Unauthorised Entry to Football Matches Bill

Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Christopher Chope

Report stage
Friday 11th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Before we come to our proceedings, I remind Members of the difference between Report and Third Reading. The scope of debate on Report is the amendments I have selected. The scope of the Third Reading debate to follow will be the whole Bill as it stands after Report. Members may wish to consider those points before deciding at which stage, or stages, they want to try to catch my eye.

Clause 1

Offence of unauthorised entry to designated football matches

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I beg to move amendment 1, page 1, line 6, leave out “or attempts to enter”.

[Mr Speaker]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

Amendment 2, page 1, line 8, leave out “or attempted entry”.

Amendment 3, page 1, line 11, leave out “or attempting to enter”.Amendment 4, page 1, line 13, leave out “or attempted to enter”.

Amendment 5, page 1, line 15, leave out “or attempted entry”.

Amendment 6, clause 2, page 2, line 3, leave out from “force” to end of line 4 and insert

“at the end of the period of 2 months beginning with the day on which it is passed.”.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

Many people watching and observing proceedings in Parliament will wonder whether we have our priorities right. The Bill is about unauthorised entry to football matches in particular circumstances, but I think most people are much more concerned about the proliferation of unauthorised entry into our very country, and the failure of the Home Office and its officials to do anything effective about it. In my submission, the Bill is a trivialisation of legislation by Home Office officials who should be doing other things—but I will not dwell on that now, Mr Speaker.

The long title of the Bill states that its purpose is to

“Create an offence of unauthorised entry at football matches for which a football banning order can be imposed following conviction.”

However, it is about not just unauthorised entry but any attempt at unauthorised entry. My amendments are designed to exclude from the Bill provisions relating to attempts to enter. Such attempts are less important than actual unlawful entry, and to include them in the same category is disproportionate and unreasonable. When we come on to debate other parts of the Bill on Third Reading, points can be made about the Bill more generally, but it seems to me that someone attempting to enter a football match without authorisation should not be subject to the same penalties, as set out in the Bill, as people who actually succeed in getting into a football match.

Actually, 11 July is quite an interesting date. On this very day four years ago the 2020 Euros final at Wembley stadium resulted in the unauthorised entry of thousands of fans, which caused a lot of disorder. Baroness Casey, who is an expert on producing reports, was commissioned by the Football Association to look into that issue and come forward with recommendations. In her report, which spanned more than 100 pages, she emphasised the fact that much of the disorder was nothing to do with people coming in without tickets and tailgating; in fact, a lot of it was attributed to other failures to enforce the law, in particular the taking of drugs and alcohol on public transport in London, which is verboten, and the taking of drugs in the vicinity of a football match, which should also be forbidden but was allowed to proceed with impunity. She also made the point that unlike at many football matches, what happened at Wembley was largely exacerbated by the inadequacy of the stewarding arrangements.

As a result of Baroness Casey’s report, the Home Office decided to bring forward this Bill. However, nowhere could I find in the report any reference to the fact that Baroness Casey wanted to treat attempts to enter in exactly the same way as entering, which is why I have put forward these amendments. There is no need to expand on that except to say that it is in common law. Normally, an attempt to commit a criminal offence is an inchoate action, which can itself be the subject of criminal proceedings; in those circumstances, there would be no need to have this provision written into the Bill.

It seems to me that the provisions would create a penalty that is quite severe; it could affect people’s ability to go and watch football matches for many years into the future. The presumption under the Bill—as you will know, Mr Speaker—is that if someone is guilty of an offence, they will be unable to go to football matches again as a spectator. My assessment is that that is disproportionate and unnecessary. For those reasons, I strongly oppose this aspect of the Bill, and seek through these amendments to remove references to “attempts”.

Amendment 6 is another example of where we need to try to tighten up private Members’ Bills when they are brought before this House, so that the Government do not have everything their own way. Members will know that there are four other Bills to be debated on Report this morning. All those other Bills have a commencement date, but clause 2(2) of this Bill says:

“This Act comes into force on such day as the Secretary of State may by regulations made by statutory instrument appoint.”

The question I ask is: why? Why is that necessary? Why can we not in this very simple Bill say that these provisions will come into effect either on the day of Royal Assent or within two months of that date? That would be the norm.

What sometimes happens, of course, is that the Government give themselves powers and do all the talk about supporting Bills such as this, and then never bring forward the regulations. The consequence of not having a specific timetable is that the ball is very much—to use that expression—in the Government’s court, because they can decide whether they will implement the provisions of this Bill, which has been put forward by the Home Office. I hope that when the Minister responds to this debate, he will explain why the Bill has to be introduced by regulations on a date yet to be specified. Of course, the making of regulations is in itself a further unnecessary administrative burden. I would be interested to hear from the Minister as to why the Bill is being treated differently from the other Bills the Government are hoping will get through today.

Points of Order

Debate between Lindsay Hoyle and Christopher Chope

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I was going to raise the issue you have just spoken about as a point of order. My concern is that, for the first time ever in my experience within this House, the list of Members participating in a Division has not been published in the hard copy of Hansard. I ask you to insist that Hansard publishes the list in hard copy, rather than relying upon its being put online. Can I also ask how it came about? This is to do with new technology, and when I inquired about this matter earlier today, the list was still not available at 11.30 this morning. Why was it not?

[Mr Speaker]

Let me deal with the hon. Gentleman’s main point. I can assure him that we will get it printed, even if it is on a separate sheet, to make sure that who voted what way is available in hard copy. That is the key thing. On his other point, this was human error. It is not about technology; it is nothing to do with technology. Sometimes mistakes are made. I do not want to go on a witch hunt over a mistake made by human error. What I will say is that we will put something in place to ensure that this does not happen again. I am sure he would agree that that is the best way to deal with this matter.