Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Moynihan and Lord Addington

Committee stage
Wednesday 18th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, this is one of the best debates we have had in Committee to date. I am equally sympathetic to the points made by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the interventions of the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, and the concern about the practicality of this, but none of that is covered in Amendment 200, which is in this group.

Let us just assume, hypothetically, that a state-owned entity acquiring a football club in England has an excellent human rights record and no problems with modern slavery. Under Amendment 200, it would be banned from owning a club in England because it is state-controlled. All the points that have been made are relevant and important, but Amendment 200, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, is very specific and states that:

“No state-controlled club may be granted an operating licence”.


There is no reference to human rights abuses or to any of the important issues regarding the supply chain, which have been mentioned. It simply states that a foreign-owned, state-controlled company cannot own an English football club. If we pass this amendment, immediately we would then have to divest the Abu Dhabi United Group of its majority ownership of Manchester City and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund of its ownership of Newcastle United, to mention but two cases.

How have the Premier League and UEFA addressed this to date? They have focused on the word “control”. When the Premier League addressed the Newcastle ownership test, it received “legally binding guarantees” that the state of Saudi Arabia would not have control over Newcastle United in the event of any deal. However, the Bill goes much further. It grants powers to the regulator that are not just about control. An individual has to be considered who has

“a higher degree of influence”

over the ownership of a club. The control test that UEFA and the Premier League currently use, which is a tough test that takes up a lot of time and energy, is overridden by a requirement in this legislation—for the first time in sport—to test whether an individual has a higher degree of influence. There can be no doubt that the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, as chair of the PIF, has a very high degree of influence over that board —he appoints it. Indeed, a Minister from that board has been appointed to be chairman of Newcastle.

If we go forward and accept Amendment 200 as it stands, what would we be saying to football, to Newcastle, to the Qataris—who might want to acquire a company, which there has been much speculation about, not least in this Committee—and to Abu Dhabi in relation to Man City? It would drive a coach and horses through the current ownership of the Premier League. It would be a very serious decision by the Government to take state control over who owns the football clubs in this country.

I say that because it comes down to the degree of state influence that is behind the regulator. The Government have said:

“Regarding the scope of the tests, we recognise the trade-offs involved, and are aware of the range of corporate structures behind clubs”,


and they specifically mention here sovereign wealth funds. They go on to say:

“We are designing the legal scope of the tests with these challenges in mind”.


They call them challenges, to be faced down at the request of government. We would have an open back door in the Bill if we accepted the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, straying into foreign policy in a way that we do not currently do. We have plenty of legislation elsewhere on the statute book allowing the Government to intervene if they felt they needed to in a certain circumstance.

The Government have therefore further confirmed the scope of the regulator. To me, it is incredibly important that the regulator is not given so many powers as to require it to have direct influence. I lost an amendment on Monday night, when I asked for that at least to be defined and for consultation to go out to find out what “significant influence” means in this context. I think that is extremely important.

I have a question for the Minister. I cannot find an answer as a result of the debates we have had so far, but football needs an answer and probably needs it now. Is it the Government’s position that the Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, should be able to own Newcastle United under the definition of ownership in the Bill? It is a very simple question, with a yes or no answer. If yes, why have Ministers deliberately constructed a Bill that will quickly put him through the ownership test of significant influence, and why did the Minister confirm on Monday that she wanted incumbent Heads of State to be tested? If no then surely the Government should say so, and we should have that as part of an open debate.

I hope that, if that question is answered this evening, there will be no doubt in future about what the Government intend, not least following the Prime Minister’s visit to Saudi Arabia last week and his offer to go to a football match with the Crown Prince. It is only reasonable for Saudi Arabia and the Crown Prince to know whether he is expected to divest himself of the interest in Newcastle United or not.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome my noble friend Lord Scriven to this debate and congratulate him on making those points. When it comes to the modern slavery amendments—to take on the point from the noble Lord, Lord Pannick—if other people are looking at this, surely the regulator should be able to take their opinion. Surely that would be a reasonable step. If the Bill does not allow that, I am sure we could do that quite easily.

On state ownership, I put my name to Amendment 200 because I thought that at the very least we deserved an answer. The previous Government’s Back-Benchers did not like the Telegraph under control and, let us face it, more people have heard of Newcastle United than they have the Telegraph.

This is an important point. Are we happy with a cultural asset being in the hands of a foreign power, regardless of the fact that we have a reasonably good relationship with it on most things? It is not all things, as we do not like certain things about it. That is a real question, and the Minister is being asked a series of real questions. I hope that at the end of this we will know whether these points are worth pursuing at other stages of the Bill. These questions really should be answered, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Moynihan and Lord Addington

Committee stage
Monday 16th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, going through this long list of amendments, I think that we can all agree that “miscellaneous” is a good description of this group. On what is a competition, I added my name to one of the amendments, but probably should have added my name to the one about heritage. Is it a ground part of the heritage, is it part of the structure, is it what is going on? I should have put my name to this and look forward to the Minister’s reply. If we do not include this, we are missing an important part of why this Bill is justifiable.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I support the probing amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, although not necessarily the wording of it or the outcome. It is related to something that the noble Baroness and I have worked on for a long time and which is covered in my miscellaneous Amendment 258A. It binds the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, and me to the same cause. There is still a major problem of abuse in the ticket market for football, not least for membership cards. Last season alone, in February one club had to cancel more than 30,000 membership cards. They were all in the hands of the touts. This is a massive problem now.

When we started to campaign to sort out the secondary ticket market, it was much smaller. Fifteen years ago there were some 120 professional touts. Now there are subscription groups which get together using bots to get hold of tickets, place those tickets on the secondary market and sell them illegally. Viagogo is, regrettably, used as a speculator—a ticketing lobby. From that, those tickets are sold abroad illegally with, quite often, information hidden behind the icons. This goes against the terms and conditions set by the clubs, which do a huge amount of work across football to make sure, especially at sold-out matches, that tickets do not get into the wrong hands.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Moynihan and Lord Addington

Committee stage
Monday 9th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, as the noble Baroness just said, could we have the answer tonight as to what the state of play actually is? If we get some assurance that, “Providing we do not do X and Y, which we hope is not the intention of the Bill, we are fine”, then this will get put to bed. If the Minister can see some way of assuring us, even if it had to be on Chatham House terms or something, that would help, because we do not want there to be a problem. If we can get that assurance out there, this issue will go away. Let us face facts: it just would not exist.

We want there to be a competition. Presumably, Europe wants the Premier League there. The reason why we have this Bill is about Europe. It was because of fans protesting that they were going to lose their competition and their traditions to Europe, and politicians saying, “We’ll intervene”, which most people agreed with. If we can get an assurance that there is something solid that means we would have to do something radically different to turn this bad scenario into a living nightmare, that is fine. We cannot guarantee the future; we can deal only with the Bill in front of us. If the Minister can give us those assurances she will have my full support.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, over the weekend, I and colleagues from across the Committee wrote to the Minister and sought to be very specific about the points that have just been raised by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and my noble friend Lady Brady. It would be helpful to the Committee—I mentioned this to the Minister this morning too—to put on record the specific concerns that could lead to differences of opinion between the two regulatory frameworks: the regulatory framework we are seeking to put into legislation and the regulatory framework that already exists within UEFA and in FIFA. Indeed, if the answer to all the points that I will raise is that there is no conflict, the Committee will be satisfied and so will I.

I would be grateful if we could have specific clarification on UEFA and FIFA’s position concerning the regulatory powers contained in the legislation. Given the extensive scope of the Bill’s powers and their potential impact on clubs and national teams participating in UEFA or FIFA competitions, I would be grateful if the Government could confirm whether UEFA and FIFA have been consulted on each of the following categories of powers: whether UEFA has specifically approved the proposed regulatory framework, particularly the revenue distribution backstop powers; the licensing framework and powers; the IFR’s independence; the IFR’s accountability mechanisms; the Secretary of State’s broad-ranging powers; the delegated powers; the financial oversight mechanisms; and the interaction between IFR rules and UEFA/FIFA regulations. If there are any areas where UEFA or FIFA has or will, in response to this request, express reservations or express modifications then I would be grateful if the Committee could be informed.

Have the Government commissioned expert legal advice on these issues? How has this impacted on the design of the legislation? How will potential conflicts between UEFA/FIFA regulations and these various powers be resolved, especially regarding revenue distribution arrangements, competition participation rules, financial monitoring requirements, the licensing system, and the extensive rule-making powers granted to the IFR? This clarification is essential for ensuring the smooth implementation of the new regulatory framework and avoiding any potential conflicts with existing football governance structures.

As my noble friend mentioned, as reported in the press, in a letter from UEFA to the Secretary of State, UEFA warned against “government interference” in football. It points out that it has very “specific rules” that guard against state interference to

“guarantee the autonomy of sport and fairness of sporting competition”.

The Bill, however, gives the regulator and the Government the following powers over football in England. I would very much welcome confirmation from the Government, not today but in due course, that in the meeting the Minister of Sport had with UEFA— referred to by the Minister on an earlier Committee day—the Minister brought these powers to the attention of UEFA and it confirmed that they do not amount to “government interference”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, the “state of the game” report is one of those things that has been almost universally welcomed. It will look at this very big and complex industry, with a very successful top and struggling foundations—that is how the industry appears to many people.

My name appears on this amendment alongside that of the noble Baroness because of things such as social impact. We are doing this because it is reckoned to be an important subject that matters a lot to people, and we keep being told that it is a big business—the biggest invisible earner going. If we get a report that is too narrow, we will not be looking at this huge social impact and what goes on.

Many of the things that we are talking about here are out of scope of the main operation of the Bill, but they should be looked at somewhere. The women’s game is one that comes to mind, along with players, which these amendments propose would feature here. If we are not going to look at such things in the Bill, we should look at them in the “state of the game” report.

It is a huge subject that we are talking about here; we have taken on something that is quite brave. If we do not find out how it is functioning and what is going on, we will be missing a trick. I would hope that we would do this as soon as we can—having slightly more frequent reports, at least at the beginning, would not be a bad idea. The “state of the game” report is a huge opportunity for gathering a great deal of very useful information.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

I support many of the points that the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, has raised under Amendment 94. I see that the Chief Whip is in his place; he will be pleased to note that nine of the amendments that we are considering now came from the Labour Benches, and that we have reached page 6 of the Bill.

The noble Baroness made the important point that Parliament should receive and debate the “state of the game” report. I am perfectly happy for the regulator, if we are going to have one, to present the report. However, in presenting the report, full attention needs to be paid to factors relating to the community and social impacts of regulated clubs and the women’s game. It is impossible when looking at this overall—and the Bill says that:

“A state of the game report must include … an overview of the main issues that the IFR considers to be affecting English football”,


—not to consider the development in the women’s game. It is a central part of English football, as cited in the Bill.

There is one other area at which we need to look at a later stage, on which I have no intention of detaining the Committee this evening. The regulator is looking at English football clubs and the game in England, but 14 Premier League clubs are in multi-club ownership, which stretches far beyond our shores. That is much more than in any other league in Europe. That has significant impacts on the financial regulation of the game. It provides greater bargaining power in commercial contracts and increases significantly the brand reach of those clubs, while allowing for the pooling of resources. There is flexibility with player transfers and loans. Certainly, within the English game, there is prohibition control over the management of more than one club, and UEFA states that you cannot have one controller covering two or more clubs in the same European competition. All these are actually central financial issues, and they have to be considered in any assessment of the health of the game in England.

I am concerned—I hope the Minister can respond and help me with this—that, if the regulator is prohibited from looking at the impact of multi-club ownership, there is a huge amount of important material when it comes to understanding the financial health of the game in England that would be outside the remit of the regulator. If I am wrong on that, no doubt the Minister will say that the regulator is absolutely entitled to look at each and every aspect of the multi-club ownership that takes place, principally in the Premier League. I will not detain the Committee by going further, but I simply table the fact that I think it is an essential and central point in any state of the game report and of the work of the regulator moving forward, and I would appreciate any clarity that the Minister can throw on that this evening.