Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Markham and Lord Birt

Committee stage
Wednesday 4th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

This is exactly why we want to have these sorts of debates in Committee. Funnily enough, I put my name to this amendment. As noble Lords know, when I talk about media interests, I do so as a former director of a pay TV company. I was thinking about media interests less in relation to broadcasting and more that—the noble Lord, Lord Birt, will know this—when you are making sports media rights bids, all information is good information. You would then be party to a lot of privileged, and maybe even inside, information.

I agree that there is a balance to be struck, because these are exactly the sort of people you want involved in the regulator as well; but if they have a current role that involves them bidding for media sports rights, that would probably rule them offside—if you will excuse the pun. Again, that is exactly why we bring issues such as this to Committee to discuss.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

There is a potential conflict on both sides. There are many different roles in media but obviously, it is a single role that might be filled here. I would feel very uncomfortable if someone were sitting in both camps, were I to be in the decision-making capacity ever again in a broadcast organisation.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Markham and Lord Birt

Committee stage
Wednesday 4th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Jackson for his Amendment 50, which looks to protect the taxpayer. I particularly support my noble friend Lord Hayward’s as ever forensic analysis, which really focused on the burden to the smaller clubs. These things easily get out of control and, as my noble friend mentioned, £140 million in anyone’s book is a lot of money, and that is just the central case—it is not even the highest example.

I will speak to my two amendments in this group: Amendments 171 and 253. Amendment 171

“restricts discretionary licence conditions to include only internal financial controls”.

Interestingly, this was the drafting of the original Bill that was brought before the other place before the general election. We have heard many times in the Chamber how this Bill is substantially the same as the original one. However, this time round there is a key change in the wording: instead of “internal financial controls”, the word “financial” has been taken out, so now it is just “internal controls”. I think we would all agree that there is a world of difference between looking at the financial management of a club, which is something that we would understand, particularly with regard to the sustainability argument, and why that might be in the remit. Removing “financial” from that, all of a sudden, so you are just looking at the internal controls of a club, is obviously a massive moving of the goalposts, if I may say so.

In trying to understand the thinking behind it, I looked at the Explanatory Notes. In those, it mentions that, broadly speaking,

“Internal controls refer to the system of policies and processes established by the management of a club that allow it to continue operating in an effective, orderly and efficient manner”.


That may seem innocuous, but it goes once more to the whole issue of mission creep. The Bill does not define internal controls—and remember that we are talking about 116 clubs, and we are saying that a regulator is suddenly going to have powers to explore those internal controls.

Again, the Explanatory Notes say that those internal controls are looking to make sure that the club is being run

“in an effective, orderly and efficient”

way, and that they help a club to operate in such a way. First, is that the role of a regulator, to get involved in the internal controls of every club, as to whether it is running efficiently? Suddenly, we seem to have appointed a management consultant on steroids, who will be looking into the cost of each club and opining on it. Surely that is not the sort of thing we want to do for 116 clubs.

Then, what does that bring in? Why not the IT department of a club? I think we would all agree that digital information technology comes into the definition of the effective, orderly and efficient operation of a club. So, are we now asking the regulator to do that? Maybe we should be hiring Capgemini, IBM and whoever else to start to get into it.

Suddenly, we start to see this mission creep. Then, we realise that the other parts we are trying to bring in, on having protection for clubs and the taxpayer in Amendments 50 and 253, become all the more important. Not only have we now got the concern that this regulator will be looking into every nook and cranny of the internal controls of a club, but who will be footing the bill for all of this? There is a blank cheque that either the taxpayer or the clubs are going to have to foot. I think we would all agree that we probably do not want either of them to do it, but as this is set up here and now, the regulator has absolutely been given the remit to do that.

In my Amendment 253, I am trying to make sure that at least this does not fall on the taxpayer; I think we would all agree that we do not want that. I must admit that I do not feel particularly comfortable about that, because I do not want it falling on the small clubs—or any of the clubs for that matter—but I am absolutely sure that I definitely do not want the taxpayer to be funding a regulator to look into the internal controls of 116 clubs and whether they are effective. However, I do not think that we want the clubs to have to do that either.

It is a long-established principle that the regulator is paid. I am familiar from my old media days with Ofcom being funded by the broadcasters, and that has to be appropriate, because we do not want the taxpayer to do it. However, what sort of control do the clubs have over this? All of a sudden, the regulator says that it is going in and to look at every single nook and cranny of their internal control to opine on whether they are efficient and effective—and the really good news is that they are going to pay for all of it as well. Is that really what we want from a regulator? I do not think it is. We started off with a very small mission and, suddenly, the regulator is looking into the internal controls of 116 clubs. I really do not believe that this is what we want.

That is why, in my amendments, I am first trying to return the regulator back to internal financial controls, which we can see a role for. Secondly, I am making sure that this does not fall on the taxpayer. However, if this falls on the clubs, we need to think about how we can give them some sort of control to avoid them having to pay a blank cheque for all of this.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

Most of what the noble Lord said would be done during an audit. All of these companies will have audit, and almost everything he mentioned will be conducted by the auditors. Plainly, it would be completely duplicatory for that to be done twice over. The issue is whether the regulator would have access to the audit. I agree with the noble Lord about the need to avoid cost, and wherever the cost falls, audits—as I am sure he knows—are ever more expensive, because the obligations on auditors are increasing the whole time. There is a lot at stake here.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

This is another example of the benefit of getting different brains on the committee. I absolutely hope that that would be the case, but it is probably a question for the Minister to answer. It is definitely logical.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Markham and Lord Birt

Committee stage
Monday 2nd December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I thank noble Lords and I think the point about Amendment 72 was well made. Why I believe this is so critical is that when we have been talking about big clubs the feeling almost is that they are going to look after themselves and somehow we do not need to worry about the Premier League. But, as we have all said, the clue is in the word “pyramid”. The fact that the Championship is the sixth-richest league in the world—richer than Portugal, Belgium and the Netherlands—is because of the money passed down from the Premier League. Fundamental to the health of the whole game, all the network and all the clubs is the health of the Premier League.

As my noble friend Lord Maude was saying, I am afraid that the more that I look into this Bill and the more I understand it, the more worried I become. As we have said before, if the only objective of the regulator is the survival of clubs, as the shadow regulator mentioned, the only tool it has in its locker is to get them to deposit cash as a cushion. I do not think there is any other mechanism. Again, I would be delighted if anyone else can come up with another mechanism and I will sit down and hear it. I really would be delighted.

But the only measure is to say “Okay, we want to be sure that there is no chance at all of you getting into financial difficulties, so put this money aside”. There have been figures of £20 million a club—£400 million—but, as noble Lords have said, maybe the bigger clubs are better able to cope. I bet the top eight or so—the Liverpools, the Manchesters, the Tottenhams et cetera—will be better able to cope. It will be the smaller clubs, especially the ones that are just trying to break in—such as Brentford and Brighton, which have now broken in, but as they were trying to get there—are the ones which will be disproportionately affected.

It is not just the Premier League clubs because, of course, we would be talking about clubs right the way down the pyramid having to make deposits to make sure that there is less risk of them getting into financial difficulties. Of course, the further down the pyramid you go, the more of a hardship that becomes. Let us understand it more. The shadow regulator was talking about his concern about dependence on rich owners and what you can do about that.

We can give two examples recently from my club, Chelsea. I think everyone would say that Matthew Harding was a very reputable business guy, had very good intentions and was an absolutely stand-up person. He was tragically killed in a helicopter crash. No one could have expected that. The club was in financial difficulties and had to be sold. What would the regulator’s answer to that have been? Probably, “Oh, you were dependent on a rich owner. You have to deposit more money in case, God forbid, they die in a helicopter crash”. Our next owner, Roman Abramovich, was very well regarded for about 18 years and was absolutely fine. Then Russia invaded Ukraine and, all of a sudden, he was no longer a reputable owner. What could the financial regulator have done about that? Well, clearly, it has to look at all the owners and think “Ooh, what could happen in your circumstance? Could your country end up doing something bad on the world stage? Deposit more money”.

It goes beyond that. Lots of noble Lords have said, “What do we want? We want better management of our clubs”. Are we asking the financial regulator to assess managers and say “Oh, I don’t think you’re very good”, or “I don’t think your business plan is very good”. What can a financial regulator do if they do not like the management of the club? They cannot sack them. What can they do if they do not like the business plan very much? They can say, “Well, please try better, please make it a bit better”. The only thing they can absolutely do at the end of the day is say “I don’t like your management very much, I’m not very confident in them, and I don’t like your business plan very much, so I’m going to ask you to put more money on deposit”.

Then you get into a situation where I guess you follow that through to its logical conclusion and some clubs are going to have to put a lot more on deposit than others, because the regulator has decided, you know, “I don’t like the cut of your jib”, for want of a better word. What sort of situation are we going to get into there? We can see as we peel back the onion that this is fraught with more and more difficulties. You are asking the regulator to opine on each club, each business plan, each set of owners and each set of management and say, depending on all that, how much money a club should set aside—with only one criterion for success for that regulator: that that club financially stays in its place and never gets threatened with going bust. There is only one criterion, so every time we are going to have an ever-increasing ratchet to de-risk every club, and the only mechanism to do that is to get them to put more and more money on deposit.

Again, please, I would be delighted. I know the Minister cares about football and the welfare of the game, so I would be delighted if someone could come up with another tool on how the regulator can try to manage sustainability. He could not come up with one the other day, so maybe we should ask him.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

Is it not far more likely that the regulator will simply insist on having a good-quality, conventional board—I know from the noble Lord’s experience that he will know what that looks like—with a mix of skills, a proper CFO and a real sense of financial accountability and risk management? That is the direction of travel a regulator is likely to take. I am sure the noble Lord would agree from his experience that that tends to lead to strong institutions—and that is not a description of many football clubs at any level.

[Lord Maude of Horsham (Con)]

Before my noble friend responds to that, he is on a very important point here about the remedies that are available to a regulator where they have concerns. The noble Lord suggests that you put in some great and good, experienced, splendid people, and they will make it all better. We have rightly heard a lot from the noble Lord opposite about Brighton & Hove Albion. If a visionary owner had a view of how you could, by investing in the right way, in the right kind of players and the right methodologies, have a different approach to managing and developing a football club, what would a great and good, wise and sage board have said? It would have said “Ooh, very difficult”. Board members would have pursed their lips and sucked their teeth and possibly stopped there being this great success story.

What would a regulator have done? They would have said, “This all looks very risky. How can you justify this great vision you’ve got?” Would they, as my noble friend suggested, say “Well, you’ve got to put more and more money on deposit as a hedge against possible failure”? What are you then going to say to fans when they say, “Well, why aren’t you investing in the players that we need to create the success?” This is why so much of this is of concern. It goes back to the point we made earlier about sustainability. It is all about downward pressure. It is putting a cap on aspiration, vision, excitement, ambition and the possibility of having these great romantic stories of huge success. Is that really what we want the future of English football to be?

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Markham and Lord Birt

Committee stage
Wednesday 27th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Birt (CB)]

I agree that that reassurance is essential, but the only way to get it is not through publishing the letter but through knowing that UEFA and FIFA have agreed that we would be compliant.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

On that point, I think that is the only way. We all agree that this would be such a big risk. I looked it up before the debate, because this is not just the equivalent of us scoring an own goal, it is like a hat-trick of own goals, so I looked at whether there has ever been an example of a hat-trick of own goals. I found out that the most own goals ever scored in a match was 149. We may go close even to that. There is a real point here, and it was very well made by my noble friend Lady Brady, but I really want to unpack it.

What we are talking about here is a lot more than what the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, was saying about the pure financial sustainability of clubs. The concern of UEFA is:

“A Member Association may … be suspended if state authorities interfere … in such a significant way that … it may no longer be considered as fully responsible”.


The Premier League has thought very carefully about how it wants to bring in such things as parachute payments in order to, as we were talking about before, have competitiveness right the way through the game. It is to encourage those clubs—again, I have spoken to clubs about this—to invest, even though they might be in the bottom half of the table, because if they get relegated, they have that safety net. Without that safety net of parachute payments, they would not invest, so they would not be competitive.

What we are talking about here is that if we start to alter those parachute payments and the regulator starts to get involved in that, that is fundamentally altering the competitiveness of the game, so interfering in a way that I feel that UEFA, given the comments it is making, is absolutely going to say that we are overstepping the mark. To my mind, the only way to overcome that, while it is helpful to have these amendments, would be to have a meeting with UEFA—I know meetings have been had—and having a letter from UEFA clearing it, saying that this is something it is happy with and that it will not cut across it. If we do not do that, there will be a fundamental danger of what I think all of us would agree would be the biggest own goal of all.

NHS Dentistry

Debate between Lord Markham and Lord Birt

Monday 19th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for raising this and declare my interest as my wife is a dentist, although she is not currently practising. It is accepted that we have made sensible improvements to the dental contract, but a fundamental longer-term overhaul is needed. In terms of the ability to get registered with a dentist, that is what the mobile trucks are all about. We realise that in certain areas it is difficult to get that registration. The idea is for mobile trucks to go into a neighbourhood where there is a particular shortage to resolve the problem.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, while working at No. 10 in the early noughties, I was involved in a strategic review of the NHS and was shocked, at the time, to discover how poor the long-term workforce capacity planning was. The total number of dentists currently working in NHS England—around 25,000—has not changed by more than tens or hundreds over the last five years. In that period, more dentists have left than joined. At the same time, fewer than 1,000 dental students have been enrolled each year. Precisely how many dentists do we need to bring NHS capacity in line with demand? In what year, again precisely, will that point be reached?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

The noble Lord is correct in talking about the supply challenges. That is what the long-term workforce plan is all about, and why we are committing to a 40% increase in training places by 2030. The other issue that he rightly raises is the balance between the cost-effectiveness of providing private versus national health dentistry. The problem is that it is often seen as more lucrative for a dentist to go down the private sector route. That is why we are trying to rebalance that and have introduced an increase in the minimum charge to £28 for a unit of dental activity, and £50 for a new patient, to try to bring services back more in favour of the NHS.