Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Moynihan of Chelsea and Lord Hayward

Committee stage
Wednesday 4th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, and the noble Lord, Lord Mann, for his intervention. He seemed to think I was talking about Premier League clubs. I was not. I was saying that the Minister had said that she did not want to specify in the Bill which clubs were going to be regulated, so the club does not know whether it will be regulated, and it certainly does not know how much it will cost it. The noble Lord might shake his head, but that is a fairly obvious point. We do not know who will pay. We also do not know what it will cost. I believe the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, talked about an estimate of £10 million—I beg your pardon; it was the noble Lord, Lord Markham.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

If I might clarify for my noble friend: the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, referred to £10 million; I was quoting from the impact assessment, which says that £140 million over 10 years is the mid-point the Government are operating to.

[Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)]

I beg the noble Baroness’s pardon for not attributing the £10 million figure to her. The fact is that we know that is ludicrous, because the cost of other regulators is way more than that.

I will make some headway. What will it cost overall? We do not know what the overall cost will be or what it will cost individual clubs. To talk a little bit more about that, imagine you are a local entrepreneur. There is a club in a little bit of trouble. They come to you and say, “You always wanted to own a football club. Why don’t you take over our club and then you can have one of those back-to-back league promotion successes that you’ve dreamed about and you’ll be famous in your community?”. You say, “Well, I’ve got a few bob. I don’t know how much, but yeah, okay, I’ll consider it”. It is one of those clubs that a noble Lord opposite talked about on Monday. I think the numbers cited were a turnover of £2 million and seven employees. You are invited to take over this club and bung in some of your money. You may not have a lot, but you may think you have enough. Then you say, “What’s going to happen?” My concern is that when you are told there is going to be a regulator that will tell you who to have on your board and all that, you will say, “Forget about that; as an entrepreneur, I don’t play that particular game”. But let us say you swallow that. Then you say, “How much is this regulator going to cost me?” The answer: “Dunno mate”. You ask, “Well, what could it be?” The answer: “Dunno”. So you turn your back and go off to sponsor the local cricket club or something like that. It does not work if you are not absolutely clear about what the cost will be.