English Football: Financial Sustainability and Governance

Clive Jones Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Turner. I thank the hon. Member for Earley and Woodley (Yuan Yang) for securing this debate and for her diligence in campaigning, along with many others, as she highlighted in her speech, for the future of Reading football club. In the Reading area, including Wokingham, Bracknell and Newbury, the cross-party approach that has united fans and politicians of all political persuasions is to be applauded. I look forward to continuing to work with the hon. Member and others and Reading FC fans on this important issue.

Reading football club is a recent story of tragedy for its fans, for its community and for English football. Gone are the glory days of Sir John Madejski, former chairman, who embodied the very definition of what ownership of a football club should look like. I am young enough to remember seeing Roger Smee and Frank Waller in the stands at Elm Park as chairmen of the club.

Back then, Reading football club was an institution driven by its owners for the good of the club and for the fans. It promoted close links to the community and with its fans, built a great relationship with schools and was able to deliver premier football quality as well. That makes it more frustrating that it is now a stark contrast to what it was a decade ago and synonymous with the very worst of football club ownership.

Dai Yongge is not accessible to fans; nobody knows where he is. He has attempted to asset strip the club and is one of the clearest reasons why Reading football club is being held back from greater success. For example, alleged cash-flow issues under his ownership have caused the late payment of wages, resulting in points deductions.

People are just fed up with the way that the club is being run. Take, for example, the saga over Bearwood Park, Reading football club�s training ground in my constituency of Wokingham. This is a state-of-the-art facility that Dai Yongge attempted to sell in early 2024, with no consultation with fans on the decision. All he wanted to do was to get some cash for his business�for himself.

Sue Symes of Sell Before We Dai contacted me on a Thursday evening to ask what a clause in the training ground�s planning permission meant. At the time, I was a local councillor for Wokingham borough council. By lunch time the following day, I had a clear answer from council planners: the training ground development had been approved several years before, provided it belonged to Reading football club. Dai Yongge wanted to sell the training ground to Wycombe and further devalue the club. If the training ground was lost, the club was at a significant risk of having no alternative sites to train its squad.

I arranged for Reading FC and Wycombe to be reminded of the existence of that all-important clause, and within hours Wycombe had pulled out of the deal. That is just one battle that was won in a war that is hopefully close to concluding. I am pleased to acknowledge Sue Symes�s role in that.

Sue can rightly be proud of making sure that the sale of the club�s training ground did not happen, so that the club, the training ground and the stadium could all be sold as a viable concern. The club has been up for sale for more than 500 days, and it may have been close to selling several times. It will hopefully not be long before a sale actually happens, because Dai Yongge has bled the club dry and no one will deny that he must go.

The issue does not, unfortunately, end with Reading. Football clubs are not just luxury goods for millionaires to buy and sell like yachts; they are important to fans and are part of the DNA of their local communities. It is therefore good to see successive Governments bringing forward important legislation to establish an independent football regulator, which will provide a vital bulwark to protect our national game. I seriously hope that the new regulator will consider the case of Reading FC and other teams, such as Bury and Macclesfield Town, and take the time to speak to fans and learn the lived lessons of fans faced with an agonising process to retain their club�s assets and identity.

The Football Governance Bill is currently making its way through the other place. I want to record my support for the rules in the Bill requiring an assessment of the honesty and integrity of owners and officers. Importantly, the Bill also includes provisions to monitor owners and hold them accountable during their time in office, rather than just before they make their purchase. That will hopefully prevent any future Dai Yongge from taking root in a football club. I do, however, hope that the Bill will go further to protect assets beyond just stadiums. Protections should be extended to other club-owned assets, particularly training grounds but also car parks, hotels and other land owned by the club.

I would greatly appreciate it if the Minister answered a few questions. Will the independent football regulator, once set up, have any formal duty to engage with clubs that have faced hardships? What steps are the Government taking to strengthen the protection of club assets? Will the Minister reflect on whether the new Football Governance Bill, in its current form, would have prevented the takeover of Reading by Dai Yongge?

In conclusion, football is not just any other sport; it is an integral part of the fabric of our cities, towns and villages in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. That is what drives passion and desire among so many people. Quite simply, they want the five tiers of professional football to function because, from their perspective, if football cannot function, then how can society? Finally, I pay tribute to all those fans who have tirelessly campaigned on this issue, including the groups Sell Before We Dai and Supporters Trust at Reading, and people such as Sue Symes, Adam Jones and Ian Morton. They have all taken time from their personal lives to save a team about which they care deeply, and they are a wonderful example to our community.

[Karl Turner (in the Chair)]

I call the Opposition spokesperson.