Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Sentamu and Baroness Twycross

Report stage
Tuesday 11th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, at the end of the day, the purpose of this first amendment is simply to increase financial sustainability and to require the Secretary of State to do a number of things. The Bill as it stands clearly and simply states the purpose, review and key priorities:

“The purpose of this Act is to protect and promote the sustainability of English football”.


I for one would be content not to put in finance and many other things, because that opens a big can of worms. The Bill then spells out clearly in Clause 2 how to achieve that particular purpose. This amendment would truncate a big piece of work that has been done.

So I still support the idea that the purpose of this Act is to protect, promote and sustain English football. That is a wonderful way of doing it. The amendment would reduce it to financial sustainability and the Secretary of State having powers to do this, that and the other. This particular Bill is really about the independent regulator; do not suddenly introduce the Secretary of State in the purposes. So I would not like to support or go with this amendment, because it is not as careful and clear as the purpose we have at the moment.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, for tabling his amendments, and for his kind words and his engagement on this Bill. I extend those thanks to all noble Lords from across your Lordships’ House for their engagement, and for the time and input that I have benefited from over the last few weeks and months.

I will start with Amendment 2. I reassure the noble Lord that, although the Bill does not specify the requirement to consider both prospective and current fans, this is implicit within the existing requirement. Football would not serve the interests of fans if the game were unattractive or unwelcoming to new fans. The regulator is also inherently future minded, with the requirement to focus on sustainability and the long-term protection of the club and its heritage assets. Future fans are therefore already required to be in the regulator’s mind when it makes its decisions. This is also reflected in the Bill’s Explanatory Notes.

Covid-19 Inquiry

Debate between Lord Sentamu and Baroness Twycross

Thursday 23rd January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I am sure that all those who are asked will co-operate fully with the Covid corruption commissioner. I do not entirely share my noble friend’s view. I felt that the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, did acknowledge that there had been issues that led to some of the problems the UK faced during the Covid pandemic. My view is that all political parties have a role to work together to ensure that our resilience is as strong as it can be for the future. I hope that we continue to work on a cross-party basis to improve this country’s resilience, and that all noble Lords feed into the wider review on the UK’s resilience, which the Government are undertaking at the moment.

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, I hope the noble Baroness will forgive me if I did not hear properly, but I did not hear the answer to the question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Winston, about research. We have the best people doing research—some of them Nobel Prize winners—and their budget has been cut, and if this is not addressed pretty quickly they may leave and do it somewhere else. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Livermore, is here and that he deals with budgets. What are we going to do about the possibility of some of our best researchers deciding to go somewhere else where there is money that will allow them to do their research?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

Clearly, we want to keep the best researchers in the country here. With the best will in the world, and with the great forbearance of the team that has been preparing my brief, I have gone back on an almost minute-by-minute basis over the last two days to get points added to it. I committed to my noble friend that I would write to him about the specific points he raised in his question. I will be honest: I do not have the answer to that specific question here today.