Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 2nd December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

I have a couple of questions for the noble Lord, Lord Maude, but first, the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, said that the amendments provide clear metrics. I do not think they do; they are very subjective, particularly Amendment 12. What is

“globally competitive in relation to audience and quality”?

Regarding the phrase

“continues to attract significant domestic and foreign investment”,

what is “significant”? I do not think it is helpful to include words like that.

For what it is worth—my noble friend the Minister probably will not like this—I think paragraphs (e) and (f) of Amendment 12, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Maude, make sense, because we can clearly see what they mean. I would say the same of the Amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson. Amendment 7 is rather rambling and unclear and is not suitable for inclusion the Bill. We need something clear that can be measured, rather than words like “substantial”, which could mean anything or nothing.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Watson, just used two words which are of significance: “subjective” and “clear”. The problem with the Bill as drafted, judging from the lengthy debate we had last Wednesday and today’s proposed amendments, is that we are trying to provide clarity in relation to very subjective words, not least of which is “sustainability”, which is used several times. All these amendments are about looking at ways of making things clear, so that the football regulator can operate in some form or another.

The noble Lord was present throughout the debate last week, and during that debate I spoke about the threat to which the noble Lord, Lord Maude, has referred: that other sports and organisations will overtake our system—the Premier League and the other leagues—unless it is able to modernise and change as time goes on. What worries me genuinely about the Bill as drafted is that it almost implies ossification. It is an immovable process, because “sustainability” is just not clear.

Let us look at what we have seen in the past few days in terms of sport. This weekend the Middle East hosted a Grand Prix, a cricket tournament and a rugby tournament, so let us look at what might happen elsewhere. Equally, the Champions League, as was referred to in a previous debate, is changing and expanding. This Bill arose from a government reaction—an overreaction, probably—to the threat of a European super league whereby a set of clubs would be in a league of their own, never challenged. Quite rightly, the nation’s fans—not just this nation but a whole series of other nations—rose up and said that that is utterly unacceptable. Despite that, some clubs still believe that that is the right way to go. The Champions League has extended and we have the UEFA Conference League, et cetera. They are involving more and more British football clubs, and I welcome the success.

In referring to the football results of the past few days, I apologise profusely to my noble friend Lady Brady. But the success of the Premiership was identified in the fact that, albeit only briefly, Brighton & Hove Albion were second in the Premier League. That does not imply an unchanging, rigid position; it implies that the Premiership and the league system can develop. I was listening to the commentary on Liverpool v Manchester City—I apologise to any Manchester City fans for referring to yesterday’s game—and it was striking that, before the game, Radio 5 Live observed that there were more foreign correspondents covering that match than were covering the Liverpool v Real Madrid game only four days earlier. That indicates the very success and potential our system has—as long as it is reasonably developed and allowed to progress.

I have doubts, to be honest, about my noble friend Lord Parkinson’s amendment, because I do not think it goes far enough. I welcome that of my noble friends Lord Maude and Lady Evans, because it gives the Bill a better perspective and tries to provide clarity beyond the merely abstract word “sustainability”, and to develop some other aspects to which the football regulator should refer.

When I spoke last week, I was highly critical of the impact assessment, and I continue to be so. I know that it is largely based on the impact assessment prepared for the previous Bill, so I do not criticise the Minister; I criticise my colleagues in the previous Government just as much. However, I said that the impact assessment was intended to justify the current Bill, and that is made clear in paragraph 17:

“This Impact Assessment (IA) provides evidence and analysis to support the government’s case for intervention”.


In other words, it is providing support specifically for this Bill. It does not look at a range of other issues, which my noble friend Lord Goodman identified when he quoted from Tracey Crouch’s original report, relating to the overall success of the football industry in this country.

I believe that we need to provide greater clarity and greater indications of what we are trying to protect, develop and allow to go forward. Although last week I criticised the total lack of reference to “success” in the impact assessment, and I stick by that, I was very pleased, in part, to receive the letter from the Minister, page two of which has a section entitled “Proportionality and promoting success”. That is the attitude I want to see reflected in the Bill, in whatever phraseology we choose.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, it might be an appropriate time for me to make a few comments on the Bill. Amendment 12 suggests that the regulator will be able to have a very positive input into the marketplace. I do not know how it will achieve the aim of attracting significant domestic and foreign investment. Let us face it, our Premiership and our football structure have no divine right to be the most popular show in town, end of story. We all agree on that, but this Bill is about the fans and what they want from their domestic game. They want it to be there, and they do not want it disappearing off to Europe, or the top names disappearing off to Europe and the structure going.

If the Minister can point us to where we will have limits, and to the encouragement of involvement, we will all be able to move on a bit, but the “sustainability” factor is actually making sure that our domestic structure is there. I do not know how much else we can do without massive intervention by the state. Are we going to say, “You are not going to pay any tax on your revenue”, which means the state has no involvement anyway?

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[Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Lab)]

I totally agree with what has just been said about segmenting the fan base. I do not support a team that has the wide support that Liverpool has, but I was once at a football match in Buenos Aires where I was asked by local people which team I supported. When I mentioned Bolton Wanderers, just about everybody around me said instantly “Nat Lofthouse”, so these things travel. I accept that, but when we are talking about this Bill and about consulting fans on ticket pricing, the club’s heritage or moving grounds, then it is the locality that is in question, and we should not lose sight of that.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I shall first pick up the comment from my noble friend Lord Moynihan of Cheslea. Whether it was an intervention on an intervention, I intervened from a sedentary position, and he heard my comments in relation to friendlies. I was not denying what he was saying; I was expressing support to the extent that pre-season friendlies take place to a substantial amount already and they achieve, to use the word currently in the Bill, an element of sustainability because they provide income from matches all around the world. The noble Lord, Lord Wood, commented earlier on. If ever there was an indication of the strength of support for a football club in another part of the world, all anybody has to do is type in “Liverpool” and “Melbourne cricket ground” to watch a full 100,000-plus Liverpool supporters singing their anthem at the start of a match. That is the extent of the support that our clubs have around the world, and it provides substantial income to the club. There are not many as large as Liverpool, but there is support right around the world.

[Lord Maude of Horsham (Con)]

My Lords, the complexity of this debate—it is structurally complex as well as dealing with complex issues—illustrates how important it is that we explore these issues, because in every debate that we have another layer of the multifaceted success that is current English football becomes exposed and illuminated.

My noble friends’ amendments suggest that the regulator should be required to consider future fans as well as current fans and to take into account all fans not just fans in the locality. The truth is that, 20 years ago, there would not have been support across the world, particularly for the major clubs. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, just said, this is not limited to the top level of clubs. This is a moving scene. Globalisation, for all its critics, has not come to an end; this is more of a global village than it was. Top-level football in England is much more international than it was in terms of the background of footballers who play here, and that is unlikely to become less so. As more and more of the world’s population have access to a variety of television channels, there will be more. We can only expect the degree of global interest and support for English football clubs to grow. This is a moving scene, and we should be clear that if we are going to have this regulator, the regulator should think in those terms and to be aware of it.

Of course, there will continue to be an incredibly important local fan base for every club. I was a Tottenham supporter when I lived in Oxfordshire, when I lived in Warwickshire, when I lived in London and now when I live in Sussex. My son, who is also a Tottenham supporter, feels it so strongly that he bought a house five minutes away from the marvellous Tottenham stadium, so he has now become a local supporter having been a distant supporter. This will continue to be the way in which support for football clubs develops, and it is important. My noble friend does us all a service by raising the point and developing the complexity of the issues that we are dealing with here and that we might, if we do not get this right, be putting in jeopardy.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak primarily to Amendment 17A in my name. Before I do so, I want to reflect on some of the contributions that we have heard, largely on the last group of amendments but spilling over into this one. I am a bit concerned that, while the Bill is about the regulator of English football, several noble Lords have said that it would be appropriate to extend it beyond the confines of England.

I understand the economic arguments for that. I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan of Chelsea, who asked: are we really saying that we do not want English football equivalents of American football teams coming here? I saw American baseball at the London Stadium this year and thoroughly enjoyed it. But I do not care about their leagues. I do not care what effect it has on their leagues or their fans; it is up to them.

I do care about the effect of sending games abroad, as other noble Lords have said, and playing competitive matches: not touring matches, as my noble friend Lord Knight said, but competitive matches in other countries. That would be, to put it mildly, a very slippery slope and it would impact on something that the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, said in the last debate about comparing other sports. There is a very worrying trend of other sports—such as the grand prix that took place at the weekend—being funded to outrageous extents by foreign, often repressive and undemocratic Governments, to ensure that sports go to their countries. I do not want to see that sort of magnet placed in the way of football clubs in this country.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

Can I clarify what the noble Lord has just said? He described the sporting events in the Middle East over the weekend—which were cricket, rugby and motor-racing—as “worrying”. Receiving literally millions of pounds of income for a football club or other sport in this country—is that really worrying?

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

It is absolutely worrying. These countries have the right to do what they like with their money, but we have a right to say, “I don’t really wish to engage with that”, because we become tainted if we do that to an unlimited extent. That is a slightly different argument from that of playing competitive matches in other countries. That surely is something that we all agree would be bad for the future of English football. There are plenty of ways of bringing money in from all sources—if clubs want to do that, it is up to them—but playing matches outwith this country is surely not where we want to go.

That impacts on the whole question of fans and my amendment, which is: what is a fan? I do not know whether my amendment is the way we should define it, but I think it is the narrowest definition of a fan that I have heard so far in relation to this Bill. How do you define the Liverpool fan in San Diego? What does she or she have to say about what is happening in the Premier League? They may watch it on television and that is fine. They may express a very definite preference for one club, and they are entitled to do so. But they do not have a vested interest in the club in the way that someone who pays their money to go and see a match does.

I will repeat the point that I made last week. Some people are unable to afford the price of tickets, particularly in the Premier League—although I have to say in all honesty that I bought a theatre ticket last week, which cannot really be equated with the cost of a Premier League football ticket. But the other question is whether some people are physically unable to go. It may be somebody who has been going since they were 10 years old; they reach the age of 70 and find they are no longer able to go. I would sympathise with that.

However, we have been talking in the Bill about the regulator ensuring consultation with fans. You cannot consult somebody if you do not know where he or she lives. There has to be a list somewhere of the people you are going to consult. You cannot just open it up online and say, “Anybody with an interest, let us have your view by email”. That is not consulting—or at least consulting properly. So people who have bought into the club by having a season ticket: that is a reasonable way of saying, “These are the only fans we can genuinely define”. You can put them in a box and say, when it comes to consultation, “That’s the group of people because they have put their names in”.

They do not go to every match, of course. I often laugh when I read the football results and they show the attendance. I do not mean any disrespect to Arsenal, but I will use them as an example. They are going rather well at the moment, but they were not going well five years ago in the latter days of the Arsène Wenger period. You would see a match the Emirates Stadium and it was perfectly clear that there were almost as many empty seats as filled seats, yet the next day the papers would say the attendance was 100 short of capacity. That means the club is saying, “Ah, now, but we’ve sold those seats. Season ticket holders have bought them but they’re not very happy at the moment so they haven’t come”. My argument is, “Okay, that’s fine, but the key to the attendance is the word ‘attend’. If people don’t go, there’s not an attendance”. Still, the point is that these people have made a financial commitment to the club, and that is a basis on which to go forward.

That is why I disagree with the other amendments in this group, particularly Amendment 26 from the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and Amendment 17 from the noble Lords, Lord Markham and Lord Parkinson, which refers to those

“who have an interest in seeing the club succeed”.

That is so vague; we have to have some way of pinning it down. If there is a better way of doing that than through season ticket holders, I am open to that suggestion and I will consider it. But, until then, I believe that is the only basis on which we can do it. I also want to see it in the Bill.

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My main point is that we cannot just talk glibly about corporate responsibility, equality and representation without recognising that there are difficult issues that need to be tackled. Passing amendments or mentioning these issues without confronting the difficulties that are at the heart of football, which I do not expect a regulator to sort out, would be irresponsible.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I shall return to the spirit of the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the other amendments in this group. As my noble friend Lady Brady has said, the Premiership funds, in one form or another, enormous amounts of good work, but, as I have discussed with both my noble friend and representatives of the Premiership, it totally fails to identify the work that it does.

Until the Premiership sets about aggregating, in one form or another, all the contributions that different foundations make—whether in relation to football training, the disabled, the young or whatever it may happen to be—it will continue, quite rightly, to face the pressures that the amendments I have referred to attempt to address. Until the message is got across about the sums of money that my noble friend Lady Brady identified, certain attitudes will not change within the football world more broadly. The social work that is undertaken is so substantial, as my noble friend has said, that it will help to change other attitudes and enable progress to be made in all sorts of different ways that the amendments attempt to tackle.

So I do not necessarily support the amendments being accepted into the Bill, but I strongly support the message that is included in them. I ask the Premiership to get its act together in some form or another and convey the good work that my noble friend has just identified so that people understand that it is attempting to change attitudes, and in that way it will actually change attitudes.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

I support the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, in what she and the previous speaker have said and in all the work that she does. It is all there in the Deloitte report on the Premier League. The Premier League has missed a trick; the pages of the report show where the money goes and how it is spent, and it is all very laudable. Premier League football clubs, independent of the Premier League, do great schemes as well. Manchester City’s City in the Community started in 2003 with no funding from the football club, apart from one officer and that was Alex Williams, an England goalkeeper, who has just retired after doing 20 years at City in the Community. That is an example of the social responsibility of football clubs.

The reasoning behind these amendments, even though they may be just probing amendments, is that those things that can be given can be taken away. If football clubs in the Premier League fall on hard times and things have to stop being done, they may stop doing the things they do not have to do, and that effect will invariably come down to the poorest parts of the pyramid.

All we are trying to say with these amendments is: let us acknowledge the social responsibility that the Premier League has and the Premier League football clubs deliver but let us give the regulator the ability to ensure that that carries on. My noble friend is not being prescriptive and saying, “You should all pay that much”, but he wants to ensure that, to avoid unintended consequences, football clubs do not suffer in the event that some Premier League clubs or the Premier League itself cannot deliver those benefits in future years. I have no reason to think that will happen, because the Premier League is getting bigger and going global and more money is coming in, but that is the point of the fan-led review. How many football clubs did the review show were one match away from disaster? That why we are looking for a regulator. Sometimes the unintended consequences are too dire, especially for smaller clubs.