Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Shamash Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 13th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shamash (Lab)]

My Lords, I am delighted to be able to follow my dear noble friend Lord Triesman; he is now not in his place, but I was delighted to see him here at all.

I have to congratulate the Government and my noble friend the Minister on introducing this Bill so early in this Parliament. Listening to this debate, it is clear there is considerable interest across the House, and it is clear from the speeches that preceded my contribution that the introduction of the regulator will be, on the whole, welcomed.

I must declare an interest in that I am currently a director of Manchester United Supporters Trust and was its former chairman over the past decade. It is a substantial trust with over 100,000 members. It came into being following the takeover in 2005—which my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, referred to—by the American family, the Glazers, who used a leveraged buyout to acquire the club. I was the proud owner of a number of shares at the time of the takeover and I felt, like many other fans who held shares, that I owned part of the club—albeit probably only a blade of grass on the pitch, but it was my blade of grass. However, company law required that the minority shares had to be sold to the Glazer family. The funds received by the fans who were shareholders were in a considerable number of cases put into what was then known as the Phoenix fund, and the cash has been managed by our trust for the benefit of the fans as a whole.

In context, following the highly publicised leveraged buyout, the debt at the club at the time was £500 million, which I think was referred to earlier. As I understand from recent reports in the New York Times, that debt at the moment is approaching £1 billion. As I have said, I welcome the creation of the regulatory framework set out in the Bill, but a question I pose for the Minister and indeed the Government is whether the independent regulator would have the power to interfere with such a leveraged buyout of the kind that took place in 2005.

Regulation in football was first raised in 2014 in the lead-up to the 2015 general election. I was involved in setting up a specialist working party to formulate the policy that included fan ownership. Reform of football governance was subsequently in the Labour Party’s manifesto for the 2015 general election, and I subsequently learned that in fact it would have been in the Queen’s Speech if Labour had won that election. As has been discussed this evening, this new Government, following the fan-led review under the chairmanship of Dame Tracey Crouch, have now laid the Bill before this House.

At the core of football are of course the fans. There are many types of fans, and indeed the Bill does not seek to set out the impossible task of trying to define what a fan actually is. Fans range from those who sit on a sofa and watch matches regularly to others like me who have season tickets, have had them for many years and attend games, in my case not just at Old Trafford but at grounds across the country and indeed in Europe. I have been a fan for over 70 years.

The Bill sets out fan consultation as a condition on a club and the issues on which a club must consult. Consultation is to be with

“persons elected by the club’s fans to represent their views, or … persons otherwise appearing to the IFR—

that is, the regulator—

“to represent the views of the club’s fans”.

Quite rightly, the Bill does not seek to be prescriptive. However, it does not refer to the substantial network of supporters’ trusts that exist: of 92 league clubs, 73 have what could be described as community benefit societies in the form of supporters’ trusts. To be added to this number are similar trusts within the National League and below. I ask the Minister to recognise that supporters’ trusts in my experience are democratically elected, have a membership and constitution, and in many cases are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and operate under the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014.

Active trusts in many cases properly and fully engage with their clubs, and a growing number of them have fan advisory boards made up of members of the trust and those of the club. I am concerned that, if there is not a properly established trust that the club could deal with, there is the likelihood that a group of fans could set themselves up and the club could deal with them as they may offer a less critical view of the way the club is run. This of course will be a matter for the regulator through guidance and further consultation with those involved in the administration of various fan groups and the club in the future.

I am delighted that the Bill is now before the House and I am aware that most supporters will welcome the creation of the independent football regulator as being to the benefit of football in England, so that football can continue to make a major contribution to the economy of the country with its huge popularity across the globe.