Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 2nd December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goodman of Wycombe (Con)]

My Lords, I will follow my noble friends Lord Moynihan and Lord Markham in their references to the Delegated Legislation Committee.

I hesitate to disagree with anything my noble friend Lord Moynihan says in any way, but he described me as a senior member of the committee, and I am afraid that this is not accurate. I am, in fact, the most junior member of the committee, having arrived only very recently, but certainly in time to consider this Bill. When I joined the committee, I found that it was very worked up about the rise in secondary legislation, as it set out in its key document, Democracy Denied?, published in 2021—I will come to the significance of that date in a moment. It criticised the use of Henry VIII powers, disguised legislation and skeleton legislation, saying:

“The abuse of delegated powers is in effect an abuse of Parliament and an abuse of democracy, and this report will, we hope, be a prompt to strengthen Parliament in the coming years”.


I find myself in an awkward position here with my own Front Bench, because in 2021 a Conservative Government were in office. The committee clearly feels that this tendency for skeleton legislation, Henry VIII powers and so on has carried on from 2021 to the present.

My noble friend Lord Moynihan will remember that at Second Reading, he drew attention, as I did, to Clause 92(3), which states:

“The Secretary of State may by regulations amend …the definition of ‘football season’”


and

“the definition of ‘serious criminal conduct’”.

Such is the exquisite moderation of the committee that we did not follow that matter up in the report, but we did concentrate on the issue, raised by my noble friend Lord Moynihan, of the leagues not named in the Bill. He has read out the relevant sections of the report, and I have no intention of reading them out again.

However, I reinforce the closing point made by my noble friend Lord Markham and put it to the Minister in the form of a question. Can she confirm or deny that if the leagues in the pyramid were to be named in the Bill, the Bill would therefore become hybrid? She is nodding, and she will doubtless amplify on that nod when she responds to the debate, but that is a very important point. If that is the case, did the Government refer to that in their discussions with the committee clerks when they were drawing up the report?

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, nobody faint, but on this issue I fully support the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson. I bear the scars of Democracy Denied? It was an excellent report that it took us quite a long time to bring through. The Government cannot have it both ways. We say that the purpose of the Bill

“is to protect and promote the sustainability of English football”,

yet it does not explain what English football is.

That is the nub of this. We spent hours on the first part of that, but the second part we seem to want to leave to the Government, because it is seemingly easier to amend delegated powers than primary legislation powers. That is not the point. What is in the tin should be on the front of the tin. It should name what it is doing, which is the Premier League and the Championship. It could go down the tiers and include leagues north and south. You would then have a full list of what this legislation is covering. It is probably just bad drafting, and no more than that. This could be done very simply. Everybody would then understand what the Bill is about.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I will speak to my amendments in this group, and I want to extend the point that the noble Lord, Lord Goddard of Stockport, has just made, as it is a very important one.

I appreciate this may have been a painful experience for the Minister, the Bill team and others. We have spent our first two days in Committee looking at Clause 1 and the definitions of “the sustainability of English football”. However, as the noble Lord said, the lack of precision in the Bill in that regard is what has elongated our debates over the last two days in Committee and so concerned the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee of your Lordships’ House. It bears repetition to draw the Committee’s attention to paragraph 3 of the committee’s report, published on 22 November:

“The fundamental purpose of the Bill is to ‘protect and promote the sustainability of English football’. One must go through a series of definitions only to find that the Bill does not, after all, provide the definition of English football. Ultimately, the meaning of ‘English football’ depends on regulations to be made in due course by the Secretary of State”.


That is why we have had some rather tortuous debates on the opening clauses of the Bill, and why we are concerned to ensure that this Committee brings the focus we need to the deliberations on this important Bill.