Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Jackson of Peterborough and Lord Hayward

Committee stage
Wednesday 4th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

Since my noble friend is referring to a letter that was addressed to me, I assure him that in the debate on another amendment I shall return in far greater detail to this letter, not least because the first heading of the letter refers to “Exact cost”. I never asked for exact costs. I preferred to use the word “probably”.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

Your Lordships and I can rely on my noble friend’s forensic interrogation of the letter and the Bill generally. I know that we will come back to this issue.

I mentioned proportionality and a final example is the framework document, which has a strange description on page 2 of the letter. It says:

“DCMS as the sponsor department will agree a ‘framework document’ with the Regulator”.


It will be up to a parliamentary committee to look at what the point of that framework document is and whether its delivery by the regulator is efficacious. We need to know about the accounting officer. We need to know about the role of the National Audit Office and how it will intervene and work with the department, the regulator itself and any parliamentary committee. The levy, the proportionality and the cost are all areas where Parliament has a very important role to play.

I think we have reached the turning point in trusting regulators to discharge their duties without appropriate and close examination by legislators. That is our job and the job of those elected in the other place. Because the weather has changed for regulators, we no longer implicitly trust them to be full of experts and to do their job effectively. As my right honourable friend the former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said, “In God we trust, everyone else bring data”. I am not just looking at the right reverend Prelate when I say that. The serious point is that we need to see that the regulator is doing its job. We cannot rely on just undertakings and assurances. We need the proper statutory function of a committee to oversee the work of the regulator. On that basis, I warmly support my noble friend’s excellent amendment.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Jackson of Peterborough and Lord Hayward

Committee stage
Wednesday 4th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I understand the point that both the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, are making, but I am always hesitant to say that something “must” happen. I speak here as someone who spent many years as a personnel/human resources director, acting as the final stage of appeal in disciplinary matters. As the noble Lord implied, I know that there is a debate in legal fields, because nowadays lawyers generally do not like being bound by something that tells them that they “must” act in a certain way.

It does not seem to be appropriate to insert “must”. The noble Baroness said that there would be a presumption—and I think so too. As the noble Lord said, these are very serious offences, but until one is confronted by a set of circumstances, I hesitate to bind anybody to a certain decision. There may be special circumstances where one is found guilty of only one of the categories and circumstances, so I am not convinced that “must” should be inserted in place of “may”.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I want partly to echo what my noble friend Lord Hayward said. Given that the individuals concerned will be non-executive directors of a de facto non-departmental public body, they would be covered by the existing code of conduct for non-departmental public bodies, which I think dates from June 2019. It may have been updated by the previous Government; I do not think that the current Government have looked at it. Equally, they are governed by the Nolan principles, with which we are all very familiar—I am as familiar as anyone else, having been a special adviser and currently being a non-executive director of two non-departmental public bodies.

My point is about the restrictive nature of this wording. This is quite an unusual situation, where the individuals responsible for bringing disciplinary issues to the attention of the appropriate authorities in the independent football regulator will have no leeway whatever under this legislation. If it passes the threshold of criminal activity in civil law, legal representatives—the judiciary, magistrates and others—would have no leeway on this. Therefore, you would circumscribe the existing internal procedures.

Those of us who have a role in non-departmental public bodies know that there is a proper process. You would have a verbal warning. I also have a master’s degree in human resource management and have been an HR manager in my time—there are almost as many of us in this place as there are lawyers.