Football: Safe Standing

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I pay tribute in particular to the previous two speakers, my hon. Friends the Members for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) and for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden). They speak from experience and their discussions with people who have been through a huge amount.

I do not want to talk specifically about the principle of safe standing, but an issue related to the design of football grounds that crops up in this general policy area. It is an issue of great importance to supporters at the largest of my local football clubs, Oxford United FC. Oxford United currently plays in League 1 and is hoping soon to move back up into the championship, where it used to play. There are a number of fans at Oxford United who consistently stand. A number of hon. Members on both sides of the House have made that point. From my discussions with the club, it is clear that it is difficult to prevent some of those fans from standing. We have heard interesting examples from parts of the country where that process goes better and from others where it is harder.

In many areas of the country, we are asking stewards—who are relatively low-paid people, as my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) said—to carry out a difficult and potentially quite confrontational task, when they have many other activities to conduct at the same time. That is not the case at Oxford United FC, where the stewards are paid the living wage—I am pleased that they are—and where the approach to safety generally is very consistent.

Oxford United wants to put in place a special system of rails in the ground. Known as the Ox-rails method, it involves the erection of rails, independent of the seats, as an additional control measure. That is not on the assumption that everybody will stand—quite the opposite —but it could give additional support to fans who end up standing, thereby hopefully obviating some of the safety problems that have occurred in other places. It also enables banners to be hung on the rails, which is obviously important to a lot of fans.

The Ox-rails approach has been supported by local fans and has largely been supported by the local safety advisory group. The problem is that the club cannot get a guarantee from the Sports Grounds Safety Authority—and, by extension, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport—that if it moves up to the championship, it can retain the Ox-rails. I find that pretty ludicrous, because it is a safety measure. If it is good enough for League 1, surely it will be sufficient when the club moves up into the championship, but it cannot get that guarantee.

It is unclear to me what the logic behind that is. From what I can see, the rules for voluntary and compulsory all-seater orders have identical implications for the Ox-rails approach, which is quite a bit fairer than the approaches adopted in some other places, so it would be helpful if the Minister spoke specifically about the Ox-rails method in her response.