English Premier League Football

Debate between Lord Watson of Invergowrie and Lord Ouseley

Thursday 25th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

My Lords—

[Lord Ouseley]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Bates, for initiating this debate and enabling the very interesting contributions that we have already heard on the Premier League and its contributions to our society and in a global context. From the outset, I declare an interest as the chairman of Kick It Out, which was set up in the second year of the Premier League. I also pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner of Worcester, for the contribution he made in supporting the start-up of Kick It Out through his work at the time with the Football Trust, which has been superseded by the Football Foundation, of which the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, who spoke earlier, is the president.

Kick It Out was set up at a time when racism was rampant not only in football but on the streets of Britain—1993 was the year that Stephen Lawrence was murdered. Football’s reputation was clearly in the gutter at the time, so it was very important during the Premier League’s second year that notable figures such as David Dein, who was at the Premier League at the time, took an interest in the formation of Kick It Out and supported the Premier League in joining the Professional Footballers’ Association and the Football Association in enabling the challenge to racism, and to other forms of unacceptable abuse that were going on in football, to be taken up and supported.

I suppose that the Premier League owes its creation to many visionaries, who are probably all queuing up to claim credit for it. In addition to David Dein, I mention Greg Dyke, the current chair of the Football Association. He had the vision, way back when he was at London Weekend Television, in collaboration with others, to enable the formation of the Premier League, which has led to the successes that we have heard about. The noble Lords, Lord Bates and Lord Wei, and others have mentioned that success very eloquently.

With all its achievements and its high profile, there is an inevitable elitism about the Premier League. However, it is counterbalanced—which is really what I want to talk about—by admirable community programmes, some of which have been mentioned already, which the Premier League sponsors. With a focus on vulnerable young people and deprived communities, its contributions have been crucial for good community relations and social cohesion, but there is much more that could be done and must be done if we are to stimulate the next generation of young players, supporters, administrators and volunteers to be part of a sport that should be seen as a source for good, not just in the context of the riches it generates and the global position it holds but how it influences particularly the next generation.

That is an area in which I am most concerned that football must do more, particularly in boys’, girls’ and disabled football. In this regard, the programmes that support the mentoring, education and upskilling of individuals will be vital to freeing the game from racist, sexist, homophobic and Islamophobic abuse, harassment, bigotry, prejudice and other forms of unacceptable behaviours and attitudes. We have heard of the transformation that has taken place during the past 20 years, but all those features still exist in English Premier League football and, indeed, right across the football terrain.

The Premier League’s programmes generate partnerships of joint funding. We have heard already of Premier Skills English with the British Council. There is also Premier League Reading Stars with the National Literacy Trust. Its Kickz programmes, in partnerships with the police, have attracted universal acclaim, with benefits for thousands of vulnerable young people. Its current pride and joy is the Creating Chances programme, which has attracted some 4 million young people who attended projects during 2011.

In spite of all the deserved acclamation, there are feelings that the relatively poorer sections of our community are unable to afford to go to Premier League football matches. In fact, they pay a disproportionate amount of their income in trying to sustain their interest in the Premier League. Their BSkyB contributions, as they go up, compete with the need to put bread on the table for their families and to deal with their essential costs of rent, transport and fuel against a background of decreased earned income. Such resentment is understandable when it is known that many Premier League clubs pay their players considerable sums of money that can only be dreamt of by the fans. Agents take huge commissions. An increasing number of clubs are foreign owned, and many carry huge debts, as we have heard, with their foreign owners bailing them out. Without that bailout many would be insolvent. There are different realities at play here.

While the Premier League continues to grow as a dominant force, it must never be overlooked that football’s past, present and future development in England relies on the responsibilities and duties of the Football Association, the oldest national football association in the world, currently enjoying its 150th year of existence. The FA is the national governing body for football in England, charged with running grass-roots football for the 7 million individuals who play the game across the country, with 32,000 clubs and 113,000 teams affiliated to local leagues in a variety of ways. The FA also relies on more than 400,000 volunteers, 300,000 qualified coaches and 27,000 trained referees to facilitate and enable participation in and enjoyment of football being played regularly across the country. I will not list the many achievements attributed to it, as time is running short.

Following a summit convened in 2012 by the Prime Minister about racism in football, the FA launched last December the English football inclusion and anti-discrimination action plan with the full support of the football clubs, the leagues, the PFA, the League Managers Association and Professional Game Match Officials Limited. One of the main goals of the plan is to widen football’s talent pool for coaching, refereeing, licensing tutors, adjudicating and decision-making. For football to achieve its diversity and equality goals will require all administrators, decision-makers, managers and power brokers in the game to accept personal and professional responsibility to pursue the right actions to achieve the equality outcomes. The present composition of boardrooms, senior management teams, coaching teams and administrators in the authorities and in the clubs illustrates that there is a long haul ahead to take the next generation of fans and players to a point when it can be seen that all forms of bigotry, discrimination and hatred in the game have been eliminated.