English Football: Financial Sustainability and Governance Debate
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Julie Minns
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English Football: Financial Sustainability and Governance
Julie Minns Excerpts(3 days, 14 hours ago)
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Lizzi Collinge (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Turner. In Morecombe, the Shrimps are an integral part of our community. They bring together people from all backgrounds who share in our love of the Shrimps. The Morecambe FC Community Foundation runs a range of programmes that support education, health, social inclusion and sports participation. I am not the only parent from Morecambe who has had a child come back chattering about the professional footballers who came to help out that day.
Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, not least because our respective teams are currently propping up the bottom of league two. She mentions the important community work that the Shrimps do, and that is vital. We are fortunate at Carlisle United to have very generous owners who have invested huge amounts of money over the last 18 months, but even I can see that community work can best be guaranteed by having a fairer distribution of revenues.
Lizzi Collinge
I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend. In Morecambe, the football club is a community hub that we cannot afford to lose. We have the Shrimps Trust, which is a democratic and representative voice for the fans. The board of Morecambe really want us to survive and thrive and is doing everything it can to make that happen. It is passionate about our success.
The Shrimps have been under a lot of pressure in recent years due to a combination of ownership issues, financial instability and the threat of relegation. My hon. Friends have laid out coherently the challenges with financial flow, ownership and governance, so I will not go through them again. In my first speech in Parliament, I reiterated my promise to the Shrimps to deliver an independent football regulator, a stronger owners and directors test, better fan representation and much better measures on financial sustainability. I only hope that it does not come too late for Morecambe FC.