Football Governance Bill

Debate between Tim Farron and Mark Hendrick

2nd reading
Tuesday 23rd April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I declare an interest, as a lifelong Blackburn Rovers fan and a supporter of Kendal Town, who are in the North West Counties football league—I am beginning to fear that one day we might end up playing each other at this rate. To prove that football is more about uniting us than dividing us, I have, accidentally, worn claret and blue today, as a nod to our dear friends Burnley. [Laughter.]

I was at Grange Church of England Primary School last week, where a bright year 5 lad asked, “Tim, what sport do you enjoy the most?”. I nearly said football, but then I realised that I do not enjoy football at all; it makes me completely frustrated and miserable, but it does rule my life and occupy most of my waking moments. It is a hugely important thing, as it binds and creates communities, it creates shared experiences and it helps to build what it is to be English and to be British. So I am a thoroughly proud football fan. I love the game and want to stand in solidarity with all other football fans, even those of teams I do not approve of.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Dame Tracey Crouch), who is back in her place, and the fan-led review, which has underpinned the Bill. My party and I welcome the principles behind it and the independent regulator. We acknowledge that football is integral to our culture and that the whole pyramid is vital to the game. Michael O'Neill, the chairman of Kendal Town—his is an unpaid role at a wonderful club that is doing incredibly well at the moment—has said that the

“top of the pyramid would not exist without the foundations”.

He is absolutely right about that, but the foundations include not just the clubs lower down the pyramid, but the youth game and the Westmorland County FA, and what it does for young people, supporting mental health, building resilience and teamwork, and creating community.

I am supportive of part 3 of the Bill, on licensing, although it is an important moment to do some redistribution, taking a proportionate share from each of the clubs to ensure that we fund the additional requirements of meeting the licensing. Part 4 of the Bill, as we have heard, is about owners and directors. I express my solidarity with the supporters of Reading—we think of Dai Yongge and what he has done to that club and community. Not yet so awful—but watch this space—is what has happened with Venky’s, who own the Rovers. Blackburn Rovers is a club in limbo and the question is whether or not we are a going concern, because of the owners’ plight in the Indian courts. We have to ask ourselves the extent to which part 4 will give the regulator power to deal with the Dai Yongges and Venkys of this world and make them put up, pay up or sell up. Nothing more underlines the powerlessness of the fans than situations such as those, and fans of Bury, Bolton, Hull City and Cardiff City would concur.

Part 5 deals with the duty on clubs and competition organisers. I am going to table an amendment, if I am permitted to do so, to bring back the replays in the FA cup and to restructure things so that all competing teams get an equal vote in deciding the organisation and rules of that cup. This situation is an outrage and nothing more underlines the arrogance and complacency of the Premier League than its thinking it can dictate to the rest of the league and the non-league how that glorious and almost ancient competition will be. If my amendment is successful, the Premier League might get away with one year of no replays, but we will get them back the year after when the whole of the footballing establishment actually gets a vote.

My main concern is on part 6—I will not go through every part of the Bill—and the powers of last resort. I am deeply concerned that we have only partial financial oversight. This is where football fans feel a sense of disappointment, and the Government have been a little weak in this regard. It feels like they have listened to the powerful few rather than the clubs, the fans or the volunteers. The financial powers seem to be restricted to simply being a mediator between the Premier League and the English Football League, and actually the Premier League and the championship when all said and done.

The right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) has talked about some of the financial division, and let us look at the allocation. Of every £1,000 received in broadcast revenue, £882 goes to premier league clubs and £32 to championship clubs—that is about enough for Blackburn Rovers to buy another pair of goalkeeping gloves and, by golly, we could do with them. If you go down further, 15p goes to national league north clubs, and a fat zero to anything below the national league. If the pyramid is important, then the foundations are important. I want the regulator to have the power to make sure that the Premier League and the championship do not hog all the money, and that they distribute properly and effectively down the division.

I want to pay tribute to Kendal Town—the mighty Mintcakes, as we are known—because they speak for and represent so many other non-league clubs. Five hundred people a week watch the great team managed by Jimmy Marshall. Everybody at that club is a volunteer. What good could be done by a relatively small amount of redistribution of that money down to that level. Kendal Town have hosted 12 cup finals of various kinds at the Parkside Road ground this year. It costs them £8,000 to maintain that ground, and they get nothing for it. A fairer deal is absolutely essential, and, so far, this Bill is the weakest on that fair financial flow. It is important that the Government get that right beyond Second Reading.

At a time when the division between the divisions has never been greater, I think it is worth paying a bit of attention to the parachute payments. There is a widening not just in quality, but in resource between the premier league and the championship, between the championship and league one, between league one and league two, and between league two and the national league. That reduces competition, entrenches privilege and squashes ambition. One key driver—perhaps the key driver to this division, certainly at the top end of the tables—is the parachute payment, which is a completely unjustifiable disgrace. It is the greatest financial distortion in the game. This Bill ducks that distortion—every football fan has noticed that the Government have ducked that distortion. Therefore, people are deeply sceptical about whether the Government are serious about fairness in the game—

[Sir Mark Hendrick]

rose—

[Tim Farron]

I am happy to give way to a North Ender.

[Sir Mark Hendrick]

The Government have not only ducked this issue, but the Bill itself contains something explicit that precludes a discussion of parachute payments when it comes to the regulator’s powers.

[Tim Farron]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point and I agree with him. That explicitly needs to be mentioned in the Bill, and we need to recognise that that is one way to allay the fears of those people who are sceptical about whether the Government are serious about this—as serious as the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford clearly is. Have the Government got the interest of the fans at heart? Will they do stuff that is difficult and challenging for those people at the top of the game, or will they have just listened to lobbyists rather than the fans?

In closing, Blackburn Rovers were owned by Jack Walker, the greatest owner of any football club ever. We say that we do not want billionaires in the game, but we will have people like that any day of the week—not just at Rovers, but anywhere else. He loved his club, loved his town and made a massive, massive difference. Today we are owned by Venky’s. It is alleged that, when it took on Blackburn Rovers, Venky’s believed that it was impossible to lose premier league status. It did not realise that a club could go down. Gutted though I am that we went down and got relegated, I am nevertheless glad that Venky’s were wrong: there should be movement between the divisions; there should be competition; and there should be fairness. Football is for the fans, not just for the powerful few. Let us make sure that this regulator, in its financial oversight, is able to ensure that there is genuine fairness from the top to the bottom.

Trade (Australia and New Zealand) Bill

Debate between Tim Farron and Mark Hendrick

Report stage
Monday 12th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Mark Hendrick]

I support the new clauses on impact assessments after various periods on issues affecting farmers, procurement, the UK regions, equality and human rights, and I shall make reference to the way in which the negotiations have been handled, the attitude of various Secretaries of State to scrutiny and, in particular, the role of the International Trade Committee.

As a member of that Committee, I have seen at first hand the Government’s mishandling of the trade measures that the Bill will implement, as well as their lack of transparency and of a coherent strategy on negotiating free trade agreements. Under the two previous Secretaries of State—the right hon. Members for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) and for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan)—the Government have deliberately prevented MPs from having a say in the details of the deals. It is painfully obvious how haphazardly negotiations have been handled.

Meanwhile, the Government have continued to tout the number of trade deals that they have secured, but the truth is that a majority of those deals are simply rolled-over deals forged when the UK was a member of the European Union. They are not even close to achieving the 80% of UK trade that they claimed would be covered by trade agreements by the end of 2022, including an agreement with the USA, which was pledged in the 2019 Conservative manifesto.

Australia and New Zealand have the distinction of being non-EU countries with which the UK negotiated trade deals from scratch post Brexit, but the proof is in the pudding. The trade deals are terrible for Britain. They benefit Australian and New Zealand exporters more than UK exporters, while UK agriculture, forestry, fishing, and its semi-processed food industry are left to suffer the consequences. Australia and New Zealand received full liberalisation on beef and sheep and unfettered access to the UK food market, but the UK did not receive the same concessions in return. The Government’s own Back Benchers have exposed what we have known for some time—that securing those trade measures was a box-ticking exercise, rushed through to get a deal done, and not necessarily in the best interests of the UK.

The former Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the right hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), recently criticised the Australia trade deal in the Chamber as not actually being a very good deal for the UK, admitting that

“the UK gave away far too much for far too little in return.”

Indeed, he said that

“since I now enjoy the freedom of the Back Benches, I no longer have to put such a positive gloss on what was agreed…unless we recognise the failures the Department for International Trade made during the Australia negotiations, we will not be able to learn the lessons for future negotiations.”

He went on to say:

“We did not need to give Australia or New Zealand full liberalisation in beef and sheep—it was not in our economic interest to do so, and neither Australia nor New Zealand had anything to offer in return for such a grand concession.”—[Official Report, 14 November 2022; Vol. 722, c. 424.]

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman is giving a very good speech. The former Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whom he has just quoted, also said that he felt that the Government were in such a rush to get a deal signed off before the G7 summit in Cornwall last year that they bypassed a great deal of scrutiny of the agreement, even by themselves, so for political reasons they cast aside the interests of British farmers. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is truly reprehensible?

[Sir Mark Hendrick]

I totally agree that that is reprehensible, but it was not the first time that it happened. The Japan deal was a roll-over deal, but parts of it were new and were added at the last minute. The Government delayed the details until 24 hours before the report was published, so the International Trade Committee could not scrutinise it properly and comment on it. It happened with Japan before it happened with Australia.