Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Pannick and Lord Fuller

Report stage
Tuesday 11th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fuller (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to my substantial Amendment 45, together with the consequential Amendments 42, 43 and 44. I have followed the Bill closely from the stand—it has been televised on every occasion it has been debated.

My amendment seeks to delete the unnecessary and counterproductive Clause 27, which is prematurely engaged at the very earliest stages of a potential sale and purchase agreement between the seller of a football club and perhaps a number of purchasers. By deleting Clause 27, notification will be engaged only once the parties have reached a conditional agreement and heads of terms and a single preferred bidder has emerged. At that point, Clause 28 would be engaged as in the Bill.

Football is a game of dreams, and some dream so hard that they want to own their own club. In a small way, I am one of those people. Back in 1932, my grandfather was an Olympic athlete, and he was known as Flying Fuller. Back then, he answered a small advertisement in the Eastern Daily Press and acquired 250 shares in the Norwich City Football Club. When he passed away 40 years ago, I inherited those shares. I have enjoyed attending the annual general meetings and generally being a keen observer of how the business of football operates ever since.

From that 40-year perspective, I can tell noble Lords how clubs change hands, and it is not how the Bill contemplates. The Bill anticipates that, at some point, someone dreams big and they need to submit themselves to the IFR so that an army of Rachels can measure them up for the sheepskin coat, which is the particular uniform that owners of football clubs tend to wear. Forget for a moment that time might be of the essence, that they might be subject to an HMRC winding-up order or that there might be other cash flow issues; even before the seller can open the books, the purchaser needs to have been vetted by a civil servant.

How have we come to this place? This is not how deals work. Unless the books are opened, how could the purchaser even know whether the deal was feasible? Then, unless the purchaser was qualified, the seller could not open those books for fear that person was a charlatan. Noble Lords can see the jeopardy here.

Quite simply, the new law, and Clause 27 in particular, would prevent buyer and seller being put together. This Bill purports to stop clubs going bust, but the actions of the Bill would ensure that they did.

As I look back and reflect on the ownership of our club in Norwich, during my small slice of ownership, I recall how Norwich City Football Club was owned by Robert Chase, a local builder. When the wind blew out of his sails, it needed somebody with deeper pockets to take over, but nobody came forward. By and by, a man called Geoffrey Watling, who owned a local taxi firm, came forward to act as midwife, and he held that club while he hawked it around. Here was a modest man with a deep interest in the community. He understood what the role of the football club can and should be, and he put himself in harm’s way when nobody else would step up to the plate. All Norwich fans thank him for what he did. The main stand, even today, is named for him. Eventually, Delia Smith, the famous TV chef, together with her husband Michael Wynn-Jones, acquired the shares of the club in a story that was beautifully told in the Times about three weeks ago. It must have been a very expensive taxi ride for them both, and no two people could have done more to act in the public interest and save our club.

Last week the club entered a new phase with a new owner, Mark Attanasio, taking a leading role. We hope he can bring us to past glories. By all accounts, he is a worthy custodian of our club. I would rather have Delia’s blessing than Rachel’s.

The purpose of telling these tales is that had there been a regulator operating under Clause 27, Robert Chase would have thrown in the towel long before he did. Kind-hearted Geoffrey Watling would not have been allowed to step in as midwife, because he would have failed Clause 37(4). He only owned a taxi company; he had no qualifications. You would have to question why a husband and wife team from Suffolk would put themselves in harm’s way to own Norwich City Football Club in Norfolk, similarly failing Clause 37(4), because being a cook is not necessarily the requisite qualification for club ownership. Put simply, as a result of Clause 27, our club would have folded; it would have prevented these deals before they even started. With the best of intentions, Labour is creating a doom loop for clubs in trouble—a vortex from which few will be able to escape. The consequence of Clause 27 is to condemn a club in trouble to extinction.

My amendments would not prevent the IFR eventually certifying someone under Clause 28, but it would stop the snuffing out of hope at Clause 27. Of course, it is regrettable that only faceless bureaucrats can allow you to don the sheepskin coat in the first place. In my view, the regulator should not be allowed at this early stage to prevent clubs doing different and taking those calculated risks—the rolling of the dice.

Football is not just embellished by the great players—the Beckhams and the Ronaldos. It is decorated by the local characters, people like the Roberts, the Geoffreys, the Delias and the Michaels. We should be encouraging them to dream. Labour is at risk of turning our national game into the dull men’s club—a system where local people are prematurely discouraged from standing up for their communities, and big business and remote shareholders with fat lawyers are preferred. This is in direct conflict with the two key outcomes set out in Clause 1, where the economic and social well-being of local communities are key objectives.

I was with Delia on that infamous “Let’s be ‘avin’ you” rant 20 years and two weeks ago. It passed into our legend and our lexicon. It is part of the colour of the game and our nation, yet this is exactly the sort of thing that will be lost if we do not attract and cherish the community-minded people. For the sake of anyone who loves our game, do not make it even harder than it is to get to the start line. Let us abandon Clause 27 and just rely on Clause 28, at which point the deal’s certainty is greater.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, I return to Amendment 7 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, seeking to leave out “influence or”. There are in fact two references to “influence” in Clause 3. Clause 3(2)(b)—the one that the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, focuses on—mentions

“a higher degree of influence”,

and Clause 3(2)(c) mentions “a degree of influence”. Is there any assistance in the Bill as to what is meant by either of those concepts? They seem very vague indeed to me.

In paragraph 15(1) of Schedule 1, on page 83, there is an obligation on the Secretary of State—the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, referred to this—to

“prepare and publish guidance about the meaning of significant influence”,

but that is a different matter. Significant influence is plainly distinct from

“a higher degree of influence”

or “a degree of influence”. I am not suggesting that the Minister provides guidance now, but it may be a matter that can be addressed when the Bill goes to the other place. There really needs to be some assistance provided to the regulator and others as to what these vague concepts mean.