Football Governance Bill [Lords]

Jon Pearce Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 28th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jon Pearce (High Peak) (Lab)]

On Saturday, at 12.30 pm, I and thousands of other Derby County fans will be racked with nerves as the club faces Stoke City, hoping to avoid relegation from the championship yet again. The fact that we have been through such occasions so often over the years will not make it any easier to endure. We have heard from supporters of many other clubs, from Charlton, Blackpool, Sheffield Wednesday, Reading and too many to mention, but here is my case for why I believe that Derby County provides the best example of why we need this Football Governance Bill—finally, a competition we can win.

Any good football anecdote should obviously start with Brian Clough. Having won us the league for the first time in our history in 1971-72, he was sacked less than a year later by the club’s chairman, to the horror of our club’s supporters. That led to protests in the streets and a threatened players’ strike. It is fair to say that there were no minimum standards of fan engagement back then, as the board of directors hid in the boardroom and relieved themselves in champagne buckets to avoid the fans’ protest.

A league championship in 1974-75 aside, years of financial mismanagement led us to drop down into the third tier and face a winding-up order in the High Court. We were saved by a certain Robert Maxwell, a once honourable Member of this place, although in hindsight he was not a fit and proper person to run any business, and certainly not a community asset like a football club. He ultimately lost interest, stopped coming to games and stopped investing in the club. All the while, he was defrauding the Mirror Group pensioners. In retrospect, Derby County got off rather lightly.

Skip forward to October 2003, when “the three amigos” bought the club. John Sleightholme, Jeremy Keith and Steve Harding bought the club for £1 each, but they had no money of their own and very quickly—not for the last time—they sold the club’s stadium, Pride Park, and then charged us £1 million to rent it to stay there. The requirement in the Bill for clubs to seek pre-approval from the independent regulator for the sale or relocation of their stadium is absolutely essential.

It was at that point that I first joined the Rams Trust, the supporters’ group that campaigns for a stronger voice for supporters in the decision-making process at Derby County. Such trusts play a vital role in clubs up and down the country. The tireless efforts of fans to scrutinise the activities of the management of the club led to the conviction of four people.

Maxwell and the three amigos would have passed any fit and proper person test, which is why it is so important that this Bill introduces both a minimum standard of fan engagement and a club licensing regime, to help ensure a more consistent approach in how clubs are run and club finances are monitored. I am also delighted that parachute payments are included, because they have been the driver of our most recent dalliance with financial ruin. We desperately tried to get into the premier league, competing against clubs with parachute payments, ultimately leading us to a 21-point deduction, relegation and near extinction again.

The club was saved by a local businessman, but not without a dalliance with the fraudulent activities of somebody who was trying to buy us. The truth is that football—and Derby County in particular—is constantly threatened by fraudsters and by terrible ownership that is ruining our communities. This Bill will begin to stop some of the damage that is being done to clubs up and down the country, and I will be supporting it today.