Private Rented Sector

Debate between Graham P Jones and Damian Collins

Wednesday 23rd January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Damian Collins]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. We should certainly consider doing that with regard to the social sector and housing benefits. I do not think that local authorities and the Government should be in the business of paying housing benefit to landlords who do not maintain their properties at a decent standard. We should not be doing that. I think that the guaranteed flow of income and the massive supply of people who are looking for accommodation give us the power to negotiate with the market and the private sector in an important way.

I would also say that private landlords who wish to rent their properties out to tenants on housing benefits should be part of an accredited scheme, run by one of the organisations that represent the housing sector, be it the National Landlords Association or another body. There should be an incentive for people to sign up voluntarily to those sorts of schemes.

The Private Sector Tenants’ Forum, which was consulted by the London borough of Newham, said that its tenants

“had some concerns—above all, that landlords should not be discouraged from letting properties and that licensing costs for landlords should not increase tenants’ rent levels. They also wondered if the regulations could be enforced effectively in practice.”

That is my one concern about the national register of landlords proposed by the Opposition. It is fine in principle but, on the ground, the local authority needs to have the resources to enforce the agreements and check the properties. I suspect that the reason why hon. Members from all parties have raised the concerns that they have about the state of properties in the private rented sector is that local authorities are not making those checks or enforcing measures against the private sector landlords. Perhaps the authority does not have the resources to do so. It would seem from what the London borough of Newham has said that it hopes that the licensing scheme will pay for some sort of enforcement, but I doubt whether that would be possible.

[Graham Jones]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Damian Collins]

I want to conclude my remarks so that other Members can speak.

We should consider some sort of incentive scheme so that private sector landlords who are in receipt of state money and benefits have to maintain their homes to a decent standard in order to qualify for those benefits. That would give us some control at the bottom end of the market and, I hope, the ability to influence positively the accommodation and standard of living of many of the poorest people in our society.

Football Governance

Debate between Graham P Jones and Damian Collins

Thursday 9th February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Damian Collins]

I agree with my hon. Friend. When we have foreign ownership and we do not know who the owners are; when we have a largely unregulated transfer market bringing billions of pounds into and out of the country, which is largely unknown and uncontrolled at its source; and when communities bear the cost of the financial failure of a football club and taxpayers bear the loss through unpaid tax bills, Parliament should take an interest. We do not seek to take away someone’s right to run their football club badly. That is beyond the control of Parliament. The report of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee and the debate have thrown up legitimate public interest concerns, however. The events of the past seven days demonstrate that the Football Association has an obligation to be the moral guardian of the game in this country, not simply the administrator of football.

I am sure that hon. Members support teams in their constituencies at all levels. I am a lifelong supporter of Manchester United, but one of the most exciting football matches I have ever watched was when Hythe Town beat Staines Town last season to qualify for the first round proper of the FA cup for the first time in its history. That was the first time in more than 50 years that a side from the Kent league had qualified. That is a single competition in which a club in the Kent league can compete alongside clubs that are competing in the Champions League. When multiple clubs are playing in multiple formats and competitions, there must be a single governing body that can have some oversight over the whole of football in this country. That can only be the Football Association, which is the guardian of the game in all competitions.

I praise the chairman of the Football Association, David Bernstein, for taking a stand on the John Terry affair. David Bernstein rightly accepted that the captain of the England football team has a position in public life in the country, and millions of sport fans look up to him as a role model. If his position is put into question by a criminal charge that has been made against him, although he is not guilty of that charge, while doubt remains about his role it is not appropriate for him to be captain of the England football team. If the manager of the England football team, Mr Capello, could not accept that ruling, it was right for him to stand aside. Although we might not have wished for the outcome of the past seven days—the removal of the captain and the manager—the course of events was inevitable. It was right for the Football Association to take a moral lead on the case, and I commend it for doing so. There are real financial concerns about the administration of football and clubs in this country, and a real concern about the lack of powerful oversight and intervention. There are many areas of concern, and hon. Members have touched on a good number. I will limit my remarks to three issues—club ownership, the football creditors rule, and player ownership and the player transfer market.

During our inquiry the fact that Leeds United was owned by a trust whose investors were not known was highlighted, together with the fact that Mr Ken Bates was employed by that trust to be chairman of the club, but did not know who the owners—the investors in that trust—were. No one in football in this country believes that Ken Bates did not always control that club. There is no other way in which he could suddenly have completed the purchase of it within days, without any kind of tendering process, and assumed ownership. He blamed the political obsession of the Select Committee, which was simply standing up for the legitimate interest of Leeds United fans to know who owned their club, for its interest in Leeds United. Many hon. Members have spoken about the role of the fit and proper person test. How can that test be applied if we do not know who the person is? That has been a recurrent problem for the football authorities, and shows that the test, which should function as a guardian, works only if the person who is being investigated is the owner, and if that can be proved beyond reasonable doubt.

[Graham Jones]

On that note, does the hon. Gentleman think that somehow the fit and proper person test could include stupidity?

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Collins]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. I shall come on to my views on the solution to the problem, but many clubs in Coventry City’s position will have a management company—a holding company that runs the club—and a supporters’ trust may have a seat on that board. However, that is just a holding company. The ownership of the club is somewhere else completely, and that management company may not know who the owner is. It may deal with a businessman who represents the owners, but it may not know who the owners are.

I recently had conversations with a businessman who was involved in running Sheffield Wednesday from the moment it went into administration through to the period when it was taken over by Milan Mandaric. He described a series of potential investors coming forward, some of whom used fake names and identities. When non-disclosure agreements were signed, it turned out that the principal investors were based in the far east and were not who they originally seemed to be. The impression is created of a murky world where no one is quite who they say they are. People running clubs in this country who seek to sell them to a foreign investor to raise funds for the club may not know who they are dealing with.

When I wrote to the Football League about Coventry City, I had a reply from Nick Craig, the director of legal affairs, who made a telling point:

“We have for some time expressed our concerns as regards investment vehicles (often offshore) and the issue of the lack of transparency surrounding ownership of them. Indeed we have previously sought assistance from DCMS and HMRC in that respect but to no avail. We are left in a position where we can regulate and seek to require clubs to comply but are reliant on self-declaration with no official means of independent verification.

That the proliferation of offshore investment trusts means we will never always be 100% certain in all cases but we continually assess the appropriateness of our rules in a changing environment.”

There is not very much comfort there for any football fans concerned, because the Football League is saying that if a company is registered offshore and it buys a British football club, it does not have the authority or power to know who owns the club.

The Select Committee report contained a request to the Government for a retrospective examination of the Leeds United case. That would require powers beyond those of the football authorities to inquire what was the source of the finance to purchase the club out of administration, how much Ken Bates paid for it and where the money went, so that we could determine who controlled the club’s source of finance, even if it was impossible to determine who the owners were. The source of finance will take us to the owner of the club.

[Graham Jones]

The hon. Gentleman is generous in giving way, and makes an excellent point, which I want to add to, as well as supporting the Minister’s position. What would the hon. Gentleman say about a club such as Blackburn, however? The board exists, but it is being bypassed; the manager is directly responsible and flies out every month to Pune in India to run the football club. What would happen if the supporters’ trust sat on the Blackburn Rovers board? It now has no role within the club. Is that an issue that concerns the hon. Gentleman? How would he deal with it?

[Damian Collins]

I am grateful for that comment, but I will make that the last intervention that I take, if the House does not mind, as I want to make a few other points. I said at the beginning of my speech that I do not think it is the role of the House or the Government to stop people running a football club badly. It would be difficult to legislate that a club now in private ownership should be majority owned and controlled by the supporters, even if the supporters might want that. As the report says, the Government should—they have stated in their response that they will look at this—make it as easy as possible for supporters’ trusts to be set up, so that such representation exists, where the club wants that.

As to ownership, I do not have a problem with clubs being owned by foreign investors. If people want to spend their money on football in this country to improve facilities and the quality of competition, that should be welcomed. However, there should be a clear register of any individual, with any investment in a football club, no matter how small, and that information should be available. I would push for it to be publicly available, but it should at least be available to the football authorities. In response to what the Football League said to me about Coventry City, if a football body—the Football League, the Premier League or whatever it is—cannot be satisfied about who the owner of a club is, it should stop that club competing in its competition. It should not necessarily be for the football authorities to chase round the world trying to find the owner of a club. If the club cannot demonstrate it to the satisfaction of the competition, it should not be allowed to take part.

A way to carry out that policy would be to request clubs, perhaps as part of the licensing scheme, to allow the football authorities to inquire of their bank what the source of funding is, and who the club’s owners are. The bank should make that information available, and if it cannot or does not, the matter should be passed to the Financial Services Authority. The ownership of clubs is not just a matter of football competition. If money is being channelled in by businessmen whose identity is not known, that should be a matter for the tax and financial authorities, as it would be in any other business.

I want to make a couple of points about the football creditors rule, which other hon. Members have touched on. As the chairman of the Football League said when I questioned him in the Select Committee, there is no moral case to justify the fact that, when a football club goes into administration, the local printer who prints the match programmes or the local building firm that does ground maintenance should get 1p in the pound for its debts, while a football club at the other end of the country or a multi-millionaire footballer get their football debts paid in full. That is wrong. The taxpayer loses too, because owed tax is not covered by the football creditors rule. That is the subject of a court case between HMRC and the football authorities. If that is not resolved, it should be a matter for legislation, and the House should resolve it. There is no moral case for that state of affairs, and we should move on.

On player ownership and player transfers, concerns have been raised that third-party ownership of players, although outlawed in this country, is still part of the game. A magazine, Tipsbladet, in Denmark, published an article this week that raises concerns about third-party ownership. Players are channelled through clubs in Denmark and, ultimately, on to the premier league. Funds that seek to own and control players have a financial interest in moving those players between clubs. That financial interest is greater than the interests of the player, or the club he may go on to on an intermediary basis.

Bloomberg’s news website also raised a concern last week about what it called “letterbox companies”, which are set up for a matter of days to loan money to a football club to purchase a player, and are then closed down almost straight away. It highlighted a case with Porto, in Portugal, where companies set up in this country had loaned money—non-bank lending—to FC Porto to buy players. Those companies were then shut down straight away, making it almost impossible for the authorities to identify where that money had come from.

The flow of money in football is an issue of the utmost importance, and one that we touched on in our report. The football authorities have to get to grips with the matter. The Government should consider it in their response to our report, and in their consideration of the response of the football authorities at the end of the month.