Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 16th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brady (Con)]

My Lords, I refer the Committee to my interests as declared in the register. This group of amendments includes Amendment 110 in my name which addresses a concern about potential political interference in football’s new regulatory framework.

The Bill creates an unusual—and, I believe, likely to be unnecessary—requirement for football governance statements every three years from the Secretary of State. This is not merely a question of frequency; I believe that the expectation created for this statement may raise questions about regulatory independence and broader international implications, which we have discussed in this Committee a number of times.

As I and other noble Lords have pointed out, UEFA and FIFA maintain strict provisions against state interference in football. We have already seen UEFA’s general secretary express serious concerns about various aspects of this Bill. In that context, we are obliged to ask whether creating a requirement, or even an expectation, for regular political statements about football governance risks providing these bodies with an additional point of leverage over English football’s development. UEFA has been clear that it is watching the implementation of this framework very closely, including in relation to possible scope creep and stepping over the line, so it behoves us to consider carefully the possible practical implications of such a mechanism and to question its necessity.

Every three years, the Secretary of State may make a statement about football governance. The Minister may say that there is no obligation here, and that it is just providing for the possibility. However, it seems inevitable that putting this expectation into statute creates a very strong likelihood that these statements will then be made. What will they say—that everything is fine, or are they more likely to look at more areas that the regulator can examine and then expand into, as we have seen with this Bill so far?

As the general secretary of UEFA spelled out in a letter sent to me last week:

“UEFA has previously shared its concerns about the creation of an Independent Football Regulator … as normally football regulation should be managed by the national federation. It is essential to ensure that the establishment of this structure fully adheres to the principle of sports autonomy, thus preventing any risk of political or governmental interference in the legitimate and appropriate functioning of recognised sports governing bodies. The IFR’s mandate must be clearly defined and strictly limited to the long-term financial sustainability of clubs and heritage assets”.


Despite these repeated warnings, it seems reasonable to assume that the expectation of a football governance statement will create not just inevitable domestic pressure for political intervention but opportunities for international bodies to question the regulator’s independence. There may be a whole range of wider issues going on with international governing bodies at the time of the football governance statement—for example, negotiations on the football calendar or the future of competition formats. With these football governance statements, we seem to be creating an unnecessary risk that the statements, almost irrespective of their content, may be deemed to constitute political interference. English football will not be served well by such a dynamic.

My amendment would align the statement cycle with the other five-year regulatory timeframes in the Bill, reducing the frequency of these potential pressure points. However, this is about not just timing but protecting football’s independence while maintaining proper oversight. I look forward to hearing from the Minister on how necessary these statements are.

Professional football requires long-term certainty for investment. In my long experience, stadium development can take up to 10 years to plan and execute. Academy investment needs at least a five-year horizon. Infrastructure projects require stable planning frameworks. Yet we seem to be risking the creation of a system where policy could shift every three years in response to short-term political steers, with each statement also potentially triggering questions about regulatory independence. I worry that these regular political statements could create permanent pressure for intervention beyond the regulator’s core purpose.

I would be very grateful if the Minister could give us the Government’s perspective on these important questions. What is the rationale for creating this unique pressure point for political intervention? How does the Minister believe that it will support long-term investment, especially given the international oversight concerns? What protections exist or could exist against scope creep through these regular statements? How will the Government manage UEFA and FIFA concerns about state interference in relation to this? I beg to move.

[Lord Maude of Horsham (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to support my noble friend’s amendment, and to question whether it is wise for the Government to include this clause in the Bill. It says:

“The Secretary of State may prepare a statement”,


and then it goes on. A Secretary of State can prepare a statement of anything at any time. It requires no statutory permission in a Bill to enable this to happen, but the effect of putting this in the Bill is, precisely as my noble friend has explained, to raise the spectre that UEFA, in particular, will see this as further evidence of political and government interference in football, which is a big concern for it. The Government have so far tiptoed around the edge of the concerns that UEFA has, but we know that the consequences for English football, if they go on to the wrong side of that line, will be severe.

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[Lord Pannick (CB)]

The noble Lord, Lord Markham, puts his case very powerfully but I for one am not persuaded, because the delegation of functions to competition organisers would frustrate the very purpose of independent regulation. The whole purpose is that regulation is done by the independent regulator. As I said in considering the previous group of amendments, it is of course vital that the regulator consults those affected and takes into account their concerns and expertise. But to delegate the responsibility to those who are being regulated, or to the competition organisers, would be an abdication of regulatory responsibility.

[Lord Maude of Horsham (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment of my noble friend Lord Markham and strongly disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. We constantly hear that the purpose of the Bill is for the regulator to be agile, to be as light touch as possible and not to impose unnecessary additional burdens on football. Every million pounds spent on the cost of running the regulator, as well as the additional compliance costs for football clubs themselves, means there is less of the pie to be distributed under the redistribution parts of the Bill.

Surely one of the key ways in which we can do our best to avoid that cost burden being excessive is to avoid duplication. The reality is that the competitions, the leagues, already exercise a self-regulatory function—not regulating themselves but regulating the clubs that are members of the leagues. That is in their nature: there are conditions of belonging to those leagues that they rightly enforce, and they are going to be obliged to carry on doing that anyway. It is possible that not all of them have done that perfectly, and that not all of them will continue to do it perfectly in the future, but it is also possible that the independent regulator will not do its job perfectly. We should consider that possibility at this stage of consideration of this really important Bill, given that many clubs—not just the Premier League clubs but right down through the pyramid—have concerns about the costs, imposition and impact that creating the regulator will involve. When we move on to the next group, we will be looking at the really big, crunchy part of the Bill that covers the regulator’s operating licensing powers.

If we are to be sensitive to these genuine concerns of football clubs—which, by and large, have been pretty successful over the decades—this is a good way of showing it. If this amendment is passed and accepted by the Government and goes into the Bill, none of it says that the powers have to be delegated to any particular competition organiser; but at least giving the possibility of avoiding this overburden of new regulation, cost and impositions on something which is already very successful would be a very good signal for the Government to send.

I hope the Minister when she responds to this amendment will not rule it out out of hand but will take it away and say that we should now be looking for ways to address some of these genuine concerns. This would be a very good way of doing it.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to comment on the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Markham, which, on the face of it, sounds sensible, obvious, simple, light touch and low cost. I rise also to defend the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, for pointing out the blindingly obvious biggest bear trap of the entire Bill up to now: delegating the power of the regulator to the very people it is trying to regulate. It would seem to any right-minded person that this is the least sensible thing to do. Being concerned about the power of the regulator but trying to persuade us that it could give some of its powers up to someone else to help them along the way defeats the object of having the regulator.

[Lord Maude of Horsham (Con)]

Before the noble Lord sits down, there are two groups which, if the Bill goes through and is enacted, will be subject to regulation. There will be the competition organisers, of course, but the biggest burden will be on the clubs themselves, and that should be our principal concern. If the competition organisers, who would themselves be overseen by the regulator, are able to discharge the regulatory functions effectively without creating a whole new panoply of compliance and enforcement mechanisms and apparatus, surely that is worth looking at and considering.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

There is some merit in what the noble Lord says. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, and I met Rick Parry and some people from the EFL this week and they are quite content with this. They do not see this as an onerous burden on them. They are looking forward to the regulator, a level playing field and a real chance for them to progress, so they are not going to oppose this resolution.

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[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The 20 clubs have competed to get into it. It is a changing 20, based on the ability of clubs to take part in that competition.

Similarly, it might be more appropriate for functions to be carried out by other competition organisers at other levels of football, if there are sufficient safeguards for them to do so in a way in which the Secretary of State feels is appropriate.

In our amendment, we have tried to reflect these safeguards to make sure that the same regulatory standards apply to the bodies to which functions are delegated. Subsection (2) of the new clause proposed in Amendment 124 says that a function can be delegated only if the regulator is satisfied that the competition organiser would discharge the function with the same degree of stringency as the regulator itself and that it would meet the objectives established by Clause 6 and discharge the function with regard to the negative outcomes as outlined in Clause 7(2).

We are where are because there are elements of football which have not been good at self-regulating in a way that has pleased fans. More than one political party has been concerned enough to bring this Bill before your Lordships’ House. Are we saying that we have reached a point of no return? If the competition organisers and other football organisations get their house in order and meet the standards set out in this Bill which the regulator is trying to do, will there never be a situation in which we will be able to delegate some of these functions back down to the level of competition organisers? This would mean a much more light-touch, organic form of regulation, which I think is what a lot of noble Lords in the Committee would like to see. That is the thinking behind the amendment and on which I would be interested in hearing an answer from the Minister.

[Lord Maude of Horsham (Con)]

Picking up the point that was made by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, particularly focusing on the Premier League, we have discussed in previous debates on this Bill the league’s concerns that the burdens of new regulation and compliance costs fall more heavily on smaller clubs than on big ones. Looking at the effect of this, my concern is how this amendment would operate if it were to be incorporated in the Bill. I would expect the Secretary of State to be looking in the first instance at the lower leagues, as that is where the pain will really be felt of imposing new burdens.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My noble friend makes an important point. It may also be in the lower leagues that we see the examples of better behaviour. The Secretary of State may then feel that it is right and proper to delegate some of these functions to the competition organisers for the clubs in the lower leagues.

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[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 128, which gets to the nub of what the licensing regime should be looking at. It would require a personal statement to identify a club’s ultimate owner and that owner’s source of funds. It is really quite an important amendment because clubs, and fans in particular, have the right to know where the club’s money is coming from.

This is prompted by things that have happened to clubs in the past, when it has been quite clear to the outside world that clubs do not have the means—because their owners have failed to provide any detail or background on their own finances, despite having given assurances—to identify where their funding is coming from. I cite the case of Dr Tony Xia, who became the owner of Aston Villa back in 2016. He was approved as an owner by the football authorities, yet it later turned out that he had neither the money nor the resources. The club ended up just a week away from being unable to meet its tax liabilities.

Following the 2021-22 season, a survey of 92 clubs looking at data on wages and cash reserves revealed that many clubs, up to a senior level, were very close to not having the reserves that would ensure that they could meet their liabilities, pay wages and so on. Some clubs are very good at this—West Ham United is one of them and, apparently, Plymouth Argyle was one of the most financially secure that season, along with AFC Wimbledon and Tottenham Hotspur.

If we are seeking transparency through the licensing regime, it is clear that we will need to understand who the owner is, where their funding is coming from and how much that will kick in to ensure the safety and security of clubs for the benefit of their fans.

[Lord Maude of Horsham (Con)]

My Lords, I have a concern with the whole of this part of the Bill and the way in which operating licences will be required and the adjudication made upon them. This part of the Bill is nine very dense pages of text, backed by three or four schedules. At various stages, it includes such dark phrases as:

“An application must be accompanied by … such other information and documents as may be specified by the IFR in rules”.


I used to be a lawyer, a long time ago, and I am reasonably accustomed to reading Bills and Acts, but when I start to read through this part of the Bill I can feel my lifeblood draining away. What of the owner or board of a small club looking at what will be required of them?

I noted that in the Minister’s winding up of the last debate she said that well-run clubs have nothing to worry about, which was meant to be reassuring. It does not matter how well-run a club is; it will have to comply with all this, and it will have to set itself up with lawyers, consultants and accountants to draw up a strategic business plan. A lot of clubs will not have a strategic business plan. That does not mean that they are badly run, but they will have to prepare such a plan. A strategic business plan is a document containing the proposed operation of a club: its estimated costs, how those costs are to be funded, the source of such funding and other information as may be specified by the IFR. That does not get done spontaneously or arise automatically.

The reality is that this is a very demanding regime intended to be put into law and enforced by the new regulator. I wonder whether there has been sufficient consideration given to putting in place a halfway-house system of regulation. Think about how companies are regulated: it is a requirement that, if you set up a limited company, designed to limit the personal liability of owners of the company, it is registered with Companies House. By law, certain listings are required and a certain amount of information has to be made public, including the filing of accounts. However, you do not have to get consent from a regulator to set up a company; you just have to register that it is in existence and subject to the laws that apply to it.

As we know, the state of football is pretty strong, stable, vigorous and successful compared with football in other, similar jurisdictions to ours. Have we given sufficient consideration to whether it might be good to take time, before we require small clubs up and down the country—which are not necessarily finding it easy to get through from week to week, month to month and year to year—to submit to this horrendous set of requirements just to get a licence to get on to the field of play in the first place, before they even set about winning a match, to go back to the drawing board and construct a regime that would require clubs to register in the same way that a company is registered, subject to rules and requirements for disclosure and transparency, and to changes being registered. That would reduce hugely the burden on clubs and would start to introduce the kind of consistency which, for reasons that I totally understand, is being sought.

I oppose the whole of Part 3 and its accompanying schedules—I am not even going to think about the plethora of regulations, guidance and further verbiage that will come out of it—standing part of the Bill.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, it might be convenient for me to say a few words on this. Primarily, I am drawn to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, for the reasons he gave. We have heard that this is a wonderful, successful league. Bits of it are but, unfortunately, those are the bits at the top. Most of the cultural capital, I am afraid, is in the less glamorous clubs with less successful balance sheets.

We have a situation where we want to maintain the whole of the football structure: five leagues. This has proven to have—let us say—attracted financial irregularity; I think it was described as “chancers and fantasists”. We have to do something to stop this or we will start to have more disasters that mean something to the fan base.

The amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, starts to address this. I hope that the Government are far more in tune with that amendment than with some of the others in this group.

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[Lord Addington (LD)]

It is nice to have a little fan club.

My amendment may be making the ultimate pedant’s point, but the Bill says that a relevant thing that cannot be interfered with is the name of a team operated by a club. My amendment refers to the name of the club itself. Is my point covered by this? I do not know. If it is, tell me where and I will be terribly happy.

The main point is that we will be still talking about who a fan is this time next year unless the Government make a decision and come up with something solid. It affects how the regulator operates and who they exclude. The Government may well have to decide who they are going to offend, but please let us do it, because otherwise fan involvement will mean nothing.

[Lord Maude of Horsham (Con)]

I would like to make a short point, but it is an important one that has barely got a mention. Football clubs have a very strong interest in consulting their fans. The fans are their customers. The truth is that, if you look across the gamut of clubs all the way down the pyramid, the composition of those fan bases will be very different. Broadly speaking, the higher up the pyramid you go, the more dispersed the fan base will be. Famously, almost none of Manchester United’s fans actually live in Manchester.

[Lord Shamash (Lab)]

Do you think I should get up and answer that?

[Noble Lords]

No.

[Lord Maude of Horsham (Con)]

I am sorry that we did not have a proper exchange, because I was looking forward to that.

The reality is that the revenue that local community clubs get is predominantly gate money—match day revenue. As you go up the pyramid, a greater proportion comes from commercial sponsorship and merchandise; and then, when you get to the Premier League, pretty much half or more is broadcasting revenue.

I am indebted to my noble friend Lady Brady for this. More than half of the Premier League’s revenue from broadcasting is international—that took me by surprise. The next-largest part is commercial—sponsorship, merchandise and so on—and the smallest part is the matchday revenue. The point is that all this comes from the good will of fans, either directly from their pockets or because of their engagement and commitment. Tottenham happens to have a very large fan base in South Korea because our captain is South Korean. Our biggest sponsor is an Asian insurance company. Why is it supporting Tottenham? It is because there is a huge fan base in Asia.

After all, as we know—although we are sometimes shy of saying this in these debates—the Premier League is the goose that lays the golden eggs that then cascade down through the pyramid, to a much greater extent than in any of the football pyramids in other European countries. Therefore, the way in which clubs consult will be very different—but the suggestion that they need a regulator to enforce upon them the duty to consult their fans is to ignore this really important point: it is in their interest to keep their fans, wherever they are, on board. If ever there were a vivid illustration of that, it is when the European super league proposal came up. It was killed not by politicians, a regulator, your Lordships’ House or the other place but by fans.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I will speak briefly to my Amendments 238 and 241. I agree with noble friend Lord Maude that it is absolutely in the clubs’ best interests to make sure that they are consulting their fans on this. If we are going to put things down, though, I will speak to two essential points.

A football club shirt is more than just the colours; it is the design as well. Any football supporter would know that the blue and white hoops of QPR are quite different from the stripes of Brighton—fans could maybe be involved in that. I remember with some humour that one Brighton design was a bit like a Tesco bag and the fans used to wear an actual Tesco bag. That probably cost the club a lot of money in lost shirt sales. But, generally, the fans have a role in that and in the name of the club—my Amendment 241 is on this—which I think most people would agree is fundamental.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I am glad that the Government Chief Whip has been here to see the lively debate on all sides of the Committee, including on his own Benches, on this group. He will have noted that only two of the 19 amendments come from the Opposition Benches. So I am very glad that he has been able to join us for this lively discussion as we head into dinner.

I will not elaborate on the points that my noble friend Lord Markham made on his two amendments, to which I added my name, other than to say that I wholeheartedly agree. Given that the Government are already looking at club colours, I am interested in why this is not extended to home shirt design, which my noble friend mentions in his Amendment 238.

On my noble friend’s Amendment 241, the name of a club is hugely important. It is not uncommon for clubs to change names. I gather that Bournemouth began life as Boscombe St John’s Lads’ Institute and Arsenal started as Dial Square, in the Dial Square workshop, and then became Royal Arsenal, I think because of a local pub called the Royal Oak, and Woolwich Arsenal—

[Lord Maude of Horsham (Con)]

Woolwich Wanderers.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I think that is an informal one from fans of other north London clubs. But clearly the names of clubs do matter, and we would be interested in whether the Government agree with that.

Given the time, I will address the other amendments in this group as a whole. They attempt to require clubs to consult a whole host of different supporters’ organisations, community trusts and fan groups. I share the concerns raised by my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough that, if clubs are required to consult numerous different groups—chosen through various methods and representing countless, and often competing, interests—it will be difficult for clubs to know to whom they are to listen. What opinions will they have to take on board and whose interests will win out? There is also a concern about whether this could lead to divisions forming among supporters’ groups of differing views, as they seek to influence the activities of a club in a manner that they would like.

I am concerned by what the noble Lord, Lord Mann, said about football clubs picking the people who sit on their fan groups. That sounds like having a House of Parliament entirely dominated by the Executive—but that is for another Bill. The concern about this one is the old adage that too many cooks spoil the broth; that is, if we tried to have too many people vying to influence the views of a club, it would be difficult to differentiate the differing sounds and, perversely, fans’ voices would be drowned out in that cacophony. So a simpler approach might be required for fan engagement.

Trying to have a better answer to the question of who fans are, as we have said previously, runs to the heart of all this. But I agree with what my noble friend Lord Maude said: clubs are well advised to take on board the views of fans. They listen to them because they are the lifeblood of the clubs, and they make their views known pretty volubly.