Non-league Football

Ian Mearns Excerpts

Thursday 4th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jesse Norman]

That is a formidable array of questions. May I respond briefly? As a member of the Treasury Committee, I am a bit leery of exemptions from VAT because I know how hard it is to recover those funds elsewhere and the precedent that they tend to set. On the issue of business rates, this is a local issue and councils should be encouraged to look closely at questions as they specifically arise. On the final issue, anything that the Government can do to support and enhance community ownership of supporter-led clubs would be valuable. I thank the right hon. Gentleman for making that point.

As I have said, the FA, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and Companies House should work much more closely to identify potentially unsuitable club shareholders, owners and directors as soon as they appear. Incredible as it sounds, as we debate today, Mr Andrew Lonsdale, a long-time associate of Mr Agombar, is the current chairman of Hereford United, despite a criminal conviction in 2008 and despite being disqualified at Companies House from 2006 to 2012. That raises in the starkest possible form the question: how on earth have the football authorities allowed such a person to be a club chairman?

Will the Minister write to the FA asking it to demand answers to those questions, and in particular to demand early completion—or pre-registration, as the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) mentioned—by potential owners and directors of the fit and proper test and rapid publication thereafter, so that we all know who has put up for it and who has passed or failed?

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

As a Newcastle and a Gateshead fan, I remember those ventures in the past with some pain, I am afraid to say. Because of the lack of oversight and transparency that the hon. Gentleman is in essence saying the FA has demonstrated, does he not think the FA itself is guilty of what it often accuses others of doing: bringing the game into disrepute by its lack of oversight of football management?

[Jesse Norman]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

I am sure the FA is listening in and I have a few suggestions for it. The first point is that it cannot fill Wembley—it could not last night and Mr Roy Hodgson says it cannot be filled for all the England qualifiers—yet I have a load of kids in my constituency who have never been to a major sporting event of any kind. I am prepared to provide the buses and raise the money to enable them to do that, if the FA will give me the tickets, and I will fill Wembley on my own, every time, with kids from Bassetlaw, including kids who play for Worksop Town. I am prepared to do that for all the England qualifiers, and, indeed, any other major sporting event that needs some noise, passion and support.

We have 600 kids who play for Worksop Town alone, and those kids—boys and girls—say to me, “I’ll wear the shirt of my town.” Well, if we think the situation is bad in Hereford, I can say that the situation at Worksop Town is worse, because we cannot even go insolvent. At Worksop Town, the owner announced just before the start of the football season that he was putting no more money in. The directors—including the chairman, whom he appointed—immediately put the club into football abeyance; they said, “We’re not going to play any more, anywhere, ever.” There were some quick interventions, but they also wrote a letter withdrawing from the league. So without the fans or anyone else having a say, Worksop Town goes down a league, and when I go to the FA, it says, “Well, it’s too late; the letter’s gone in.” I say, “Well, what’s the fear?” and the FA says, “The owner won’t put any money in. The owner owns all the shares in the club.”

So I look at the club accounts. They show that Worksop Town’s assets are worth £669, because the previous owner somehow managed to get rid of the ground, so the club owns no ground; it owns nothing despite having been there since 1861. Yet with a turnover of £101,000, the new owner is apparently owed half a million pounds. He owns the club, however; he took it over. He decided, I think, that he was going to put some money in, and it is down in the accounts as administrative expenses. Last year, on a turnover of £101,000, there were admin expenses of £223,000, and the same the year before. That is down to an unnamed creditor, and I think that is Mr Jason Clark, the owner. I think he decided, “I’ll put money in, but I’ll put it in as a loan,” and then he said, “I’m not putting any more in, but I want someone to buy the club off me.” But the club has no assets—yet there are all these kids wanting to play, and go up and play for the full team.

Some are doing so, because we have managed to do a few little deals on the side, using the supporters trust. We have sorted a bit out. We have got support from the community. Mr Lee Westwood has put in some sponsorship, and Mr Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden has put his hand in his pocket as a Worksop lad, and Mr Graham Taylor, former England manager, and many supporters have put in, but they are having to put into the supporters trust because they cannot put into the club, because the club owes money, because the owner has decided to put in money that no one asked him to lend but he put it in as a loan.

What can the FA do about that? The answer is, at the moment, it can do nothing. It ought to be feasible in that situation for us to set up a new club, with the players and the managers and the supporters in support, and for the FA to recognise that club, and for that club to play in the same league. I am sure then, with helpful council support and support from private business and the rest—there is plenty of good will—we can build a new ground as we built the old one with the help of the fans. I am confident of that. Therefore, those 600 kids can aspire again, and we can have what we want in the town, which is everyone being proud of the name of the club and all those kids and people in the community being able to play. That is the kind of change that is needed in football.

If a party wants an idea for its manifesto, I suggest that in football the youth side and the stadium should be separated out from the semi-professional side. We should not be giving Government money or any other money if that can be siphoned off by an owner.

[Ian Mearns]

In future where clubs find themselves without a ground to play in, if the stadium still exists might we be able to find some mechanism for getting the supporters trust to be allowed to recognise and register the ground and stadium as an asset of community value?

[John Mann]

Absolutely, and we have got a community interest company and if we had a stadium, it would be in the CIC—and when we have a stadium, it will be in. I am sure I can get a stadium built; I am confident of that, but it will be owned by a CIC, and who will play at it? The owner will have a veto, because the FA will let the owner have a veto. We could set up an alternative club, but it has to start right down at the bottom. That is nonsense.

These rules will be simple to sort out, and we should use the leverage of any money that goes in—state money of whatever form, whether grant money or Football Foundation money via the Premier League and the rest of them, or whether section 106 agreements, which is one way in which we can develop a stadium with relative ease in Worksop over the next couple of years. Those guarantees need to be there, but the FA rules need to ensure that if we do this, we can ring fence it. That should be for all clubs, and, by the way, this is not just about the FA, because if we are dealing with the FA, I can get to the FA. But if we are dealing with the blazers running these leagues, with the power to decide who is in and who is out, we cannot even get to find out who they are, never mind get to meet them.

That is the problem with football. It is a great challenge, but I believe there are solutions there, and obvious ones if people are prepared to act. The whole country would be behind that kind of action.