Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Addington Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 27th November 2024 Lords Chamber

People ask questions, but I would have thought that those three words, without putting finance before sustainability, could live together. The regulator has to ask “Is this sustainable? Is it successful? Will people work hard and succeed? Will it grow?” The little clubs all have aspirations to get into the Premier League and win the FA Cup. That is what drives them. So, please, we should not just look at the Premier League. Yes, it is important, yes, it is great, but the little clubs do not just want to be sustained—they want to grow, to be successful. So I cannot see why these three words cannot live together without qualification.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, when trying to sum up these several hours of debate, I felt at times that we were dancing on the head of a pin. Sustainability —what actually does it mean? What do the Government think it means? That is the one question I would give to the Minister. Does it mean sustaining a successful Premier League? Well, I would hope so. Is sustainability making sure—remember, this Bill encapsulates it—that those five tiers of professional football are functioning? That is what is in this Bill—five tiers of professional football. That is what has allowed the resurrection of teams which got it wrong—there was somewhere to go.

Making sure that that is sustainable means that the fans want something. I hope I never cross the noble Lord, Lord Mann, on this subject because there was a great deal of fire in the belly there; my noble friend Lord Goddard might have got close at times, but I think we will give the noble Lord that one on points. The fans want something and are hugely emotionally and physically invested in this structure. That is what is behind the Bill. Football is not another business; it is not even another sports business. It is not—and may all that is holy be thanked—WWE. It is not something that we will throw away; it is embedded in the identity of much of our society. I say that as a rugby player. The noble Lord, Lord Hayward, is my friend—I will say yes to him and “sir” when he is refereeing, but only then.

So it is that that comes through. The question here is about the word “sustainability”. What do the Government envisage it is? Let us get it out here now. Where will this be backed up? Where will it be shown so that we can know what is going on? Pepper v Hart is clearly not enough here. If we can get that, we can move on, but we must remember that we do not want the Premier League to be damaged, because it provides the money for the other good things to happen. That is the balance we must achieve—or at least get close to.

We cannot guarantee that it will be the best league in the world for ever. Will there be government intervention to make sure that it is successful? That would be a strange position for many noble Lords who have spoken.

[Baroness Brady (Con)]

The point is that the government regulator should not make it less successful by over- regulating, mission creep and making it so difficult to keep it competitive that it ends up having a detrimental effect.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, we come back to semantics, definition and interpretation. How do you interpret success? Is it by lack of regulation or by intervention? I do not think FIFA and UEFA would be terribly happy if it was felt that it was possible for a regulator to interpret success.

I hope that the Minister, who will have better access to this information than anybody else here—at least, I really hope she will—will be able to say what sustainability is, where does it go and what is the Government’s vision? That is what has happened here.

The Bill is about keeping five tiers of professional football functioning, with an escape route when it goes wrong, if we want to be terribly mercenary, for the top clubs. It gives a chance to rebuild and come back. That is difficult—Leeds have done it briefly; the noble Lord, Lord Mann, is smiling at me—but that is what is behind the Bill. It is not just about the Premier League, it is about the whole thing. I hope that the Minister will be able to correct—or rather, clarify—these points.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, this has been a long but I think helpful debate, particularly towards the end when the more conversational changes that Committee allows exposed some fundamental differences, if not in party politics then in political philosophy and outlook. It is very valuable that we start our scrutiny of the Bill by reminding ourselves of the differing views and hopes of not just your Lordships in Committee but the many fans whose hopes ride on the job that the regulator is being asked to do and the way in which it is being asked to do it. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, said that it felt at times like matters of semantics, but it is important to make sure that the words in the Bill are carefully chosen and that the Government’s intentions behind each of those words are properly probed. I look forward to hearing more from the Minister about the Government’s intentions for the regulator and the way it will and will not carry out its duties.

I do not want to dwell too long on the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton; I do not want to be accused of playing for time, as they do in football. However, I want to reassure her of the spirit in which those of us on these Benches are scrutinising this important Bill. As she said, and as my noble friend Lord Moynihan and others said, the Bill has enjoyed cross-party gestation and support. I made that very clear in my comments at Second Reading. It arises from the fan-led review led by the former Conservative MP, Dame Tracey Crouch, which was introduced to another place in the last Parliament. It has been changed by the new Government, as is their right, and we want to make sure that when it gets to the statute book it does so in the right shape and form. My noble friend Lord Moynihan noted that there are 340 amendments already tabled, and more than 100 of them are in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, and the noble Lord, Lord Bassam. I think it is a strength of this House that we will look at each amendment and give it the airing it needs, and that we scrutinise the Bill and read the Bill documents as carefully as my noble friend Lord Hayward has done. I know that your Lordships will not demur from that.

The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, set out clearly and powerfully the case for her Amendment 10, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, particularly in the exchanges with my noble friend Lord Markham. I hope that that helped bring some clarity, both to the argument the noble Baroness was advancing and counterarguments from across the House. The exchange on her amendment chimed with our concern that “sustainability” is too imprecise or insufficient a term to stand on its own. She gave a practical and useful example of the way in which the Bill might expand on how we guarantee the sustainability of football and football clubs. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, was seeking a cure for amnesia, understandably. I never had the pleasure of being the Bill Minister for this Bill, but he will remember from our many exchanges when I sat on the other side of the House that I was looking forward to the Bill coming to your Lordships’ House. He will also remember that, as a Minister, I had the pleasure of taking a number of Bills through and faced keen scrutiny from him and other Members on the Opposition Front Bench, carrying out, as was their right, the Opposition’s duty to scrutinise government legislation. I hope that he remembers, as he does not suffer from amnesia, that I was always open to ways of improving Bills, including those I took through as a Minister. If he thinks I am being too careful or conscientious in my scrutiny, it is only because I learned from the best.

This is important because, as my noble friend Lord Maude of Horsham said, the Bill brings about an unprecedented intrusion by the state into a sport and an industry that is a resounding success story. My noble friend extolled the benefits of inertia, and I agree. We want the regulator to be carefully constrained, but we want it to be respected and able to fulfil its duties with authority. That is why it is important that we make sure it is not backward looking, nor that it seeks simply to preserve football as it is today in aspic, but can demonstrate to football clubs and to fans around the world that it shares their aspirations for the future of the game.

My noble friend also struck an almost Schumpeterian note by reminding us that sustainability, particularly in this complex ecology of the football pyramid, has sometimes been delivered through new clubs, new tournaments and new successes emerging from the ashes of previous failures, so sustainability can be delivered in ways that may feel turbulent as we go through them. I thought that was a useful point. We want to ensure that we avoid the unwitting or avoidable failures, such as the noble Lord, Lord Goddard of Stockport, so powerfully set out in the example he gave, and to make sure that the clubs that matter so much to their communities are protected—they are not, as the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said, like just any other business; they have a social purpose, which we have already well considered—but it is the nature of sport that there are winners and losers. We also have to bear that in mind as we look at the regulator and the way it will carry out its work.

We could probably save ourselves a lot of time if we heeded my noble friend Lord Hayward’s referee’s whistle and just accepted his rulings on everything. I am glad that he had gone through the impact assessment so carefully. I agree that there should be more references to success than to Bury, for instance, in the impact assessment and some of the accompanying documents.

The noble Lord, Lord Watson of Wyre Forest, was right to warn about the inadvertent danger of sending the message that a sport loved by 1.5 billion people around the world is not sustainable without a new law, a new regulator or the intervention of politicians. My noble friend Lady Brady pointed out in both her speech and her interventions that sustainability can mean different things to different people and that, as something with no end state, it is very difficult to define. I think that is why we have given it so much attention in our debate on this first group.

The noble Lord, Lord Birt, was very helpful in saying that sustainability is a necessary but not sufficient term. My amendment would strike out the words, not because I disagree with them but because I do not think they are enough. The way he put it was right: the regulator must not stop football developing.

The noble Lord, Lord Mann, made a powerful case for adding the word enjoyment. I enjoyed not only the way he did it but also his powerful reminder of the necessity of government and state intervention in the past in football, particularly in relation to the disasters and terrible incidents that he rightly reminded us of, which we want to avoid happening again.

I was struck by the compromise from the Cross Benches from the noble Lord, Lord Londesborough, and his suggestion of “financial sustainability and success”. I wonder whether the Minister will set out her thoughts on that, as well as on the point that my noble friend Lady Evans of Bowes Park made about growth. This is something, after all, that chimes with the words of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the work of the Government more broadly. We want to ensure that the regulator is a growth-focused one that helps the growth not just of the game but of our economy.

This has been a long debate, but in debates on the Online Safety Act, which I had the pleasure of taking through your Lordships’ House, we spent a lot of time talking about having a declaration of purpose at the beginning of the Bill—the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, pressed me hard on it from the Opposition Benches. I remind your Lordships that we made that change and put it in the Bill because I thought it was important for the regulator to be given a clear message from Parliament and in legislation about what its role should be and how it should do it. I was glad to make that change.

The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Sentamu, reminded us in his analogy with the BBC of the Reithian principles, which we also inserted into the Media Act—again a Bill that I took through. I was happy to amend it to make sure that that Act also reflected important statements of intent and ways of working. So I make no apology for having invited the Committee to spend some time thinking carefully, as we embark on our scrutiny of the Bill, about the role of the regulator and the message that we send through the Act of Parliament that we pass about the way it should do it.