Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 18th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maude of Horsham (Con)]

My Lords, I have some concerns about what the noble Lord advocates in this amendment. He advocates setting up a central fund in one of his other amendments, and the purpose of that is not clear, unless it is to provide a mechanism, in effect, for redistributing the levy funding the operation of the regulator, presumably from bigger and better-off clubs to smaller clubs. That will dilute the incentive that should exist for the regulator to constrain its size, cost and degree of interventionism because of the effect on smaller clubs.

This comes back to the sense that the rich, big or better-off clubs are somehow there to be plucked in terms of the redistribution of funds down through the pyramid—already, 16% of the revenues of the Premier League goes down into clubs through the pyramid. My concern throughout the consideration of the Bill has been that, if the regulator is set up in too large a manner and exercises its powers as regulators have an inbuilt tendency to do—they increase their scope and degree of intervention—that will have a cost.

A primary aim of the Bill and of setting up the regulator is to “improve” the distribution of money down through the pyramid, but the more the regulator does, the larger it is and the greater the extent of its activity, the less there is to distribute. If it is not strictly controlled, it will become self-defeating. If the purpose of the central fund that the noble Lord advocates is, in effect, to increase that degree of redistribution from bigger clubs to smaller clubs, as it seems to be, the effect would be to exacerbate the concerns that a number of us will have about the direction of travel and the inevitable tendency for a regulator of this kind to increase its scope, size, interventionism and, inevitably, cost.

I have given notice of my desire to oppose that Clause 53 stands part of the Bill, on the basis that the power to impose a levy will damage football. If the Government are so concerned to have this regulator, they should raise the money for it themselves and not have the regulator able, in a very uncontrolled way, to impose a levy—potentially very large amounts of money, as the impact assessment makes clear—on the very activity of the sport that we love, inflicting damage on it that would run counter to the intention of the Bill.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, I will try to put the noble Lord’s mind at rest. Most regulators are financed by the industries that they regulate, and the noble Lord knows that; he knows a lot about regulation. Given that there may be, from time to time, a need to strengthen the capacity of clubs lower down in the pyramid to operate, comply with regulations and all the rest of it, it is not unreasonable for the IFR to have the ability and capacity to exercise a levy.

The Premier League is generating considerably large sums of money and, although the distribution down the pyramid looks extremely generous in raw number terms, it is worth being reminded that some 92% of the revenue generated ends up being maintained by the Premier League and those five clubs in the Championship that receive parachute payments and the rest. There is a lot of money here, and we need to make sure that the regulator has the capacity to intervene in a way that is entirely fair. Later amendments deal with some of this issue, but we should have that at the front of our minds when we consider this.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, very briefly, it is probably important to remember that a lot of this is about making sure that we preserve our football league. If a different Government had not intervened, we would have a European Super League and the Premier League would not be there. That is what happened.

We must remember that the preservation of those top five leagues is intrinsic to the Bill. If we want that to carry on, some money will occasionally have to be raised to support their structure so that it is more stable. The noble Lord’s amendment is reasonable. There may be a reasonable answer about why it does not have to go in, but I agree with the concept.

[Lord Maude of Horsham (Con)]

What the noble Lord says is simply not the case. When the European Super League was proposed, what stopped it from happening and what made the clubs drop it like a red-hot potato was the fact that the fans reacted with fury. Admittedly, the rather populist Prime Minister of the time responded to the fan fury by uttering threats, but it was not the politicians, the Government, your Lordships’ House, the other place or a fantasy regulator who stopped it; it was the fans who stopped it, and we should have absolutely no illusion about that.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, that might be the noble Lord’s interpretation, but, ultimately, it is government that makes law.