Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Moynihan of Chelsea Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 13th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)]

My Lords, I refer to my interests and to 65 years of attendance at Stamford Bridge. Your Lordships should oppose this Bill, root and branch. It is badly written, of course—it is a Christmas tree.

However, beyond this one very bad Bill, there is a major problem facing us: far too much regulation, with both major parties over the past two decades having succumbed to the impulse to interfere, to busybody, to regulate. Excess regulation kills economic growth, reduces wealth and suppresses human happiness. Fact-based academic studies from around the world confirm this, but, in the UK, regulation has mushroomed.

We cannot roll out a decent nuclear programme. We have demolished the London Stock Exchange, with so few companies now opting to list there. Policy Exchange cites 25 destructive Human Rights Act impositions, one for each year since its adoption. Then there is the £100 million bat tunnel: noble Lords, over the last few days, have expressed bemusement as to how it came about. People ask why these things happen. It is regulation and regulators—that is what goes wrong. My own recent book on economic growth estimates that reversing all of this would increase GDP per capita by some 13% in a decade.

If most of us agree that there is too much regulation, how come regulation has proliferated so much? It is because those few who love regulation have become adept at pushing it through. First, find yourself a problem—in this case, parachute payments and alleged financial incompetence, although it is odd to assert that about one of the world’s most financially successful industries. In phase one, cry that something must be done, and then create a further panic about diversity or equal pay and get to phase two, “The Government must step in”. Talk something about, “Football, blah, grass roots, blah, women’s football, blah”, and stir up a general feeling that a regulator would be a damn fine thing. Phase three is, “There ought to be a regulator”. So, a football regulator—what could possibly go wrong?

The Bill is actually an attack on the Premier League. It is driven by Willie Sutton’s philosophy, “That’s where the money is”. Are we so sure the Premier League will be unscathed? It pays £4 billion a year in tax and £1.6 billion to lower leagues and grass roots. With overseas TV deals, it is a great export success, and there are 90,000 Premier League jobs. It drives Britain’s soft power around the world: you can have a vivid chat about Arsenal or Liverpool in a taxi from Jakarta to Lagos. All of that raises people’s estimation of this country around the world. There are 3 billion viewers, in 900 million homes, in 189 countries.

Did this happen by accidental circumstance? No, it was private enterprise that created this. Would it have happened had a regulator had been suppressing experimentation and initiative over the past 20 years? You know that it would not. Free markets need competition, fair exchange, no rent seeking, no crony capitalism and private property rights. They wither when subjected to heavy-handed regulators. Do we really want to be known in future times as the Parliament that destroyed the global success of the Premier League?

Establish a compulsory governance code—because, after all, we know best—licences, the imposition of removal orders and disqualifications for life on not-proper owners. Look, I am as anti-oligarch as anyone, but why dissuade a billionaire from dropping a substantial proportion of their wealth into the UK to invest in a football club? Which bureaucratic regulator would be able to distinguish between a good owner and a bad one? Would Sheikh Mansour have been permitted to purchase Manchester City and turn it into one of the greatest teams of the modern era? Would Sir Alex Ferguson’s famous hairdryer have been allowed by an equality, diversity, inclusion-loving regulator? What possibly can the “E” in EDI—equality of outcome—mean in football? Football is a competition. Winning and losing is the whole point. You cannot have equality of outcome—or will the regulator require that all games end in a draw? Or perhaps, if we are to diversity, they will require that 50% of teams be women. That would be difficult when there are 11 in the team, but I am sure they can solve that, too.

Seriously, we know there will be regulatory creep. We have already heard this afternoon from a number of hungry, prowling Peers eager to add their own obsession to the regulatory Christmas tree. We are told that this is a fan-led initiative, but do these busybodies, incidentally demanding that they be put on the board of this regulator, truly represent fans? Public First’s poll asked which kind of regulators were needed. Least wanted of all was a cricket regulator, and second-least wanted was a football regulator.

Of course, with the artfulness of polling, when you offer a list of possible regulations, people say they are in favour of the most absurd things, which could eventually be added by the regulator. Force the whole club to go on mandatory EDI courses, cap footballers’ wages, give equal pay to women footballers, create quotas for English players in Premiership teams—all in favour. Just a few of those would destroy the Premier League’s success. There would be no more global supremacy, no more soft power and far less tax revenue—a depressing future to contemplate.

We must pull back from this overweening belief that we know best. We do not. Hayek’s book, The Fatal Conceit, nailed that error. I recommend it; Lady Thatcher loved it and I am sure noble Lords will, too. It is the free market that knows best. We should back off from so much regulation, and in particular from this attempt to plunder and distort that precious jewel in the economy’s crown, the Premier League.

I end by asking the Minister: has there been a request for a formal evaluation of this proposed regulator’s possible damage, both to football and to the economy? If not, will she conduct one?