Lord Faulkner of Worcester
Main Page: Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Labour - Life peer)Accessible Sports Grounds Bill [HL]
Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts
Lord Faulkner of Worcester
That the Bill be now read a second time.
Relevant document: 5th Report from the Delegated Powers Committee
Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)
My Lords, I start by expressing my thanks to all noble Lords who have indicated their wish to speak. I hope very much that the Government and the football authorities in particular will appreciate the great support that exists in this House and outside for the principles underlying this short but necessary Bill. Its purpose is to create a civilised and safe environment for disabled people who want to watch sporting events at football and other stadiums. The Bill does so by giving local authorities a discretionary power to refuse a safety certificate to sports grounds which do not comply with the accessible stadia guidelines published by the Sports Grounds Safety Authority. I am proud to declare my unpaid interest as a vice-president of the charity Level Playing Field, which has done so much to raise the profile of disabled sports fans and to campaign effectively on their behalf. I pay tribute to the zeal, courage and dedication of LPF’s chair, Joyce Cook OBE, who has raised to great effect the needs of disabled fans in Britain and indeed in Europe.
Your Lordships will be aware that this is not the first time that I have raised the subject in this House. Almost exactly a year ago, on 14 July 2014, I asked an Oral Question about how the Government planned to ensure that professional sports clubs follow the accessible stadia guidance. I drew attention to the letter written in April 2014 by Mr Mike Penning, the then Minister for Disabled People, to all professional clubs, in which he described the situation with professional football as,
“‘woefully inadequate’, when it was revealed that only three clubs in the Premier League, the richest league in the world, comply with the requirements for the number of spaces for supporters in wheelchairs”.
I said that,
“the time has now come for equality law to be properly enforced and the guidelines, which have been in place since 2004, properly implemented”.
Answering for the Government, the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner of Kimble—who I am delighted to see is in his place on the Front Bench—said that,
“the Government are committed to ensuring that all spectators have enhanced and appropriate access to sporting venues and services, and that professional sports clubs are aware of their responsibilities towards disabled spectators. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is working with the Department for Work and Pensions on a range of measures to ensure that the rights of disabled spectators are met by professional sports clubs … Premier football clubs have considerable means and I think that they should be looking to do very much better”.—[Official Report, 14/7/14; cols. 374-75.]
I think that we can all say amen to that. The “considerable means” to which the Minister referred included the clubs’ share of the latest broadcasting deal, which amounts to £5.34 billion.
Let us consider the depth and impact of the problems faced by disabled sports fans. More than 12% of the UK population is disabled, with one in four families having a disabled member. This number is expected to rise significantly over the next decade or so as healthcare continues to improve, with survival rates and life expectancy increasing year on year. At any given time, more than 40% of the population requires easy access. This includes families with young children, senior citizens and people with temporary injuries or ill health. The annual spending power of the UK disabled community, which is our largest minority group, is estimated to be more than £80 billion. Accessible venues are more sustainable, and inclusive facilities and services make good business sense. When disabled people are unable to attend a public event or use a service because of poor access, then most often neither will their family or friends. This means that inaccessible venues lose business and also owners lose their reputation.
Attending a live football match or sporting event and supporting your local team or club is an integral part of our culture and traditions. Matchday crowds are at last becoming more diverse and representative of our wider society. This should naturally include many more disabled people. Social inclusion and equal access is a basic human right and a fundamental pillar of social justice. It is clear that many people experience great joy and a sense of belonging in being able to follow live sporting events and their local team alongside fellow fans, family and friends. But for our disabled fans, that cannot happen unless our sports stadia and venues are truly accessible and inclusive. Service providers and public venues have a legal duty under the Equality Act 2010 to provide accessible facilities and to remove the barriers that may prevent disabled people from using their services.
The Act requires disabled individuals to challenge service providers who are not meeting their legal obligations through the civil courts, but it is neither realistic nor fair to expect disabled fans to take this on individually. We would be asking them effectively to sue their own club—something that is anathema to most sports fans because of the life-long, loyal relationship that they may have with the club that they support. Disabled fans who have considered taking such action will tell your Lordships of the threats that they are subject to if they take on a multimillion pound club.
This is not a new issue. We have been aware of the problems faced by disabled sports fans for more than 25 years. Following the Hillsborough disaster, Lord Justice Taylor made a series of recommendations for disabled fans back in 1990. Then, in 1998, the report of the football task force, on which I served as deputy chairman, went further than Lord Justice Taylor and made 52 recommendations to set mandatory requirements on the minimum number of wheelchair-user spaces and adapted seats for disabled people. The report recommended improvements for disabled fans in line with the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, including decent views, shelter from the weather, and access to toilets, refreshment bars, ticketing and stewarding. It also proposed annual visits by hit squads to all the grounds to conduct access appraisals of facilities and to monitor progress. That report was agreed to by all the parties represented on the task force, including the Premier League.
Following those recommendations, the National Association of Disabled Supporters—the predecessor of Level Playing Field—carried out access appraisals of all football clubs in the professional game between 2000 and 2002. Yet no further funding or follow-up was provided to continue with that important work. In 2003, the Independent Football Commission reported on the lack of progress in implementing the 1998 football task force recommendations in the annual report.
Football should do better and can do better. For an indication of what can be achieved, we should look at what happened with the London Olympics in 2012. Access and inclusion were integrated at all stages of the planning and everyone was committed to ensuring that it was there from the outset. I suspect that we may hear from the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, and possibly the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, on that subject during this debate.
There is often talk about the difficulties of improving access to existing football stadia because of their age. This is an indefensible argument, especially when we consider the extraordinary wealth of the Premier League clubs. They have no difficulty in finding money for improving and extending their hospitality and media areas or in spending incredible amounts of money on players and managers. Earlier this week your Lordships may have read in the sports pages the report of Raheem Sterling’s transfer from Liverpool to Manchester City. Monday’s Guardian states:
“Agreement was … struck on Sunday afternoon on a deal which will cost City an initial £44m, with a further £5m due in add-ons. The player is now formally free to discuss personal terms and undertake medical checks with his new employers. A long-term contract worth around £200,000 a week”—
I repeat, £200,000 a week—
“has in effect already been agreed”.
The accounts for all Premier League clubs for 2013 have recently been published. The annual wage bill for all Premier League players was £1.85 billion. The weekly wage bill was £35.4 million, and the daily wage bill, based on a five-day working week, was £7 million. If all Premier League players donated just one day’s pay, their clubs could reasonably improve their disabled fans’ facilities to meet at least football’s own minimum standards. As I have said, the minimum standards of football are significantly lower than those set by other bodies such as Sport England, the London 2012 Olympic Delivery Authority and the International Paralympic Committee. Football’s own standards are less than half of what those bodies have accepted.
Only 14 of the 92 professional football clubs in England meet football’s minimum numbers. Of these, only three Premier League clubs exceed those standards and more than one-third meet less than 50%. Top clubs not meeting the standards include Chelsea and Manchester United. Almost 1% of the population uses a wheelchair, yet Old Trafford provides only 120 wheelchair-user spaces, which is equivalent to less than 0.15% of the overall stadium capacity.
Disabled fans at 55 of the 92 professional clubs have no choice but to sit with home fans as away supporters, and many have stopped travelling to away games because the situation is so awful. Disabled fans are often asked to hide their team colours and to refrain from celebrating goals. It can be an intimidating and hostile experience. They have been verbally abused and threatened, and some have had coins, cigarette lighters, urine and other items thrown at them. The Accessible Stadia guidelines state:
“Designated viewing areas should be provided for both home and away”,
disabled spectators.
Let us be clear about the matchday experience. Surveys show that 82% of British football fans agree that being around other fans in the atmosphere of the grounds is as important as watching the game itself, and 85% associate football with friendship and camaraderie. Disabled fans should not be deprived of this experience. Being able to sit with your family or friends at a match is taken for granted by most fans but that is frequently denied to disabled fans and they often have to sit in a completely different stand or even use a different entrance. Recently, a father of three young sons, a Manchester United fan, was told to go and support Stockport County if he wished his disabled son to sit with the rest of the family. There are reports of walking aids being confiscated and of guide dogs being banned.
Poor sightlines within disabled fans’ seating areas are commonplace, with views blocked by stewards, police, players warming up on the touchline, match officials and other fans who insist on standing. Several clubs have resorted to putting signs on the back of seats asking non-disabled fans to remain seated. Not only does this not work, it is ridiculous. Fans always jump to their feet at crucial moments of a match and block the view of the fans behind them. In some Premier League grounds, persistent standing is commonplace, with disabled fans often located at the back of stands behind such fans. Accessible parking and accessible amenities are often limited, of a poor standard or non-existent, and there is a lack of suitable drop-off points. The situation is especially difficult for some older fans and those with limited mobility.
Let us be clear: when a disabled person is denied access or provided with a lesser service, it is discrimination and exclusion in its worst form. It sends a message to disabled people that they are somehow less important, less valued and less worthy. Is that the reputation that we wish for our sports, our national game, our clubs, our leagues or our governing bodies, or do we seek true inclusion? It is now clearly time for new measures. Everyone has so far failed in their efforts to persuade the clubs to do the right thing and to play their part. It is apparent to all of us who have been involved over the last few years that the clubs will not fix these issues themselves. It is time for effective regulation. That is why this Bill, or one drafted along these lines, is so urgently needed now. I beg to move.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester
My Lords, I thank all the speakers who have contributed to this debate. It is unusual for the three main-party speakers, the Cross-Bench speaker and a right reverend Prelate all to meet on exactly the same side, promoting the same cause. I am grateful to every one of them for such powerful and, in some cases, entertaining speeches. I hope that ears are burning at certain clubs. I am perhaps thinking of one club up in the north-west which I am sure will read the remarkable account by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, of the emails that she has exchanged with Manchester United. Other reports will come out of the debate that are of great significance.
I am grateful in particular to the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, because of his experience and because, as he said, we worked together on some of these issues in the 1980s. I like his thought that the Bill would benefit by being strengthened. That is not exactly what his noble friend on the Front Bench said in her reply a moment ago. However, I can assure your Lordships of my intention to continue with the Bill into Committee, and I am very willing to consider amendments from whatever source they come. I have already made an offer to the Minister for Sport, with whom I discussed the Bill on three separate occasions, that if the Government would like to see amendments made to it, we will consider them, and I am sure that there will be amendments, perhaps along the lines of those proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, and other noble Lords.
Quite frankly, the talking needs to come to an end on this issue and there needs to be some action. With great respect to the Minister, disabled people do not need yet another period of consultation on what they need when they attend sports grounds—rather, the consultation that has gone on almost without cessation over the last 20 years needs to be taken into account, and action needs to be taken now.
We have heard from all noble Lords in the Chamber today the feeling that using cost as an argument is completely unacceptable, particularly in a sport where the sums of money involved are absolutely eye-watering. Therefore to use cost as a way of not making progress is not a good argument.
I was particularly grateful to the Minister for reaffirming something which I do not think I have heard a Minister say before, that the accessible stadia guidelines apply equally to old stadia as well as to new. Some people in the Premier League have said that they apply only to new stadia, so the fact that the Minister has said that they apply to old ones as well is of great importance.
I should say that I had a conversation with a very senior official of the Premier League while waiting for a train three weeks ago. He said, “How’s the Bill going?”, and I replied, “I think it’s going to get a lot of support in the House”. He said, “We can’t say so publicly, but we think our clubs need a nudge”. This will be quite a big nudge, and we will go on with the Bill in the autumn. For the moment, I ask the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.