Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Goodman of Wycombe Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 4th December 2024 Lords Chamber

The amendment we put down was just to probe what the intention might be in future—it was a mechanism for debate, not to make this Bill hybrid. I am not sure of the intentions of those opposite, but certainly we were not intending to make it hybrid. It is not hybrid now and I do not think we should look to make it so in future. I suspect that any suggestion about referring this elsewhere is part of the delaying tactics that we have seen so much of these last few days.

[Lord Goodman of Wycombe (Con)]

To follow that point directly, I raised the original question of hybridity following an intervention by my noble friend Lord Markham, at which the Minister nodded. The Minister has since written to us, and I am grateful for her letter setting the situation out. I want to respond to what has been said in the following way. The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, who is in his place, has at various times produced a copy of the Bill as it was under the last Conservative Government and pointed out, as the noble Baroness just said, that the two Bills are, in certain respects, almost identical.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

The Bills are 95% identical. That is why we are somewhat surprised that noble Lords opposite are so opposed to its content. There is only one fundamental policy difference in it.

[Lord Goodman of Wycombe (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for intervening, because it buttresses the point I want to make. The Minister made it very clear on Monday that she was not aware of the hybridity issue that would arise were the leagues to be named in the Bill until that afternoon. It is evident, therefore, that someone in the department, as my noble friend said from the Front Bench, was aware of the hybridity issue under the last Government and under this one. I raise this as a member of the Delegated Powers Committee; when we received the view of the Government about why the leagues were not named in the Bill, the hybridity issue was not mentioned. It seems to me intuitively quite wrong that so important and real an issue should not have been named when the communication was made between the Government and the committee.

I am told that, procedurally, the people who speak on the Government’s behalf to those who brief us on the committee about the Bill are not obliged to tell the committee about the hybridity issue. If there is something as important as the hybridity issue, should the committee not be made aware of it somehow? I am grateful to the noble Lords opposite for raising the point about the Bill being much the same under the two Governments, as it is germane to the point I want to make.

[Lord Mann (Lab)]

My Lords, in one of the quaint ways that the Commons has of occasionally putting people, for whatever reason, on obscure committees, I found myself for 15 years on the hybrid Bill committee —one of the more obscure joys of life. I should just say that it was not the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, who put me on it.