Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Goddard of Stockport and Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay

Committee stage
Wednesday 18th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

I support the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, and the noble Lord, Lord Bassam of Brighton, because I have walked this tightrope. When I was leader of Stockport Council, we had to financially advise and support Stockport County on several occasions. In the end, in 2013, we acquired the freehold and leased it back to the new owner of Stockport County, Mark Stott, for 250 years. That enabled him to get investment in and get the football club moving back into the league and climbing the divisions. That is where we start from: the position of the club and its value as a loan against something.

If we can get local authorities and other people to get hold of the freeholds, that will save Toys-R-Us from being built on certain football grounds on the south coast and give the clubs real opportunities to move forward. So we should support the amendments. We should also probably be thinking about how we can strengthen that in future. There is more involvement in the community value and the asset to a town and area of a football club, so we could be a bit more imaginative about how we protect that, rather than just arguing over how we should cover a loan against the ground.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I will say a few quick words about my amendment in this group. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, and the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, and other noble Lords for their amendments in this group. My Amendment 236 would introduce a new duty encouraging clubs to consult the Office for Place before making any decisions regarding their home ground or the construction of a new one.

I know that the Government have proposed to wind up the Office for Place, but I wanted to draw attention to its work, and in particular the excellent work of its interim chairman, Nicholas Boys Smith, and the board and staff who were working in Stoke-on-Trent. I think a lot of us share the disappointment, because we saw the Housing Minister after the election tell the BBC that the Office for Place would be kept. But, following the Budget, I understand that the Government are proposing not to keep it. I did think it could play an important role here, as it has in so many other areas of public policy.

My amendment offers a clear benefit in terms of promoting meaningful engagement and ensuring that football clubs consider the broader social and cultural impacts of their decisions. That is a theme that noble Lords touched on when introducing their amendments in this group. I think we all want to see clubs take a more holistic and responsible approach when planning changes to their home grounds, helping to preserve the heritage of these much-loved sites while ensuring that development is in the best interests of both the club and the community in which it is rooted.

In light of the need for more thoughtful and inclusive decision-making, my amendment tries to strike the right balance between promoting consultation with an expert body, fostering collaboration and ensuring that long-term planning for home grounds is done responsibly. I appreciate the points that noble Lords raised in their amendments and look forward to the noble Baroness’s response to them all.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Goddard of Stockport and Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay

Committee stage
Monday 9th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

Can I help the noble Lord? The debate on defining sustainability was about three hours on the first day and, on fans, about two and a half hours on the second day. I think we have done both of those subjects to death, for hours and hours.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

We did not get to a conclusion.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

We may not have got to a conclusion, but what about repetition? Here we go again. We have had the discussion; the Minister gave us her answer; we move on. But we have not moved on because, two days later, it is brought up again—and again and again.

This is the frustration that some people are having. I understand the need to examine and tease out but, if we do not like the teasing out, we cannot keep going back every day to keep teasing out. We will never finish; that is the problem with it. We have had an enormous debate on sustainability and on fans.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Goddard of Stockport and Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay

Committee stage
Wednesday 4th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

To be helpful to the Committee, could the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, give us the names of the seven clubs? That might shed some light on what is going on here. There seems to be an illusion that the Premier League was suddenly born out of the ether, and then provides for all. Players such as Ryan Giggs, Phil Foden and Alan Shearer do not just suddenly materialise; they come up from the other divisions. I get what the noble Baroness is trying to do, and I respect her position, but you have to look at this in a holistic way. This is about a regulator regulating for the five divisions, and if it is not blindingly obvious to anybody what those five divisions are, they may be sat in the wrong place.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. It has been worth while having it again, painful and irritating though it may be. I am sorry if that upset the Minister—it certainly was not my intention to do so. I did it because this issue matters.

By the Minister’s own admission on Monday, she did not know about the issue of hybridity until it was raised with her on Monday. Does she think that a few hours’ consideration, along with all the other matters we gave attention to in Committee on Monday, and a few minutes’ debate in Committee late on Monday evening, is sufficient to dispose of an issue as fundamental as this?

As I said in my opening remarks, the Government Chief Whip knew about this issue at the same time I was alerted by the clerks, on 26 November, almost a week earlier. I am grateful that he stayed to listen to our debate on this group. Maybe he, if not the noble Baroness, can tell us what discussions he had in light of that issue being raised with the usual channels on 26 November. This is about engagement with the people, organisations and businesses that this new law will profoundly affect. I was shocked to hear what my noble friend Lady Brady said about only seven hand-picked clubs being given just half an hour of—

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Goddard of Stockport and Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay

Committee stage
Monday 2nd December 2024 Lords Chamber

[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.