Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 2nd December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 12 in my noble friend’s name and have added my name to it. As he rightly said, this amendment aims to broaden the definition of the sustainability of English football for the purposes of the new regulator, to ensure that it has a duty to consider a much more extensive list of factors that are important for the continued success and growth of the game—obviously, issues that we discussed at length last week—in deciding its approach and exercising its powers. If the Minister will not look at expanding the purpose of the regulator to include growth, for instance, as I set out last week, this is an important amendment to ensure that we expand the definition of sustainability and create a balanced framework within the regulation to provide protections while enabling growth.

A framework that provides sustainability while encouraging investment and maintaining stability will preserve the success of English football and ensure the continuation of innovation and investor confidence. As my noble friend said, we cannot take the success of the English game for granted, so it is important that the Bill ensures that successful elements of the current model are given due prominence—perhaps we are being a bit blasé in thinking they will just continue, no matter what—in the concerns of the regulator going forward.

English football’s depth and current comparative advantages come from achieving the right balance of oversight with competition, aspiration and financial support—a combination of elements that the regulator must be mindful of when considering the sustainability of football over the longer term. I really hope that in the light of our discussions last week, and the concerns we are raising again today, the Minister can see and accept that a narrow set of sustainability metrics could, inadvertently, be very damaging. If she will not look at changing the purpose of the Bill, I very much hope that she will look at expanding the definition of sustainability in this clause, so that we can cover all the elements that we are all, I believe, in support of saying are important in today’s game but simply do not appear in the Bill as it stands.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment in the names of my noble friends Lord Maude and Lady Evans of Bowes Park, for the simple reason that it is very helpful to the Government. We had the good fortune to meet the shadow regulator last week; it was a very informative and interesting meeting and, clearly, it is starting from scratch.

Given that the Bill has many wide-ranging and permissive powers that are given via statutory instrument to Ministers, it is important that on its face—in primary legislation—there are proper framework guidelines for the regulatory and legislative regimes for the regulator to go forward with. Given that last week the Government were quite firm in setting their face against growth parameters, which are pretty important, given that the Premier League is one of the most successful business outfits in the whole world—in fact, the most successful sports league in the world—I cannot really understand why the Government believe that this is mutually exclusive to supporting fans and putting into the Bill a commitment to fans, even though they are, as we learned previously, not defined.

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For these reasons, I am unable to accept the noble Lords’ amendments and ask that they do not press them.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I hear what the Minister says and I am grateful. However, she will have read the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee report dated 22 November. We know that sustainability is not explicitly defined. We know that fans are not explicitly defined. As was said on our first day in Committee,

“the meaning of English football is deliberately left unclear on the face of the Bill … The answer will emerge only after the Bill is enacted, when the Secretary of State makes regulations to fill in the definitional gap left in the meaning of ‘specified competition’. As a result, the remit of the new regulator is presently unclear”.—[Official Report, 27/11/24; cols. 720-21.]

Does she not agree that this is why it is important to tighten up that situation—that lacuna—in the Bill, so that the regulator has a firm sense of direction in how it proceeds?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

That is a matter that I am sure we will discuss at greater length when we come to a longer discussion on secondary legislation, but I am happy to talk to the noble Lord outside this Chamber at further length.

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[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, as I sat through the whole of this fascinating debate, I thought I might as well throw my penny’s worth in on the issue of what a fan is. I am a football fan. I do not have a season ticket. I was on a list for a season ticket for many years until Arsenal moved stadium, when they scrapped the waiting list and you had to start again. The only way I show my fandom, really, is to listen or watch matches whenever I can and get into arguments in pubs with people from other teams. Just saying.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, very briefly, I support my noble friend Lord Parkinson’s excellent amendment. I think it is unarguable that in the last hour we have demonstrated why we need that amendment, because no one agrees what “local” means. I think that is a very important point. This whole debate reminds me of Humpty Dumpty in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, when Humpty says:

“When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less”.


We do not really know what “local” means. My noble friend Lord Moynihan of Chelsea talks about the importance of international fans. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Watson, that I fundamentally disagree with Amendment 17A because I think it is socially regressive and would lock out many people. It would actually go against my noble friend’s Amendment 8 in terms of getting new generations of fans involved: not everyone can afford a season ticket.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

I accept that, and I hope I made that clear earlier—but how do you consult the other people? You do not know who they are.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

The noble Lord asks a very reasonable question. I actually pray in aid the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Addington, because, for all his frustration with this debate, his Amendment 26 has at least tried to answer the question of what a fan is and what “local” means, and therefore I am quite predisposed toward that amendment. My only problem is that it absolves this House and Ministers from solving the problem, by kicking it into the long grass, so to speak, of the independent football regulator. So I agree with that amendment, but the noble Lord’s amendment is too restrictive.

When I was a child, I used to go to Charlton Athletic, the Valley, which in the good old days had a 66,000 capacity. Because I was a Charlton fan, vicariously, through my father, does that mean I could not be a fan of Millwall, which is in almost the next borough, the London Borough of Southwark? Could I not have been a fan of Crystal Palace, in the London Borough of Croydon? Could I not have been a fan of Leyton Orient, in the London Borough of Waltham Forest? You get into a rabbit hole of really difficult decisions if you do not properly talk about what is “local”.

I will finally finish by reminding your Lordships that, at Second Reading, I mentioned the importance of supply chains, because although fans are important, so is the wider football community. That includes businesses, commerce, supply chains, the people who sell the hot dogs and the prawn sandwiches, the people who provide the footballs, and the people who do the advertising, etcetera. We are dancing on the head of a pin, because—with all due respect to the people in the Box—the Bill is not well drafted. We have a responsibility to point that out. For that reason, I implore the Minister specifically to support my noble friend Lord Parkinson’s Amendment 9.

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

My Lords, I will make a point on Amendment 17A of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, about the complexity of what we mean by “fan” and indeed “season ticket holder”, because there are so many options to be a season ticket holder. You can be a season ticket holder for Premier League clubs, just for those Premier League games. You also have cup games, like the FA Cup and the Carabao Cup. There are also Champions League tickets. If you cannot get a season ticket, as an individual you can apply for those individual cup games. If you wish to become a forwarding member for £20, you are in the position to receive a ticket from a season ticket holder. It spreads up; the number of season tickets available is very complicated indeed for cup games.

Not only that, but you also have corporate tickets. Corporations can buy a whole suite of tickets for their employees and also for their clients. To establish somebody who would go as a guest of a corporate individual or who had been forwarded a ticket further complicates it. The point I am making is that it is not straightforward. It is very complicated—there is not just one season ticket holder at any club.