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

Baroness Debbonaire Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I am also in football paradise because my club, Birmingham City, after 30 years actually has very decent owners. Seeing the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, reminds me that Birmingham beat Arsenal in the League Cup in 2011, as he may well recall.

The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, has raised an important issue, essentially about definitions, but I just want to ask him: why a fatal Motion? Only a handful of fatal Motions have ever been passed by your Lordships’ House. I listened very carefully and I do not think he gave one justification for a fatal Motion. I do not know whether he is allowed to come in again, but it would be helpful to this debate to know what on earth this is about.

[Baroness Debbonaire (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly. My interest in this matter is in the Football Governance Act itself, and less in football. I have no football club interest whatever to declare. I just want to ask: what is the noble Lord trying to achieve here? There are all sorts of people in both Houses who seem terribly keen on stopping the football regulator getting on with what they are supposed to be getting on with. This Bill originated in the Tory party prior to the general election, and it was picked up willingly by the Labour Party while we were in opposition. I was the leader of that team at the time: I pushed for it to be in our manifesto and I am absolutely delighted that it is there. There is an excellent chair of the regulator in David Kogan, who has the respect of all sides of football and is uniquely well qualified in his knowledge of both broadcasting and football. All we need here is for the regulator to be allowed to get on with the job. It is my understanding that it is doing so at great speed, in the interests of football clubs.

The noble Lord refers to specifics. Surely, he wants those football clubs to survive and thrive. That is what this regulator is about and what this party wants to see: is the game of football surviving and thriving up and down all quarters and parts of the country? That is what the football regulator was set up to ensure and I really hope that the noble Lord is not trying to stand in the way of progress.

--- Later in debate ---

[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”.

[Baroness Debbonaire (Lab)]

Come on.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

Well, those were the comments of the chairman of the Select Committee in another place. But rather more pertinent are the comments not by a politician but by the commissioner, Sir William Shawcross himself, who spent the morning giving evidence to a Select Committee of Parliament and who said that he had never seen an appointment with as many breaches of the Governance Code on Public Appointments as this one. He said that it was

“not easy to set those breaches aside”

and called that very disappointing. I am sure we all agree that it has been a very disappointing process.

[Baroness Debbonaire (Lab)]

I thank the shadow Minister for giving way, but are we not somewhat straying from the subject of this Motion? We appear to be now discussing the football regulator and some very flowery language used by the chair of the Commons Public Accounts Committee this morning, which was wholly unfair and wholly unreasonable, when we are actually supposed to be discussing the guidance. Are we not just using a political opportunity to have a go?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

This is guidance and this is a Bill that is to be enforced by a new independent regulator. We did not know the name of the Government’s preferred candidate for the regulator when the Bill went through, regrettably. We know now who is entrusted with applying this new regime, and we know that the Commissioner for Public Appointments has criticised not just the Government but this morning Mr Kogan himself for a lack of transparency. It is straying from the guidance, but I wonder whether the Minister, when she rises, will have anything to say about the comments made by the Commissioner for Public Appointments today.

The noble Baroness, Lady Debbonaire, is right: the focus of this debate is the guidance before us. On this too, my noble friend Lord Moynihan has raised a number of pertinent questions, some of which we touched on during our scrutiny of the Bill and some of which are raised by the guidance that has now been published. Under particular consideration today is an issue that we spent considerable time on. When we were looking at the Bill, we were provided with rather scant information about what significant influence or control would mean in practice. We now have draft guidance—but, as my noble friend Lord Moynihan says, that appears to raise rather more questions than it answers.

As my noble friend pointed out during our scrutiny of the Bill, there is no requirement in the legislation to consult before publishing the guidance, which has now been published. I think that is regrettable. I see from some of the comments that there has been informal consultation with some in football, but maybe the Minister can set out in a bit more detail the consultation and discussions that were had, which led to the drawing up and publication of this draft guidance.

A second and rather more serious point of contention regarding the new owners’ test, again raised by my noble friend in his speech and his Motion today, is the significant departure from the current concepts of ownership employed by the Premier League, the EFL, UEFA and others in football. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, made some remarks about obscenity—not obscene remarks, I note carefully—drawing attention to other areas of law, both in this country and in the United States, where different tests are made. But in a football context alone, the Premier League’s handbook uses the notion of control and control only, whereas here in the guidance we see the new concept of significant influence or control. So this is introducing some new thoughts into this particular sphere of football regulation. The draft guidance states:

“The right to exercise significant influence or control over a club may result in that person being considered an owner for the purpose of the Act, regardless of whether or not they actually exercise that right”.


Surely the combination of this broader interpretation of the meaning of owner and the fact that one does not actually have to do anything to be considered as such, under the Act, means that this guidance would capture a far greater number of people than one might initially anticipate.