Football Association Governance

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in today’s debate. The Chair of the Select Committee set out a powerful case and I will not rehearse too many of the points that he made. We also had fantastic contributions from other hon. Members, with the exception perhaps of the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones) who took the mick out of the Scottish game.

The motion is damning, and I have little sympathy for the FA as it was given early warning of the concerns of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. The first report outlining its concerns was published in 2011, and a follow-up report that stated that the football authorities had not done enough on governance reform was published in 2013. We are now, therefore, six years into the process and questions are rightly being asked about why enough has not been done to address the concerns that have been raised.

In a somewhat squeezed debate, I want to focus on the lack of diversity at the top of the FA and across the game in general. In doing so, I will primarily focus on the lack of women involved in the running of the game. The draft code of governance states that 30% of members who sit on a sports governing board should be female, and the FA fails miserably in that regard as only one woman sits on its 14-person board.

The issue does not only affect the English FA, as the Scottish Football Association also has room for improvement. Scotland goalkeeper Gemma Fay—a good St Johnstone fan like me—who has been capped more than 160 times, claims that women are not represented enough at board level and has called on the Scottish governing boards to make moves to diversify their board members.

A recent survey found that only three of 70 directors at Scotland’s top football clubs are women, which proves that the imbalance exists in boardrooms right through the game. In fairness, the Scottish Football Association has been going through step-by-step reform over the past few years to become a fully representative and modern governing body. Following the McLeish report in 2010, the SFA has been going through an ongoing process of modernisation, which includes the creation of a new congress to replace the so-called blazers of the past with the first fully representative group of stakeholders.

The creation of the congress has meant that clubs and affiliates are now joined by recognised bodies such as Professional Footballers Association Scotland, the Scottish Managers and Coaches Association, the Scottish Senior Football Referees Association, the Scottish Football Writers Association and SportScotland. The congress deals with many issues, and its work includes looking at ways of increasing the numbers and influence of women in the game.

For a long time, and many moons ago, Maureen McGonigle, the founder of Scottish Women in Sport, was the only woman involved with the SFA at any senior level. She sat on the SFA non-professional game board and is the only woman to have received a long-service medal from the SFA council. She was the only woman on the council for 14 years, and casual sexism was rampant in those days. Maureen gives an example:

“One of the first dinners I went to was for the opening of the South Stand at Hampden. I was at a table with all of the Scottish FA council wives while my work colleagues were sitting elsewhere. Afterwards I wrote to Jim Farry”—

the then SFA chief executive—

“and said ‘I’m not a wife, I’m actually a worker.’ I then became the first woman to sit at a men’s table at one of the dinners. To be fair, I was always treated well within the council but they never knew how to address me. It was always: ‘Good morning gentlemen …and Maureen.’”

Despite the welcome progress that I have outlined, the SFA professional board still has no female members. It is fair to say that a dramatic increase in the pace of change is required.

It is also fair to say that two of the most impressive people currently operating in the Scottish game are women. A few weeks ago I attended a sports policy conference in Edinburgh, and we were lucky to hear from Ann Budge who, after leading a takeover of Hearts, has spearheaded a huge change in fortune for the Tynecastle club and was named Scottish Professional Football League chief executive officer of the year in 2016.

Meanwhile, the club’s Edinburgh rival, Hibernian, has an inspirational chief executive in Leeann Dempster. I was lucky to be a guest of Leeann at Easter Road a few months ago, and she was eager to discuss a community programme on which the club has embarked. Most clubs these days have a community trust, some more effective than others, but GameChanger takes it to a different level by involving more than 100 partners from the public, private and third sectors, culminating in a public social partnership between the club, business and the national health service. It is about using Hibernian’s assets to improve the lives and life chances of all in Edinburgh and the Lothians, not just Hibs fans. Leeann has strong opinions about the governance of the game, and she thinks that there are still not enough women involved, particularly at the decision-making level.

The FA has a slogan: “football for all.” It always talks about how sport should be for everyone, but how can that be the case when, at senior level, there is a glass ceiling for those who are not white and male? Furthermore, the FA chairman’s recent comments on homophobia within the game, advising against players coming out, almost serve to highlight that point. The advice not to come out because the FA cannot protect those players is inherently wrong and is an abdication of leadership on a hugely important issue, undermining some of the FA’s good work.

Instead of urging people to remain silent about their sexuality, the FA chairman should be doing all he can to ensure that football is a place for everyone. Anyone who dares to abuse a player because of their sexuality, ethnicity, religion or anything else is not welcome at football matches. Moreover, if a particular club has repeat offenders within its fan base, the club should be punished with larger fines and point deductions. That is the correct approach, and it underlines the faults within the FA.

The FA is a governing body, and it has a responsibility to clubs, players, managers and supporters to send out messages and to set the right standards for all those involved in the game. Football is massively important to all the home nations. It is our national game, and more than 12 million people play. It is woven into the very fabric of our society. Despite all that, football has to change and adapt to the modern environment in which it finds itself. This is not about the Government interfering in the affairs of the game; it is about ensuring that the FA meets its slogan about being a game for everyone. We need to open the boardroom to people from all backgrounds, and the time is long overdue for supporters and people from diverse backgrounds to be involved in the running of the national game.