Football Governance Bill

Kevin Brennan Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 23rd April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

The regulator will have strong powers to look at owners and directors tests, and at financial plans. They will have powers that are designed to ensure the financial sustainability of football. The question that would arise, I suspect, in the right hon. Member’s case is whether that issue was interfering with a particular football club.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State is being very generous with her time. I thank her for mentioning Cardiff City. I hope to catch Madam Deputy Speaker’s eye later and talk some more about them.

One reason why the Government regulate in the commercial space and in business is to promote competition. In the White Paper, the Government said that the scale of parachute payments can distort competition in the championship and encourage greater financial risk-taking by clubs not in receipt of them. If the regulator has no power in this sphere, how will we ensure that the pyramid is a reality, rather than it becoming ever more difficult to climb?

[Lucy Frazer]

I recognise the concerns raised about parachute payments and the distortion of competition. On the backstop powers, parachute payments have been included because of the way that the backstop mechanism works; two offers are made by the Premier League or by the English Football League. However, that is not to say that parachute payments are completely ignored. The regulator will look at the state of the game in a holistic way. Also, it is not to say that if the parachute payments affect the running and finances of a club, the regulator has no ability to look at those payments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I also broadly welcome the Bill. May I add the members of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee to the list of people whom the Secretary of State praised? I was a member of that Committee until the end of last year, and I am glad to see several of its members in the Chamber for Second Reading.

It is a pleasure to speak directly after my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Dame Tracey Crouch)—I think I can call her a friend after all these years. I commend her for her work in this area and the terrific speech that she has just delivered. I found myself agreeing with pretty much everything that she said. I know that we are in favour of replays, but it would perhaps be wise of me not to repeat everything she said, so I will try not to, although I commend her for what she had to say.

There are still some who question whether Parliament should be regulating in this area at all. Why should we legislate to regulate football? After all, we do not do that in every sport—although, as the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) pointed out, there is perhaps a strong case for doing so in rugby union after what happened to his local club and other English premiership rugby clubs. However, in reality, Parliament has a long record of legislating specifically in lots of different areas of football. In fact, my private Member’s Bill—the Unauthorised Entry to Football Matches Bill—will have its Committee stage on 8 May, and will, I hope, given its widespread support, make its way into law if we have time before a general election is called. There is a long record of football-specific legislation, so this is not that unusual. Football plays such a huge part in our culture.

Let me say, as the Member of Parliament representing Cardiff West, that although we talk about the English football pyramid, it includes Welsh clubs of course, and has done for well over a century. Football is a huge part of our culture in Wales. In fact, a lot of hon. Members will not know that it is the most popular sport in Wales—more popular even that rugby—helped greatly by the success of our Welsh men’s national football team in recent years, including their reaching the semi-final of the Euros.

Of course, as hon. Members have pointed out, we would not be legislating if football had demonstrated the ability to regulate itself, which many of us—including the late Alan Keen, whom I am glad got a mention in the speech of the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford—have called on it to do for many, many years. It is telling that the Bill is now widely welcomed in almost all tiers of football except, as has been mentioned, the Vanarama national league and the higher echelons of the premier league. I completely acknowledge not only that the premier league is the world’s most successful club competition, but that its existence has brought benefit down the football pyramid.

In the first 25 years of the premier league’s existence, its revenues grew thirtyfold while revenues in the second, third and fourth tiers grew more than tenfold. That is the nub of the issue: if we go on as we are without effective redistributive methods, the inevitable consequence is that that the gap between the top and lower tiers would gradually make the pyramid untenable and unworkable. Without a long-term viable pyramid, football at the top will become even more of a cartel than it currently is.

The Premier League’s chief executive told the Culture, Media and Sport Committee earlier this year, that he was

“totally accepting of the Bill and the regulator coming in after that Bill.”

As the Bill progresses we should bear that comment in mind, which he said on the record to the Select Committee. We should hold the Premier League to that.

As we have heard during the debate, football should be about competition. Business should be about competition, and regulation is about helping to promote fair competition. That is the role of Parliament, Government and the state in this sphere. In the absence of an agreement between the Premier League and the English Football League, the backstop power of the regulator is an essential tool to ensure fair competition, and so that smaller businesses are not ultimately wiped out by the gradual concentration of resources at the top of the game and the impossibility of making progress in the game without taking the sorts of risks that undermine local clubs, and ultimately led to a number of situations that we have heard about. I do not see how Ministers will be able to convince right hon. and hon. Members that that is possible without the regulator having any powers to deal with pyramid payments. As we have heard, the Government’s own White Paper acknowledged the distorting impact that they have on competition. If the Bill is about fair competition, that has to be dealt with.

I want to mention my own club Cardiff City—hon. Members would not expect anyone not to mention their own club. Its stadium is located in my constituency and its recent history has contributed to some of the clauses in the Bill, particularly around fans’ rights. Cardiff City has been very successful during my 23 years in Parliament. It has been in the premier league twice, reached the FA cup final, and lost to Liverpool on penalties in the league cup final, but as is well known, some years ago a new owner, Vincent Tan, decided to change the club’s colours from the traditional blue to red, believing it to be a colour that brought good fortune. If hon. Members can imagine, for a football club universally known as the Bluebirds, the switch to red was somewhat problematic for the fans.

I welcome the fact that the owner changed his mind, and that the Bill would not allow that sort of thing to happen without the involvement of the fans. I can confirm that Cardiff City football club welcomes the Bill. I thank the club’s director Steve Borley, who wrote to me about the Bill. He said that

“the game’s fractured governance model and the inequitable distribution of finances”

is increasingly putting the game at risk. That is why the Bill is so important.

The Bill does not make any reference to the players. That is a missing part. The players’ union, the Professional Footballers’ Association, wrote to hon. Members about that, to say:

“As drafted, there is currently no reference to players within the Bill. We think this is a significant omission”.

I would like to hear from the Minister why that is the case, whether the Government would consider the representations from the players’ union to ensure appropriate references to them in the Bill, and reassurances about some of the existing structures that protect the rights of players, which the union is concerned about.

No one here wants to damage the premier league. I simply want my club, Cardiff City, to have a fair chance of playing in the premier league again. I hope that the Bill will go some way—hopefully improved, strengthened and amended—to ensure a healthier future for football.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee.