Football: Safe Standing

Ian Mearns Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

Unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds), I have stood in the Roker end and felt very unsafe indeed. [Laughter.] As a founder member and chair of the all-party group for football supporters, I felt it was vital for me to be here today to represent the interests of football supporters.

I attended my first game at St James’s Park in Newcastle in the 1966-67 season, so not quite as long ago as my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts). I have visited 70-plus football league and premier league grounds and dozens upon dozens of non-league grounds, many of which I have heard mentioned today. For me the issue is not an abstract concept. It is something that I and many fans experience week in, week out through the football season. Standing in football grounds in all-seater stadiums happens now. The problem currently exists. We are not advocating a return to the large open terraces of the past.

Hillsborough was a tragedy, but it is not the only tragedy to befall football fans in this country. Ibrox in Glasgow has had two significant disasters in the past century. Bolton Wanderers had a significant disaster at Burnden Park. Bradford had a dreadful fire that took many lives. There have been other smaller incidents where walls have fallen down or crush barriers have gone.

When I was a young person going to football matches, I remember people being crushed on crush barriers on open terraces on a regular basis, and the accident and emergency wards of our local hospitals were testimony to that. However, 27 years have passed since the Taylor report. Grounds, fans and football have changed, but there is a problem that needs to be addressed.

Having seen the improvement, I was a fan and MP who remained to be convinced about safe standing at football grounds, but now—regularly attending football games at St James’s Park where I am a season ticket holder, and travelling round the country going to away games—I am part of the experience where fans stand week in, week out in the away ends and in many parts of home grounds as well. Safe standing is much safer than standing in designated seating areas; there is no doubt about that whatever. In designated seating areas where fans are standing in numbers, the seats in front of them are undoubtedly a trip hazard. I myself have tripped over seats, and seen many others doing so as well.

It is unlikely that safe standing will reduce ticket prices. In the Bundesliga, Dortmund, for instance, has one and half people standing for every seated place, but at Celtic—the experiment in Scotland—it is one for one. There will not be any real return from the football clubs’ perspective, but there is demand. No one wants it to become compulsory; it will be in selected parts of football grounds. However, there is no doubt that standing in sitting areas is less safe than safe standing. We need to think about it, and do something about it as soon as we can.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Tracey Crouch]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention. I still feel quite scarred by the response I received on social media to my initial comments. They were loose and wrong, but were not a reflection of my views on football. It was certainly unfair of people to say that I did not understand the game with which I have been personally involved since I was knee high to a grasshopper. That shows a lack of understanding that Ministers and Members of Parliament have views and sometimes make mistakes.

It is useful to start by summarising very briefly the framework in which we operate. As colleagues have heard, Lord Justice Taylor’s report following the terrible Hillsborough disaster ushered in the all-seater policy for the top two divisions of English football, as well as Wembley stadium and the Principality stadium in Cardiff. The wider safety regime, which includes the all-seater policy, also took into account other tragic events, such as that at Bradford. No Government of any political persuasion should ever be complacent about safety or other measures that have enabled us to achieve such consistently high levels of safety since the all-seater regulations were introduced. That must be paramount in our considerations.

[Ian Mearns]

One thing that has changed since Hillsborough is that the Government and the establishment have taken safety at football grounds much more seriously. Ibrox had two disasters in the space of less than 50 years, and Bolton Wanderers had a significant one. Crushing injuries occurred week in, week out at football grounds. The evidence of earlier years shows that football’s fans and their safety were not taken seriously by people in the halls of power.

[Tracey Crouch]

I was about to say that the all-seater policy has served football and football fans well over many years—the hon. Gentleman makes that point. It is not just a domestic measure: FIFA and UEFA both mandate that host stadiums for their main competitions must be all-seater. Let us not forget that all-seater stadiums provided the impetus for clubs to transform their grounds after years of neglect, which meant the widespread improvement of facilities for fans, which has brought about a welcome increase in the diversity of those choosing to attend.

I recognise the increasing support for the Government to change the all-seater policy in the top two tiers of English football, and the interesting innovations in spectator accommodation in recent years. They include various forms of seats incorporating barriers, or seats with independent barriers, which provide both a safety rail and a seat. They have been installed at grounds in Germany and at Celtic Park. More recently, they have been installed at Shrewsbury Town in League One. Those developments led the then premier league club West Bromwich Albion to make the request to the Sports Ground Safety Authority to run a rail seating pilot. The request to install rail seating made it clear that the intention was to create a permanent area within the ground where supporters would be freely permitted to stand. That would have been in breach of the licence conditions imposed on all clubs in the top two divisions under the powers set out in the Football Spectators Act 1989, the current legislative framework.

Ministers make decisions based on the evidence put in front of them within the legal framework permitted. Contrary to media reports, I did not receive a recommendation from the SGSA to approve the application. The club’s request would have required an immediate change in the law as it stands. As the application was for permission to start this coming season, colleagues will appreciate that the processes required would have taken more than the few months that Albion wanted them completed in. However, more significantly, the current legislative framework means that I cannot allow for any pilots. There is no wriggle room. It is either the status quo or changing the legislation.

So, what next? What are we going to do? The one thing we need to do is to collect and analyse the evidence that exists and ensure that all views on this issue can be heard and considered before we make any decision on changes to the all-seater policy—a point that many hon. Members have made today. We need proper evidence and solutions about how risks associated with standing would be addressed and what systems might be needed to achieve this. The first step is to gather that data and to conduct further research if necessary.

Today I can announce that we will commission an external analysis of evidence relating to the all-seater policy. My Department will be going out to tender for this piece of work shortly, and my aim is that the initial analysis work will be completed by the end of the year. As well as looking at what evidence already exists and assessing its reliability, that work will look to identify any important gaps in data, including injury data, and recommend the best ways of filling them.

The premier league has already shared some of its injury data with me, collated in the SGSA format from its clubs. What is clear is that not enough information is collected to determine the circumstances, severity or outcome of injuries. For example, data collected so far shows that, of the 1,550 injuries reported over the season at 19 premier league clubs, none related to persistent standing and 242 may have been caused by some standing—the equivalent of two injuries per 100,000 match attendances. Hon. Members have today made it clear that people are standing in unsafe ways, yet the current injuries log suggests otherwise. Some colleagues have outlined their own experiences of being injured at football matches, yet the injuries log says otherwise. Given that that fan experience is very different from the data, it is clear that the data needs further probing, and that is what I am announcing today.

The precise scope of that work will be defined in conjunction with the SGSA and other expert stakeholders. I am grateful to the Premier League and English Football League, with whom we have discussed this approach, and with whom we will work to improve the evidence base from the start of next season.