the country to support their team and we could end up with the unintended consequence of the regulator denying the potential of an owner to buy a club based on his set of rules and regulations, but tens of thousands of fans would disagree and we could have a situation where they would go down and protest. That could be one of the unintended consequences, so perhaps the Minister could let the House know whether the Government have thought of that.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Debate between Lord Evans of Rainow and Lord Mann

Thursday 24th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Graham Evans]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. It is only 15 years since the genocide in Rwanda, in the mid-1990s, when the whole world stood by and allowed it to happen. He is right to say that we need to remain vigilant in relation to Rwanda and other countries.

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

I am leaving in the next few minutes to go to Hungary, and I shall be speaking in the Hungarian Parliament tomorrow morning with politicians from five other countries about the statements made by the new party, Jobbik, which called in November for there to be lists of Jews rewritten by the Hungarian state, for purposes to be determined. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that even today there are extremists who would perpetuate race hate, even among politicians in western European countries?

[Graham Evans]

I wholeheartedly agree. The hon. Gentleman must have been reading my speech, because I was about to come to that exact subject. I wish him well in Hungary; I am sure that he will be a fine representative for the whole House.

When we stop remembering our collective history, because we no longer have first-hand accounts from people who were there, or simply because it shows the unpalatable truth about how we can turn on a minority, we risk making the same mistakes. It is inevitable that they will be repeated. Evil men know that. Adolf Hitler knew it. He frequently referred to the Armenian genocide, which took place between 1915 and 1923, during the Turkish Ottoman empire. One million people were murdered and another million were displaced, but the memory of it had all but disappeared by the 1930s. The world had moved on, and the vigilance against similar events had all but disappeared. History, it appeared, could simply wash the blood away. Adolf Hitler knew that when he went to war against Poland and Russia: he thought that if he could win, he could commit mass murder and genocide throughout Europe—he thought he could get away with it.

My application for this debate came to the Backbench Business Committee in the wake of a surprisingly under-reported outburst by the deputy leader of the Hungarian party Jobbik. During a debate in the Chamber of the Hungarian Parliament, he demanded that a list be drawn up of every Jewish Member of Parliament, and Government Members claimed that their very presence posed a national security risk to the country. Such words should bring a chill to any rational person’s heart. The response by the Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, was impassioned. He said:

“as long as I am standing in this place, no one in Hungary can be hurt or discriminated against because of their faith, conviction or ancestry.”