Draft Statutory Guidance on the Meaning of “Significant Influence or Control”

Lord Sentamu Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, when I saw that we were going to pray against the Bill, I thought, “Oh, this is interesting”, because I know that the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, is good at this. He casts the fly across the water and drags it out to see what will rise and bite. Well, this trout is biting—not at the fly but at the line. The Bill is going through and we will have precedent and case law very quickly on how this is operating. We will have to let the regulator get on with it.

I agree with the noble Lord on one point: the ownership of these national bodies is incredibly complicated. The noble Lord, Lord Watson, has just mentioned it. If you think this is complicated, look down the chain. The origins of many of these institutions go back to the Victorian period, and they have been through many evolutions, changes and traumatic experiences along the way, wrapped around them. There is a great mess about these institutions, which is why they get into so much trouble and why we need the regulator.

You will have to have a series of general terms, which will be defined by experience, case law and the attitude of the regulators. I hope the current regulator is a success. Let us face it, the regulator has not exactly arrived to universal fanfare, but I hope it is a success and we set a precedent for how this should be done, because we need that. It is too complicated to get the definitions and clarity the noble Lord seeks here. I know he opposed the regulation of this sport and is worried about other bits. I happen to disagree with him on this; I may agree with him on something else tomorrow, but on this I disagree with him. We should let the regulator get on with it and observe. We have other things coming in the “state of the game” report, and the Government cannot look away from this. We have to make sure that it happens independently. I hope that we just let the regulator get on with it because, let us face it, we have talked about this enough.

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, I apologise for speaking when the Front Benches have started speaking—I was going to stand up, but the noble Lord, Lord Addington, jumped up far too quickly.

When it comes to football, I want to use a phrase that the late Bishop of Southwark, Roy Williamson, applied to me. We had been working hard to get the Holy Trinity Church restored; it was a very poor congregation and fundraising was really very difficult, but we managed to do it. He came to open this amazing refurbished place, with the organ returned to its great glory. The church was full, and he said, “Your vicar, John Sentamu, can almost be compared to a Yorkshire terrier—never letting go, or only doing so in order to get a firmer grip”. That is how I see the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan: when it comes to football, he is like a Yorkshire terrier. He does it not wanting to control or anything but just because he loves football, and he knows a lot about football. He is doing this with an honest attitude. I do not think he is doing it to prevent regulations and all that is happening. But because he is like a terrier, I think this is the moment he needs to let go.

This stands on a three-legged stool. The first is what we passed here in your Lordships’ House—an Act of Parliament, the primary legislation. If you go there, you discover that the Secretary of State has power to do what he has just done. He is not doing it out of any reason other than that the Act that we passed gave him that power. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said exactly the same thing.

Secondly, there is the regulator, with powers given, again, by an Act of Parliament. The third leg is guidance—but I always look at guidance not as the key driver of things, which is why it cannot be clearly defined on every occasion. As the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said, guidance always has to be understood in context. You cannot simply talk about what happens to my little club, which is not in paradise. York City Football Club is climbing up slowly, but it fell out of League Two a long time ago. You cannot say to the people of York City that paragraph 1.6 should not apply to them, when it says that

“regulated football clubs will be required to submit and publish a personnel statement identifying all owners. The definition of ownership, including the concept of significant influence or control, will ensure this statement publicly identifies the correct persons as owners, providing transparency to fans and the wider public”.

That will also apply to my little York City Football Club. Therefore, I do not see those phrases needing to be more precise.

This three-legged stool of the Act, the regulator and the guidance provided by the Secretary of State will, I am sure, make even my little club of York City feel emboldened that it actually knows who really owns it and who those people are. I think this is a good thing. I beseech the highly admired noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, that this is the time to drop the Motion. He can continue to be keen on football, but this is not the time—otherwise, you are going to play a game that is not going to take you anywhere.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I for one am grateful to my noble friend Lord Moynihan for giving us the opportunity to consider this guidance in full and for acting, if I follow the metaphors correctly, like a trout-fishing terrier who loves football too much but did not read the Tory manifesto with enough diligence. Of course, had my noble friend not brought this Motion, I doubt we would have had quite as many people here, or quite as many speeches, or spent such a long time looking at the guidance that is before your Lordships’ House—and I am glad that we have, because much has changed even since the debates we had on the Bill before it left your Lordships’ House and went to another place.

For instance, we saw just yesterday the sanctions that the EFL has handed to Sheffield Wednesday, following multiple breaches of its regulations relating to payment obligations. The EFL has given that club a six-point deduction and banned its former owner from owning any club in the English Football League for three years. Had we known that example at the time of the Bill’s passage, we might have taken it into consideration when discussing the amendments allowing some of the regulation to be delegated to the leagues themselves—but that debate has passed.

We are also meeting this evening after the Commissioner for Public Appointments appeared before a Select Committee in another place, where the appointment of the chairman of the Independent Football Regulator was likened to a

“mafia appointment in Sicily sometime in the 1950s”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

I do not like interrupting the noble Lord, because he always puts the facts as he wants to put them, but the question that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, asked was: would it catch everybody? Yes, if they are regulated football clubs. Paragraph 1.6 states that

“regulated football clubs will be required”,

so it will catch everybody. Everybody must do what paragraph 1.6 says.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My point was a broader one about whether, under the definitions in paragraph 2.11, a club sponsor could be considered to have “significant influence or control”. It seems to me, on a reading of the guidance, that they might, but I look forward to the Minister’s response. It certainly seems that there is quite an expansive list of people that the regulations might apply to. Paragraph 2.12 states that a former owner who sold his or her shares to a close friend could still be considered an owner if he or she makes recommendations on how to vote to the person to whom he or she sold those shares. So, under the guidance, a person with no current financial stake in the club at all could actually count as an owner. I would be grateful for confirmation of that from the Minister. I see her nodding, but I look forward to her confirmation.

My noble friend Lord Moynihan set out, through the history of Leeds United, the complicated arrangements by which football clubs are owned. Another example might be Bournemouth. In 2022, Turquoise Bidco Ltd obtained 100% of shares in Bournemouth Football Club. Turquoise was then renamed Black Knight Football Club UK Ltd, which is a UK-based holding company wholly owned by Black Knight Football Club US based in Nevada. That American entity is in turn owned by Cannae Holdings, Inc. According to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Cannae owned 44.3% of Black Knight, but Cannae is in turn owned by institutional investors, including BlackRock and the Vanguard Group. An American businessman, Bill Foley, owns 7.7% of Cannae, meaning that his beneficial ownership of Bournemouth is 3.4%, but a filing in April this year disclosed that his economic interest in Black Knight is 28%. That adds to the example of Leeds given by my noble friend Lord Moynihan of the complexity of even the most straightforward football clubs and the difficulty that will be involved in setting out all the people that might need to be regulated, investigated and brought before the regulator.

I conclude by echoing the question that my noble friend asked, as the Minister would expect, given my roots in Tyneside. The question that my noble friend posed will be of great interest to my friends and family there: would she advise the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia to continue to invest in Newcastle United, through the Saudi Public Investment Fund, given what this might mean for him and for the club? That is just one of many questions of great interest to football fans, which is not made clear through this guidance. I am very grateful to my noble friend for giving us the opportunity to probe those in a rather fuller House than I think we would have had in Grand Committee.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Sentamu Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments and / or reasons
Tuesday 15th July 2025 Lords Chamber

We now move from process to purpose. The regulator will be tested quickly. The Premier League and its clubs will engage positively and constructively, but it will also defend what makes our competition great. As we enter this critical new phase in the context of all the challenges I have set out, the Government should also consider their approach to our national game. We must move away from layering on new risks, more friction and additional costs. We can no longer treat the Premier League as a bottomless well of money or a political target, because the Premier League is not just a domestic institution; it is a special national asset that belongs to its millions of passionate fans, and its success powers the whole pyramid, the deepest and best funded in the world. Let us regulate it with care, not complacency. Let us preserve its global leadership position. Let us ensure that, in doing so, this new regime does not weaken English football but strengthens it for generations to come.

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, I simply want to thank the Minister for her perseverance, for staying with the task until it is done, for her humour and for appearing truly human. She had quite a lot of stuff coming in her direction but she did not get distracted. For that, I thank her very much.

I am going to limit my comments to the amendments. The Minister moved the Motion on Commons Amendment 1, but I want to go up to Amendment 9 and tell the House why I think these amendments are wonderful. We all learn Americanisms, where nouns and pronouns of all kinds become verbs—which we should not really want. The word “levy” we know, but in our draft we used the word “leviable”—however you might pronounce it. We all know that you can levy but I do not know whether people in the football team will know what we called the leviable function. It is not a perfect English word, but I prefer what the Commons have done. They want us to insert “functions under this Act”. This goes through Clauses 53 and 54 and I think it is more readily understood than the word “leviable”. Sometimes it is better to use quite simple English, so that everybody can understand it. I hope that, when it comes to those nine amendments, we will not quibble but will say that they have put the English in a way that the man and woman on the Clapham omnibus can understand.

Freedom of Speech

Lord Sentamu Excerpts

Friday 10th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble and learned friend Lord Brown for his powerful speech, which is still ringing bells of challenge in my ears.

On 6 January 1941, the President of the United States of America, Franklin Roosevelt, addressed Congress on the state of war in Europe. At the close of his address, he said that he looked forward to

“a world founded upon four essential human freedoms”,

which he named as freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. These words are still remembered but the ideals have not been realised anywhere in the world.

In this debate, we are invited by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, given the contemporary challenges to freedom of speech, to map out the role of the public, private and civil society sectors in upholding it. In a book of essays I edited in 2015, On Rock or Sand? Firm Foundations for Britain’s Future, I referred in my introduction to two noble and learned Law Lords. It is still my view that what they offered us is not sand but rock—that is, firm foundations that would enable us and the public, private and civil society sectors to uphold freedom of speech.

First, in his book, The Rule of Law, Lord Bingham has a beautiful translation of the Magna Carta, from the Latin into English. Clause 39 states:

“No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.”


Clause 40 states:

“To no one will we sell, to no one deny or delay right or justice.”


Those words from the Magna Carta were written 800 years ago, and echo the law and prophets of the Hebrew scriptures.

Lord Bingham’s examination of the meaning of the rule of law makes clear that it is not an arid legal doctrine but the foundation of a fair and just society, a guarantee of responsible government and an important contribution to economic growth, as well as offering the best means yet devised for securing peace and co-operation. He advocates eight conditions that capture its essence, as understood in Western democracies. Today, I will give four of them:

“The law must be accessible and so far as possible intelligible, clear and predictable … Questions of legal right and liability should ordinarily be resolved by application of the law and not the exercise of discretion … The laws of the land should apply equally to all, save to the extent that objective differences justify differentiation … The law must afford adequate protection of fundamental human rights.”


Lord Bingham ends by saying on page 174 that the rule of law

“is one of the greatest unifying factors, perhaps the greatest, the nearest we are likely to approach to a universal secular religion. It remains an ideal, but an ideal worth striving for, in the interests of good government and peace, at home and in the world at large.”

It is key in freeing and energising us all, in the public, private and civil society sectors, to uphold freedom of speech with cheerfulness and hope.

For me, justice goes beyond the simple administration of laws. Justice is possible only when law, religion and morals are intermingled. I call my second witness: the noble and learned Law Lord, Lord Denning, to whom I also referred in On Rock or Sand?. Lord Denning wrote in The Changing Law in 1953 that the severance of law from morality, and of religion from law, has made many people

“think that religion and law have nothing in common. The law, they say, governs our dealings with our fellows, whereas religion concerns our dealings with God. Likewise, they hold that law has nothing to do with morality. Law lays down rigid rules which must be obeyed without questioning whether they are right or wrong. Its function is to keep order, not to do justice ... Although religion, law and morals can be separated, they are nevertheless still very much dependent on one another. Without religion, there can be no morality, there can be no law.”

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, in his book Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times, published in 2020, argues that

“there is no liberty without morality, and no freedom without responsibility … all of us must play our part in rebuilding our common moral foundation”—

the kinds of things we heard from the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries. The book goes on to say that

“a nation is strong when it cares for the weak, and rich when it cares for the poor.”

I ended the book On Rock or Sand? Firm Foundations for Britain’s Future with these words:

“Individualism and consumerism are sand. Freedom, Fellowship, Service for God and neighbour, and the Rule of Law are rock. These are the firm foundations for Britain’s future.”


On these foundations let us uphold and restore freedom of speech. I hope we do not allow the two reactions to the book On Rock or Sand? to happen to freedom of speech. The first reaction was from those who read On Rock or Sand? Then there were those who hated it.