Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Pannick and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Report stage
Monday 17th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 31 and to support Amendment 33 in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley. The amendment seeks to remove the explicit reference to EDI—equality, diversity and inclusion—in the Bill by way of a compulsory obligation in the independent football regulator’s corporate governance statement.

I do not wish to rehearse the arguments made in Committee, when the Minister, I gently suggest, did not fully engage on this issue. I am nevertheless grateful that her letter of 15 January to my noble friend Lord Moynihan of Chelsea—who, incidentally, has done excellent work on this issue—was more helpful and at least tried to put forward a partial rationale for this part of the Bill. As your Lordships will know, this is an additional duty and encumbrance from the Bill put forward in the last Parliament. To that extent, it does not have the support of His Majesty’s loyal Opposition.

I want to say at the outset that it is important to treat everyone in football with fairness and equity; I believe that is good business as well as morally the correct thing to do. That is why we have a strong existing regulatory and legislative regime in this country, to ensure compliance with the basic tenets of decency, fairness and equality. But I oppose the compulsory and draconian imposition of an EDI obligation on football clubs for a number of reasons. It is heavy-handed and diverts resources from excellent existing community engagement initiatives that have developed organically over the last few years in grass-roots football. It is costly, bureaucratic and divisive, and I believe it under- mines community cohesion. It will impose unnecessary costs on a majority of smaller clubs whose financial health is precarious, and on which the onerous provisions will weigh heavily.

It will encourage diverse and divisive litigation and the intervention of third-party groups such as Stonewall, and will result in cases such as that of the football fan Linzi Smith, banished from Newcastle United Football Club for expressing her own lawful and reasonable gender- critical views online and questioned, in my opinion, in a disgraceful Orwellian fashion by Northumbria Police, for which it was forced to issue a belated and grudging apology. These proposals will chill free speech, cause the proliferation of ideological training schemes and undermine women’s sex-based rights in their workplace.

The Minister prays in aid a study by McKinsey into EDI and improved corporate decision-making but, as she knows, McKinsey’s 2018 study Delivering Through Diversity has been comprehensively critiqued and discredited by Green and Hand’s March 2024 paper published in Econ Journal Watch, which demolished its empirical evidence base and methodological assumptions, specifically on reverse causality, narrow focus, opaque data, quartile bias and global versus US scope of the research. Other academics, such as Alex Edmans of the London Business School, have similarly echoed Green and Hand’s robust and rigorous refutation of McKinsey’s studies. It is noteworthy that the Minister does not in her letter, or previously in this House, reference any other generic EDI research in respect of its efficacy, nor any on football specifically or wider sport. Perhaps she will address this issue in her later remarks.

There is a reason. Green and Hand’s headline finding was that EDI policies did not harm profitability, but there was no evidence that it helps it either—a rather important issue, given that the Wall Street Journal estimates that, globally, businesses will spend $15.4 billion on EDI next year. Where is the evidence that an EDI duty will, as the Minister has stated, “make clubs more sustainable” and ensure “good corporate decision-making”? Really?

The penny is finally dropping. Last week, the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority ditched their plans to impose costly and bureaucratic diversity and inclusion regulations on the financial services sector, which the FCA’s own impact assessment estimated would cost £561 million to set up and £317 million in recurring annual expenditure. The fans and wider public agree. In May last year, Policy Exchange found that, by 50% to 14%, people agree that businesses have become too concerned with taking political positions on contested issues, while 75% of people believe that companies should prioritise hiring on merit, regardless of race or gender, rather than hiring to create a diverse team. Of course, they are right: 40% of Premier League footballers are non-white—on merit.

I assume that both the Prime Minister and his adviser, Morgan McSweeney, read those polls and media coverage too. I am heartened by reports today that the most senior leaders in government are considering prioritising growth and economic prosperity rather than overregulation and virtue signalling, and are giving serious thought to ditching the IFR. Perhaps the Minister will offer her views on that issue.

Does anyone really believe that fans clamoured for the mandatory reporting of data on race, gender and sexuality when Bury FC went bust in 2019? The proposition is ridiculous. We need to trust our football clubs to do the right thing within our current laws. Regulation for regulation’s sake will only hasten the demise of our world-beating football success story. For those reasons, I beg to move.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, puts his case very high. He says that this is draconian and heavy-handed, will lead to ideological training schemes and is even Orwellian. His case is simply not made out. The EFL in its briefing to noble Lords says on corporate governance:

“The EFL supports the inclusion of equality, diversity and inclusion provisions within the corporate governance code of the Bill. The EFL’s equality code of practice is already mandatory for member clubs and this approach is a logical extension of existing arrangements that will ensure high standards are maintained”.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Pannick and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Committee stage
Wednesday 15th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I know we have had a busy and eventful seven weeks and we are almost there, if the noble Baroness will allow me just to finish. The Employment Rights Bill is coming down the line, which will be an extra cost to businesses of perhaps up to £5 billion a year. These are all issues that the Government have not taken into account. It is absolutely right and proper for us to make the reasonable request for the Government to look at the impact in the real world of these compliance costs, and I hope that the Minister is able to come forward with better news when we get to Report.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, and other noble Lords have made a powerful presentation of concern, which I understand, about the financial costs of regulation. It is a short point. It really is. The question is whether the amendment is a sensible way in which to address this matter. I suggest that if there is to be a review of the financial impact on regulated clubs of complying with the provisions of the Act, the best people to conduct that review are the clubs themselves and the leagues to which they belong. They can collate the material, assess the costs and provide a report to the Government, which they can publish. Everybody will be able to debate it. It is all transparent. There is absolutely no need, so far as I can see, to have a specific provision in the Bill that addresses this matter.