Football Association Governance

Gordon Marsden Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

Football clubs are

“more than simply private assets”.

Those are the words of the Vote Football campaign, and they have been echoed by many Blackpool football club supporters who have written to me ahead of this debate. Blackpool has always had a proud football history, from the club’s famous 1953 FA cup final, with Stanley Matthews, to Jimmy Armfield, recognised internationally for his abilities as a footballer and as a commentator, and all the way through to the Cinderella story of our promotion to the premiership in 2010—a very proud moment in our history. I was privileged, along with tens of thousands of people on the promenade, to welcome home the team.

Sadly, however, the strife over the past four years between the club’s fans and owners is only too well known. It has resulted in thousands of people choosing to boycott Bloomfield Road in protest at the club’s running. That is why, incidentally, I backed the Bill that my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) introduced that would have given accredited groups such as the Blackpool supporters’ trust greater powers and influence over how their club was run. It is a melancholy set of circumstances, not simply for Blackpool, but elsewhere, particularly in the north-west, with the issues at Blackburn and, some would argue, Bolton. That, again, is why I signed early-day motion 611, along with other Members from the north-west.

It is interesting to note what the Blackpool supporters’ trust said about the governance issues. The unprecedented pursuit of Blackpool football club supporters by the management through the civil courts on matters such as defamation, libel and trespass has made the situation far more difficult. As Steve Rowland, the chair of the supporters’ trust, has said, the FA was supposed to be the overarching guardian of the association football game in this country, but too often it has become simply a money-spinning business venture. If this debate can take us forward, serious attention can be focused on reform, the fairer representation of supporters’ rights in the way clubs are run, and more stringent rules in respect of the roles of owners and directors. That is why I also support the plans to have supporter representation on the executive board and council.

These are issues that ordinary football fans in Blackpool feel strongly about. I want to quote from two letters I have had. One reads, “They’re not just businesses like any other, but company law makes no such distinction, and the FA rules no longer do either”. My constituent Stephen Bullen, who strongly believes that clubs should be run in the best interests of the community, wrote:

“The FA has committed to investing £260 million in grassroots football over a four-year period, but…is this really enough?”

Is it getting to the grassroots? Supporters have nothing but the game’s health at heart, but they are dramatically under-represented on the FA board, as we have heard. As the Football Supporters Federation has said,

“if the governance is to be truly reflective and representative of the sport…needs to value the role of ‘consumers’ and other less traditional ‘producers’.”

I know that the sports Minister is anxious to move and frustrated at the lack of progress. I have talked to her about the problems of Blackpool football club, the chasm that has opened between the owners and the fans, and how this illustrates starkly why there needs to be a much more proactive system of governance. She responded with a set of proposals, but they are not far-reaching enough, not least in their failure to contemplate Government action. Why has it taken her Department almost six years to act? The letter from the five FA executives sums it up, and that is why it is reasonable to concur with the conclusions of the Chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. As someone once said, the prospect of hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully. I wish the new chief executive well in his attempts to prove the Committee wrong, but there will be no harm in pressing the motion in the meantime.

[Several hon. Members rose—]