Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 16th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, my Amendment 145 seeks to add to Schedule 4 a consideration of a

“club’s political statements and positions”

in the part of the new regime that concerns the fan engagement threshold requirement. I and my noble friend Lord Markham, who has added his name to the amendment, have sought to do this in as neutral a way as possible, reflecting the fact that political statements and positions are rarely one-sided. They are usually complex matters with a number of competing and conflicting views.

We have seen in recent weeks the case of Crystal Palace’s Marc Guéhi, who twice amended his rainbow-coloured captain’s armband with expressions of his Christian faith. Plenty of people would say that rainbow armbands supporting gay rights and written expressions of Christian faith are not irreconcilable things. The problem in his case is that his expression of his religious faith fell foul of FIFA and FA regulations banning

“any political, religious, or personal slogans, statements or images”

on players’ kit or equipment, while the other was deemed an acceptable form of political expression.

During the last World Cup in Qatar, we saw the great dismay among LGBT+ fans when the FA chose to suspend its advocacy on their behalf while the tournament was taking place in Qatar. I am very proud that my right honourable friend Stuart Andrew, the former Sports Minister and now the shadow Secretary of State, wore the one love armband—which a number of fans and others were very keen to see worn—when he went to cheer our national teams on in the World Cup. Although, as a Welsh-born man representing an English constituency, I think he found it just as difficult having to reconcile deciding for whom to cheer in the England v Wales match that he saw.

We have seen many other examples of this being a growing area of concern for fans, clubs and those who have to navigate these choppy waters. Whether it is taking the knee, the decision about when to hold a minute’s silence and over what, the singing of certain anthems and songs or the decision to light certain stadia up in yellow and blue in support of Ukraine but not white and blue in support of Israel after 7 October, these are very difficult matters for clubs to decide. They should be able to decide them for themselves, but the amendment my noble friend and I have brought forward asks them to discuss these matters with their fans, to try to take on board their views, to take them with them and indeed to encourage them to think about these matters and perhaps change their mind.

In doing so, the amendment asks the Government to recognise that religious or philosophical belief is itself a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010, so is worthy of our consideration when we are looking at supporting diversity in football, and that diversity of thought is really important if we are to grapple with these very thorny questions as a society.

The amendment also seeks to ensure that football clubs remain genuinely independent and free from external political pressure that might distort the relationship between them and their supporters. If we are to safeguard the integrity of football as an independent sport, we cannot allow it to be co-opted into political campaigns, whether from the Government or from any other political group. The duty to consult fans on political statements and activities is a safeguard which ensures that clubs will remain true to their roots, focused on the sport and not caught up in advancing political crusades or day-to-day rows.

I hope Minister will look at our amendment with the neutral consideration we have tried to give it in the way we have worded it. I beg to move.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to my Amendment 244 and to support Amendment 145, moved by my noble friend Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay. My amendment seeks to formalise a duty which will prevent clubs, players and employees of clubs publishing political statements that bring division and conflict into a game that should be about generating unity.

We have seen over previous years multiple instances of virtue signalling, such as taking the knee before matches after the Black Lives Matter protests, and the wearing of certain armbands—as my noble friend has said—and laces, which are the latest attempt to campaign. I would say that it is a small “p” political campaign. I may differ somewhat from my noble friend Lord Hayward on this, so it is probably a good thing that he is not in his usual place.

Politics is not just about party politics. It is about the pernicious influence of political campaigning affecting—infecting—football, our national game. I remember the dark days of the 1970s, when a number of London clubs were perceived to be involved with the rise of the National Front and its racist politics. That gave rise, of course, to instances of football hooliganism. That was not a party-political issue, but it was a political issue. We do not want to go back to those dark days when, for instance, Millwall was associated with football hooliganism and some elements of racist behaviour.

I am not even sure that these initiatives work. The figures quoted a week or so ago in Committee show that 43% of players in the Premier League are Afro-Caribbean or Black African. They have achieved that through their skills, their abilities, their resilience and their physical fitness, not because they wore multi-coloured boot laces. UEFA already bans political statements such as these, but it has not been successful in implementing and enforcing such rules. The Government could really take a lead on that.

If the Government are so keen to have a regulator to enforce numerous other rules, many of which overlap UEFA’s rules, surely it is only right that the regulator impose rules on political statements and attempts to impose political views. My noble friend is quite right: we have seen recently the unpleasant behaviour of fans cheering on pro-Palestinian extremists; and of course, we have the ongoing debate, discussion and rivalry between Celtic and Rangers in Glasgow. That is very much a political issue.

Article 16 of UEFA’s own regulations, entitled “Order and Security at UEFA Competition Matches,” prohibits

“the use of gestures, words, objects, or any other means to transmit a provocative message that is not fit for a sports event, particularly provocative messages that are of political, ideological, religious or offensive nature.”

My own bugbear is bad language, particularly in front of children and young people. It is terrible, unacceptable, for grown men to be swearing and using really unpleasant language. However, do we really want to add into that mix the poisonous disputes of politics and political issues? I do not think we do.

Why do we not try to replicate, and perhaps enforce, UEFA’s rules in the Bill? We must remember how divisive such actions have been with supporters and fans. No one likes to be told what they should believe or how they should act. Fans themselves are diverse; they do not need to have these views forced down their throats—such as the preachy proselytising of Gary Lineker on any number of fashionable so-called progressive causes, or a pretentious new Jaguar advert which does not actually feature a Jaguar car.

Fans want to watch a football match and support a team; they do not want to be in the middle of a political bunfight. Fans turn up to watch their favourite team play, not to see a session of Parliament. For those reasons, the Minister should give consideration to this amendment. It would save us from further discord and conflict, which we do not need. Fundamentally, we have to trust the clubs themselves to do the right thing by their fans, their players and their boards and deliver good policies organically, rather than enforcing these kinds of initiatives, which have been proven not to work necessarily.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Jackson. What he said was exceptionally perceptive and wise. Look at Marcus Rashford, for example, who exploded on to the football scene in the UK in 2016, aged just 18, and scored on his Manchester United and England debuts, before becoming one of the country’s most exciting prospects. He became a household name at the same time and was recognised with an MBE for his work off the field, campaigning on child hunger, which he faced growing up in Wythenshawe in Manchester. He challenged the then Government in 2020, imploring Ministers to offer free meals to needy children in the school holidays.

The position for international sports federations—and, indeed, for clubs in this country—is to recognise that a balance needs to be struck, which is what my noble friend Lord Parkinson was arguing for. The balance to be struck in the Olympic movement is recognising that the IOC Athletes’ Commission opposes using athletes for political propaganda or campaigns, while providing the opportunity for them to exercise their views and opinions in official media settings or on social media accounts, which are so powerful. Surely this is not a subject for the regulator; this is a subject for clubs and the organisers of the competitions in which they play.

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Does the Minister agree? The “What is a woman?” question seems to me to be an obvious signifier of fairness in sport and, if all we have is EDI box-ticking and we cannot be fair to women in sport, what are we doing here in the first place?

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I rise to support my noble friend Lady Fox of Buckley, and I was pleased to sign the amendment. Noble Lords should remember that the corporate governance statement is not a voluntary part of Schedule 5; it is a mandatory licence condition and a threshold requirement. A club simply cannot progress in the licensing process unless it abides by this rather pernicious sub-paragraph of Schedule 5.

My noble friend Lady Fox made an excellent case in saying that this should be removed from the Bill; it is disappointing. We have heard many times from the Government Benches—including the Minister and the Chief Whip, who is no longer in his place—that it is hypocritical for us on these Benches to criticise the provisions of the Bill, given that the previous Conservative Government introduced the original Bill. But noble Lords will now know that I refute this suggestion because I personally would have opposed many aspects of the Bill. I think it is a terrible Bill, frankly, and would have opposed it under the previous Administration.

The Benches opposite cannot make that charge on this particular aspect of the Bill, because this is a brand new inclusion by the current Administration. I am not sure why the new Government thought this was an important measure. It is disappointing that there are no Labour Back-Benchers supporting their own Government on one of the most contentious aspects of the Bill, although I concede that the hour is late.

There are already a whole host of measures that clubs and leagues take to progress inclusion and diversity. We had debates previously, a week or so ago, which made the point that this is covered, comprehensively, by the Equality Act 2010. It is also covered by a number of employment Acts, such as the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, which would prevent direct and indirect discrimination without the heavy-handed nature of this provision. Because it is going to be set down in primary legislation as part of a corporate governance statement, it will very quickly become not just statute law but case law, so it will be a de facto tablet of stone—irrevocable, a settled document.

That worries me, because we know there is a huge amount of bureaucracy—and I can say this as a former human resources specialist. There are, per capita, more HR specialists in the UK than practically anywhere in the European Union and the developed world. That means there will not just be this corporate statement; there will be the bureaucracy of impact equality assessments, people specs, job specs, race action plans, EDI plans, LGBT plans, et cetera. This is what it will become. It will be about a divisive attempt to segment and disaggregate different fan groups. I think that will be deeply regrettable. Therefore, I think it will give rise to anger and resentment—the very opposite of the sense of cohesion, belonging, unity of purpose and community pride, which surely are the raison d’être of football.

As an example, Peterborough United—Posh—posted a single photo on its Facebook page of a Pride flag. I do not have a problem with a Pride flag. I treat gay and lesbian people with respect. They are football fans; they can come and go as they wish. I make no value judgment on that. But it gave rise to an absolute deluge of negative comments on the Facebook page, and it set fans against each other. It was seen, cynically maybe, as virtue signalling by Posh. It was a kind gesture, but it backfired, I am afraid.

The Bill claims to have the interests of the fans at its heart, and the Government claim the same. It strikes me as incredibly bizarre that they have no clue what the fans actually want. Is there any quantitative or qualitative data to back up whether this provision is needed in the Bill? Football fans are not interested in EDI. They want their clubs to be run properly; they want the teams to deliver high-quality football. They actually believe in fairness and decency, not tick-box virtue signalling.

Finally, there is the issue of cost to the clubs. Policy Exchange, the think tank, has highlighted its recent annual report, Politicising Business, the enormous cost that EDI can place on clubs. It has analysed the cost of the new EDI rules that the FCA brought in for firms that it regulates in December 2023. It estimated that the new rules will incur a one-off cost of £561 million, and ongoing costs of up to £317 million a year to businesses—that is over £500 million for firms simply to improve their diversity and equality policies, which are already embedded in existing legislation. Surely this cost will be prohibitive.

Finally, I ask: what are the objectives? What are the key performance indicators? What does success look like? What does a cost-benefit analysis look like? This is about appearing virtuous and will result in conflict and discord. I do not believe that it should be in the Bill. We should trust clubs to do the right thing and to treat people both properly and fairly.

[Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)]

My Lords, the hour is late and I found my brain somewhat pounded into stupefaction by the thoughts of the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay. I found myself, perhaps disloyally and strangely, in agreement with the thoughts of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, on that matter. In this state of stupefaction, I am concerned about the serried ranks on the Government Benches waiting to jump on any mistake that I might make, so I hope that they, or perhaps their ghosts, will forgive me for any. I shall make just three quick points because the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, and the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, have said it all. I could perhaps just say what they said, but I shall try to make three very quick points, in view of the lateness of the hour and the evident but brave tiredness of the ranks in front of me.

My first point is that EDI is, believe it or not, for those who desperately believe in it and think it is tremendously important and essential to have in the Bill, a passing fad. It is a fashion. It is not even a fashion that we came up with: it is a fashion that we imported from America. My wife was, for many decades, a fashion designer in New York and she would point out to me how the colour would be decided in New York and the next year it would be copied in London. The line, the cut, the theme of fashion would be decided in New York and a year later would arrive in London. So it is with all these moral panics that, for the last decade we have seen arise, one by one, be taken very seriously and gradually fade away.

The noble Baroness, Lady Fox, talked about how, even now, American academia having become obsessed with it for many years, everybody is getting bored with it because it actually turns out to be a bit of a disaster. One by one, all these moral panics will disappear and, in coming decades, people will ask, “Why on earth did they think that way? What on earth told them to do that?” There is, as the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, said, no academic evidence. The academic evidence that companies such as McKinsey used to make hundreds of millions or more out of companies for selling these lines has been shown to be disreputable by careful academic analysis. I know; I used to work for McKinsey. There were 800 people around the world when I worked there; there are now 46,000 and the numbers grew on stuff like this, without any really valid academic basis. It is a passing fad and I hope we will not allow it to become implanted into football just at the time that it is beginning to fade.

My second point is that it crowds out useful activity. I spent decades advising chief executives of the largest companies in the world as to what they should do, and the one thing that I and so many others like me advised them on was focus: do not allow yourself to get distracted. But noble Lords who have been here during this Committee will remember that I have frequently described the Bill as a Christmas tree. What we have heard is everybody trying to hang baubles on the Christ1mas tree.

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I want to be clear that the regulator is not going to prescriptively micro-manage each club’s board or set EDI targets and quotas. That is not the role of the regulator, and it would cause significant burden to both the regulator and clubs. The regulator will not be able to become involved in issues relating to freedom of speech, or, as we discussed earlier in Committee, the diversity of fans. This clause relates only to a club’s internal governance and staff. This is not the place for a debate about trans participation in sport. I therefore hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw—

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

Before the Minister sits down, may I ask, given that this is a specific difference from the previous Bill, what specific football-related research was commissioned by the Government that led them to believe that it was imperative to add this provision to the new Bill? If that question is too difficult to answer now, perhaps the Minister will write to me.

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

My Lords, it is getting late and I have just dropped all my notes. This is not actually about football per se; it is about good governance. The regulator will be concerned with sustainability. As a sustainability regulator, its interest in equality, diversity and inclusion is that it contributes to good corporate decision-making, which, in turn, makes clubs more sustainable. This is why the regulator will encourage good EDI in clubs by requiring them to report on what action they are taking to improve EDI. That transparency will only be a good thing. I therefore hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment for the reasons I have given.

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[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 170, I will speak also to the other amendments in this group in my name, Amendments 194, 196 and 197. These all relate to foreign interference in football clubs, a topical issue today, given the debates that have taken place in another place on Chinese espionage and the Government’s tardiness in introducing a foreign influence registration scheme.

Amendment 170 in my name seeks to expand the scope of the regulator’s role in varying a club’s licence conditions. As drafted, the Bill is clear that the regulator may vary a club’s licence conditions to restrict its acceptance of funding which the regulator reasonably suspects to be connected with serious criminal conduct. This is a very significant power and an important one—none of us wants to see funding connected with serious criminal conduct in football. By the same token, I hope the Government would agree that funding that the regulator reasonably suspects to be linked to conduct harmful to the interests of the United Kingdom should have no place in football either.

There is an important point here, as those involved in funding football in this country might be involved in perfectly legal activities internationally, which, while legal elsewhere, may harm our national interest. I hope the Minister can explain why, if the regulator is equipped to make a judgment about criminal conduct, it would not be able to make a judgment on conduct that is harmful to the national interest as well.

Amendment 194 seeks to expand the terms of reference for the regulator’s determination of whether a person has the requisite honesty and integrity to own or run a football club to include whether an individual is a member of a proscribed terrorist organisation. The principle behind this amendment is that proscribed terrorist organisations have no place in football. I am sure that all noble Lords in the Committee agree with that.

The Government may argue that this amendment is not necessary but, given the number of foreign owners of clubs and the many appointments of international officers in the football sector, it would give the regulator the power it needs to protect football from people who are found to be members of proscribed organisations. Sadly, it is far from inconceivable that somebody resident in the UK might be found to be a member of such a proscribed group. In those circumstances, surely the Government would want the regulator to have the tools to end their involvement in football swiftly. What assessment have the Government made of the risk of people who are members of proscribed terrorist organisations being involved in football clubs in this country? Have the Government looked at this and deemed it unlikely? Have Ministers come to a view about an acceptable level of risk? If the risk is greater than zero, can the Minister explain why the regulator should not have a power such as I have set out?

I accept that proscription is not always of the same utility in relation to different terrorist networks or to the work of lone wolves. I would be happy to discuss a broader criterion, perhaps looking at a reasonable belief that someone is involved in terrorist-related activity, to capture that. I think there is a loophole that we ought to try to close in our scrutiny of these provisions.

Amendments 196 and 197 relate to Clause 37. They seek to ensure that the regulator can carry out its duties effectively, responsibly and in close co-ordination with key public bodies that can assist its work in this area. Amendment 196 would require the regulator to consult a range of bodies, namely the National Crime Agency, the Security Service, the Secret Intelligence Service, the Serious Fraud Office, His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs and the Sports Grounds Safety Authority.

The regulation of football clubs cannot be divorced from our wider national interest. Football is more than a sport. It is a vital part of our national culture, economy and global reputation. We know it is a sector that can attract bad actors, financial mismanagement and, in some cases, criminality. Whether it is safeguarding clubs from fraud, tackling money laundering or ensuring that stadia meet safety standards, the regulator will need the insight and expertise of these key agencies in doing its work. This is about equipping the regulator with the best possible advice. I hope that the Minister will look at that with some care.

Finally, Amendment 197 would replace the mandatory “must” with the discretionary “may” in relation to the regulator’s engagement under Clause 37(3). This minor adjustment carries significant practical implications. Its purpose is to avoid placing an excessive legal burden on the regulator to consult in circumstances where it may not be necessary or proportionate. By providing discretion, we would give the regulator the flexibility it needs to prioritise its resources and respond to situations on a case-by-case basis. This amendment would not weaken the regulator’s responsibilities; rather, it allows for common sense to prevail. It reflects our commitment to safeguarding the integrity of football while ensuring that the regulation is not heavy-handed. I beg to move.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Parkinson’s excellent amendments. They are straightforward, sensible and in keeping with recent developments whereby the previous Administration established in primary legislation quite strict rules about the takeover of British businesses by foreign entities. Soft power and the global kudos and prestige of football cut both ways. They could be used by bad actors, foreign countries and state-owned entities in those countries for nefarious and possibly criminal activities such as money laundering.

Therefore, the Government would be wise to take on board the concerns that some of us on this side of the Committee have. In that respect, Amendment 196 is sensible, because we have a regime which looks at foreign entities’ ownership of UK interests. It would be irresponsible to disregard the intelligence and information provided by the agencies mentioned, particularly the National Crime Agency and the security services, in making a reasonable, fact-based decision about the efficacy or otherwise of ownership.

Given that ownership runs through this Bill quite prescriptively at a micro level, in terms of very small clubs, it is only sensible for the Government to consider how big strategic ownership decisions would be affected by this Bill. In that vein, it would be wise for the Government to consider accepting these amendments.