Football Index Collapse

Clive Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Liz Twist]

I certainly agree and will touch immediately on the issue of redress. As I was saying, the issues identified must be addressed to ensure that those affected have the answers they need and we must look again at the regulatory failing that allowed this situation to come about. Tens of thousands of customers had—and lost—more than £124 million in the system at the point of its collapse. Of course the question of redress must be revisited, as hon. Members have already said, because the clear failings of the regulations applied to BetIndex Ltd, a subsidiary of Fame Ventures Ltd, have left many people in a difficult position.

The Sheehan report, as we have heard, highlights a range of issues about the regulation of the product; it highlights several failings by both the Gambling Commission and the Financial Conduct Authority. It sets out that from early in the life of Football Index, the product was not regulated correctly and the platform’s “go to market” function was not notified to the Gambling Commission. However, it states that the Gambling Commission had reviewed the product twice and this was not noted in the reviews carried out, meaning that Football Index was given its licence and launched without any consideration of one of its two main features. At that point, it was already clear that the Gambling Commission should have done more to protect the rights of customers. Given Football Index’s likeness to an exchange or a market, the Gambling Commission should have notified the Financial Conduct Authority.

The Sheehan report also states that the Gambling Commission became “fully aware” of the issues with Football Index in 2019, but it still allowed customers to put money into the platform, meaning that customers lost even more money because of the commission’s inaction.

In 2019 the Gambling Commission referred Football Index to the Financial Conduct Authority, and in September that year stated that Football Index should be authorised by both the FCA and the GC. Despite that, again nothing was put in place. Clearly, the failings allowed customers to bet more and more into a platform that was not correctly regulated. Now, in the aftermath, people are having to deal with the fear that they may never get back the money that they put into the platform. The life-changing impact that could have on some individuals is clear.

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

rose—

[Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Streatham) (Lab)]

rose—

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[Liz Twist]

I most certainly agree. I know the real impact that the collapse has had on my constituents’ wellbeing—not just financially. My hon. Friend makes a valid point.

[Clive Lewis]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Liz Twist]

I will take one more intervention and then I must make progress.

[Clive Lewis]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way, and for making such a powerful speech and securing this debate.

I wanted to intervene at this point, when my hon. Friend is talking about the regulatory framework, because it has comprehensively failed my constituents, many of whom have been suicidal. The collapse has led to them losing their homes or their businesses. The FCA failed them, Football Index failed them and the Gambling Commission failed them.

The Government have ruled out financial redress. Would my hon. Friend say that, in the interests of justice —indeed, if justice is to be done—and in the interests of our constituents’ wellbeing, the Government must look at financial redress again?

[Liz Twist]

I most certainly agree. It is one of the asks that I will make of the Minister later. I will try to speed up, because I am aware that so many Members want to speak.

I have made the point about the regulators and the fact that, in effect, Football Index was allowed to operate as a stock market where people traded stocks. I will now talk about the experience of people such as Chris and Collin, who are my constituents. They have given me permission to share their experiences. They told me about the difficulties the collapse has caused in their lives. Chris was saving up for a wedding and now has limitations on what he can afford. He said that Football Index

“was advertised as a great way to invest and buy shares, it was shown to be a better way to save compared to the rates banks offer. The loss of the £13,000 has limited certain aspects of what we can afford now.”

Collin also lost an incredible amount of money through this regulatory failing, which has had a direct impact on his mental health. As a result, he spent months unable to work, because of the stress and depression caused by the collapse. He told me:

“I feel a massive sense of guilt and anger that a huge amount of my family savings has been stolen. That money could have been used for my children’s future, house improvements, holidays and other investments.”

That comment again touches on the issue of regulatory failing. Football Index was able to sell itself as the “football stock market”; the language used was very public and the company even sponsored football teams high up in the Football League system. Allowing customers to believe that was incredibly misleading. The Gambling Commission and the Financial Conduct Authority should have stepped in long before they did. Their failure to understand a licensed product led to Collin, Chris and many other people across the country losing thousands of pounds.

On 17 May, I wrote to the Minister about the experiences of my constituents, and fortuitously, I received a response to my letter yesterday by email. The Minister noted that the Gambling Commission and the FCA have acted on the recommendations of the Sheehan report, so there is clearly a recognition that there was a failure in the regulation of the product. It is clear that the regulators have failed many people, like Chris and Collin, and they and I believe that they should be compensated in some way for that failure. The Sheehan report itself admits that it was

“produced under significant time constraints”

and could not provide

“as full responses…as possible”

to the issues, yet even from that condensed outline of the issues, it is clear that the regulatory failings have cost thousands of people dearly.

I welcome the gambling White Paper announced by the Government, which will seek to better regulate the market, better protect customers, and learn the lessons of this failure. However, that is simply not enough for the tens of thousands affected by the collapse of Football Index—those who have lost such great amounts of money, who are worried about telling loved ones about lost savings and growing ever more pessimistic about the Government’s handling of the matter. Those people simply want one thing: justice. On a number of occasions, the Government have stepped in when regulators and companies have failed to ensure that people are protected, so my constituents and those of other hon. Members ask, “How is this situation different?”

The Football Index action group has repeatedly asked the Government to do more to seek redress for those affected, and is willing to discuss that request with the Government and work with them to find a solution that will work for the people affected. As such, my first ask is whether the Minister will commit today to a meeting with the Football Index action group and myself to further discuss these outstanding issues.

It is clear that the failings that surrounded Football Index were severe, and the impact they have had on people’s lives will be lifelong. For that reason, those affected deserve the answers they need to move on from the situation. Will the Minister commit to another, more in-depth report, or would he be supportive of an inquiry into those regulatory failings to show that the Government and Parliament support those affected, and want to work with them to find the crucial answers that those people need?

Since the collapse of Football Index in March 2021, the regulatory failings have become clear, and the tens of thousands of people affected have lost huge amounts of money to this scandal. For them, we need to do more than learn the lessons and look forward; we need to find answers, and compensate where possible. My final ask is that the Government look again at bringing forward a redress scheme for the victims of Football Index. My constituents Collin and Chris, who have been hit hard by their losses as a result of regulatory failings, and all the other people affected across the UK, deserve answers and redress.

BBC

Clive Lewis Excerpts

Monday 15th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Huw Merriman]

I certainly do not know something that the hon. Lady does not know.

We made a manifesto commitment that now puts us in a difficult position, if the BBC is going to take away the licence fee for those outside the means test from 2020 to 2022. It leads to an argument for the Government Benches that the Government would need to carry on funding it, at least for that two-year period.

I take issue with the petitions—like my right hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey), I will now lose part of the room, or perhaps all of it. Although I understand the cost implication for those who cannot afford the licence fee—I absolutely recognise that pension credit is at its lowest level and that those just outside the pension credit boundary will struggle to meet this cost—I have a fundamental problem, which I am surprised that Opposition Members do not share. If a multi-millionaire happens to be over the age of 75, they receive a free universal benefit that is effectively being subsidised by someone in their early 20s who is renting and cannot afford to buy a property of their own.

I believe that there is a cost to everything and there are choices. The Government spend £800 billion each year on our public services. If we are spending money on people who can afford to pay, ultimately that means either that somebody else has got to pay for it or that somebody else will not receive the same benefit.

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman has made some interesting points. Earlier in the debate reference was made to a public good. A public good is defined as a service, such as healthcare or education, that we feel is so important to us as a society that we collectively provide it. The BBC is a public good; it has a value for our democracy, for our community cohesion and for society generally. Therefore, we should pay for it collectively and not leave people who are over 75, and who cannot afford to pay for it themselves because they have no means, to pay for it. We should provide it collectively, as a public good.

[Huw Merriman]

The hon. Gentleman, who I know worked for the BBC, makes a good point. I agree that the BBC is a public good, but there are other public goods that one can think of where we require people to pay or we means-test them.

I have a fundamental issue with it. I am sorry to use these words, but I think it was an election bribe. Once something is given for free, it is difficult to ask people to start paying for it. I recognise that challenge. I ask all right hon. and hon. Members to consider this: if this is always going to be a cost, and we have to make decisions, then should the welfare state be providing something for people who can readily afford it, so that we are unable to spend more on those who really are at the borderline? I say that not to get electoral gain; I represent a constituency that has the second highest proportion of over-75s in the country, so I commit electoral suicide. It is important that we address this; if we do not, we will find that other decisions will be made or will not be reviewed. I am particularly worried about inter-generational fairness; people are missing out because we preserve benefits for people on the basis of age rather than means.

My last point is to the Minister. She is an excellent Minister and she has inherited this package, if I can call it that, from predecessors in the Treasury. I believe that we need to look at this again. It is a big challenge. We made a commitment in our manifesto that we should stick by it. As for the future—and that gives us time to think about the future—I would like us to address whether it is affordable to give people a benefit that they would be able to pay for themselves.

--- Later in debate ---

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Cheryl. As has already been mentioned, I need to declare an interest; unlike the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell), I rejected the advice of my father, who said I had a great face for radio, and decided to become a BBC TV reporter. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) on securing this crucial debate.

What could be more crucial in this period of political instability than the question of BBC bias, which is what I will address in my speech? I think hon. Members will be pleased to hear that I will not mention “Panorama”. I do not need to. This is a target-rich environment. When it comes to BBC bias, or impartiality and the BBC, we often find, as in this debate, that there are a lot of contradictory claims and counter-claims. That is partly because the BBC produces a vast amount of content, featuring a range of people and opinions, meaning that everyone will at some point see something to complain about.

Unfortunately, at times that has led representatives and defenders of the BBC to dismiss all criticism of its reporting. “If we are attacked from both sides,” the argument goes, “then we must be doing something right.” However, when faced with conflicting claims, we cannot just dismiss them all and assume that everything is fine; we must assess which are accurate—or which are more accurate.

When it comes to climate change, there is a weight of evidence among the scientific community, and then there are the ideas put about by right-wing think tanks, newspapers and politicians. Similarly, when it comes to debates about the BBC, there are the allegations of bias advanced by many of those same right-wing interests, and then there are the findings of independent academic research. What does the social scientific evidence tell us about BBC impartiality? One consistent finding is that the BBC allows the press and senior politicians to set the agenda for its reporting. In the BBC’s Bridcut report of 2007, it acknowledged that impartiality should mean representing a range of views in society, not just the perceived political centre ground or the balance of opinion in Westminster.

However, research by Cardiff University found that, five years later, BBC News was still dominated by elite sources with—and this is key—an over-representation of Conservative and Eurosceptic views. During the EU referendum, that “impartiality as balance” paradigm, which seems always to lean to the right, was scrupulously applied to the two sides of the referendum campaign, but with the right dominating both. Research by Loughborough University found that Conservative and UK Independence party representatives accounted for 74% of all party political appearances on television news. Cardiff University found an even higher level of prominence, with Conservatives and UKIP together accounting for almost 80% of politicians.

The striking domination of our political debate by the right is exacerbated by the influence of right-wing newspapers. One of the key functions of the BBC should be to act as a bulwark against misinformation and the abuses of private power, but how can it perform that function if its news agenda is set by an often unscrupulous, partisan press, owned by a handful of billionaires, which has spent decades misinforming people on every important issue of the day? Again, we can look at the research: Cardiff University found that more than half of BBC News policy stories during the 2015 general election originated with the press, with The Daily Telegraph and The Times leading the pack, and the right, once again, dominating overall.

Another crucial issue on which this has had an impact, alongside reporting on immigration and the EU, is austerity. There is now a fairly substantive body of work examining the reporting of the 2008 financial crisis, including, for example, Mike Berry’s recent book. Berry shows that the economic debate, at that crucial time for our country, was skewed toward the right, and that even mainstream economic opinion was marginalised in favour of the disinformation emanating from the Conservative party and its allies in the press.

I could go on, but the overall picture is clear: not only is BBC News overwhelmingly orientated towards the political and economic establishment but, in so far as it exhibits any political bias, it tends to be towards the right. The story behind that pattern of reporting is detailed in Tom Mills’s 2016 book on the BBC. The organisation has always been a quasi-state broadcaster, orientated toward officialdom and particularly vulnerable to pressure from the Government of the day, as the last charter renewal process showed.

The situation got much worse from the 1980s onwards, when the BBC became increasingly marketised and politicised. Independent reporting was curtailed as editorial and managerial authority was consolidated, funding was cut and services and programme making were contracted out. In short, the BBC’s public service ethos, which was always far too elitist anyway, was steadily eroded while the BBC was slowly privatised. None of that opened it up to a wider range of voices. The privately educated and Oxbridge graduates still dominate—just as they do the press, as a recent Sutton Trust report shows—but the BBC became an elitist organisation more in step with neoliberal Britain.

I have no doubt that the Brexiteers want a BBC that is even more right wing, even more vulnerable to Government pressure and even less economically literate in its reporting—or, alternatively, no BBC at all. Meanwhile, some on the left are so disillusioned with the BBC that they have given up on it altogether. That is a mistake. There are serious problems with the BBC that cannot be ignored, but they can be resolved by making it genuinely independent of Governments—of the left and the right—and accountable not to a narrow elite but to its own staff and to the communities it should represent. The left has always been a friend to the BBC, and should remain so, but securing a public and democratic media system with the BBC at its heart will require radical change.

Football: Safe Standing

Clive Lewis Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Karen Lee (Lincoln) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I have been contacted by many constituents and by my local football team, the Imps. They all support giving fans a choice on safe standing. Lincoln has one of the highest numbers of respondents in support of this e-petition of any area. A huge proportion of my local community are Imps fans. Weekly games at Lincoln’s Sincil Bank bring our whole community together. The atmosphere is electric.

Lincoln Imps are a club on the up. We were promoted in 2017 to league two and earlier this year, we won the Checkatrade Trophy. We are really proud of that. The managers won the Lincoln civic award, too.

Danny Cowley—an Essex lad, actually—who manages the Imps with his brother Nicky, has said many times how struck he is by the allegiance people have to their club and city, and how proud people are to be Lincoln. The bottom line is that communities identify with their football clubs and football connects communities. That is why we have to get it right with safe standing.

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

Norwich City football club supports safe standing, as do many of the fans. One concern many fans have, however, is that some clubs may use the increase in supply as a cash cow, to generate more money from sales, rather than increase the supply of tickets for those loyal fans, who are currently priced out of many football games.

[Karen Lee]

Coincidentally, I was just coming to the point that in my view, safe standing spaces should be capped to keep numbers at a safe level. Safe standing zones would then be more safe than they currently are.

Anybody who has been to a football match knows that people still stand in narrow seated areas that are dangerously unsuitable for 90 minutes of standing. That obstructs the view of people who want to sit, which is particularly unfair for children, families and elderly fans. The Lincoln people who have contacted me, like a lot of football fans, believe that they should have the option to stand in safe areas of football stadiums and safety experts support their view.

I believe we should listen to our constituents—the fans—and grant them the choice to support their team in a manner that is safe and preserves that special atmosphere which brings communities together at Sincil Bank and stadiums across the UK. I will be cheeky here and say, “Up the Imps!”