Football: Safe Standing

Debate between Alex Chalk and Stephen Morgan

Monday 25th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Morgan (Portsmouth South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I want to thank the chair of the Pompey Supporters Trust, Simon Colebrook, for talking with me about the issue, as well as our excellent shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan), who has led our party in backing safe standing across the football league. I thank, also, the owner of Portsmouth football club, who has written to me about this important issue today.

In a debate about safe standing in championship and premier league games, Pompey fans will be painfully aware that, despite a prolific history of European and top division football, not to mention multiple FA cup wins, our club are currently enjoying a short break from the pressures of the premier league. Nevertheless, our time in this country’s top two divisions means that, under current legislation, we are required permanently to remain all-seater. Our club is therefore a prime example of the injustice of the Government’s stance on safe standing, because in reality the issue is not whether to bring safe standing into football grounds; it is already there. When Portsmouth fans travel to the grounds of Bristol Rovers, Peterborough United, Wycombe Wanderers and countless other sides in the football league, they see stadiums where fully licensed standing sections are operated. Yet back at Fratton Park they have no choice: standing sections are not allowed. That is all because we previously spent more than three seasons in the top two tiers. I must admit that I am puzzled about why the Government think standing becomes safer as the quality of football gets worse. If that is true, Southampton fans should not be made to sit.

Why should divisional status—and historical divisional status, at that—have implications for whether clubs can have standing sections at their grounds? It is nonsensical, and fans in my constituency are understandably frustrated. Listening to supporters is not just a courtesy. It is important for securing the future of the game. Not every fan wants to stand, but nearly every fan I have spoken to wants to have the choice. I implore the Government to trust fans. They know their clubs best.

The Minister is well respected and highly sensible. However, she is a Spurs fan and so, like Pompey fans, cannot stand safely to watch her team; but her colleague, the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), can. Why? It is because the legislation is outdated and unjust. Surely, as a fellow victim of the Football Spectators Act 1989, she shares my frustration and that of Pompey fans. I urge her not to review the issue—which many fans consider to be shorthand for ignoring it—but to listen to fans, listen to common sense and change the law.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

As the hon. Gentleman suggested, Cheltenham Town football club is in league two, and therefore we have safe standing. Does he agree that it will be regrettable if, when the time comes and the club is catapulted into the premier league, it has to rip out the safe standing? That would be to snub some of its most loyal and passionate supporters.

[Stephen Morgan]

I could not agree more.

Opportunities for any Government to do something that an overwhelming majority of people want, and that will boost community assets and generally make people happy—for free—are few and far between. The Government have an open goal. Yet, like a Southampton striker, they have skied it. On behalf of supporters in my constituency I urge the Minister to reconsider and back fans in their call for safe standing across the league.