Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Birt Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 13th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, may I take noble Lords back? In the 1980s, I scheduled ITV at the weekend, and among my responsibilities was football coverage of the then First Division. Of course, there was no Premier League then. This was the period that you now see on archive match footage, where the centre forward shoots at goal and the ball gets stuck in mud six yards away. All games were played at 3 pm on a Saturday, and ITV’s pitiful contract allowed us only to show highlights of a few games on Sunday afternoon, 24 hours later, long after the results had been thoroughly digested. Unsurprisingly, the football audience was bored and was drifting away.

ITV, and then the BBC, called time, and no football was shown on British television for some months until the then football authorities finally agreed that some live football could be included in a new deal. Not many years later, a breakaway league was formed, the Premier League; a little later still, Sky Sports made the live broadcast of games the staple of every football fan’s life. Later still, the Premier League became a global force. I hiked high up in the Himalayas with my wife about 10 years ago. There were no roads or vehicles but there was solar power, and in every single village, high up in the Himalayas, young boys, almost all wearing Manchester United or Liverpool shirts, could be found kicking a football around some rocky patch.

Let us be clear: the Premier League’s success is not an accident but an unrivalled achievement, forged over decades. A high proportion of the world’s best footballers play in it; a high proportion of games produce brilliant, scintillating football of extraordinary creativity; and, unlike in some other countries, there are no invincible superpowers. Every team in the Premier League plays to a high standard and, on its day, is able to beat any other team. Thus, in the past 12 months or so we have had Wolves 2-1 Manchester City and Liverpool 0-1 Nottingham Forest. Just this last weekend—the noble Lord, Lord Maude, is not in his place, so I am sparing him a moment of pain—we had Spurs 1-2 Ipswich.

Of course, success brings new problems, and I support the measures in this Bill designed to address them. Clubs are businesses, but they are not just businesses: they have long heritages, many from over a century. As everybody who has spoken today agrees, they are deeply embedded in our local communities; they have been followed by generations of the same family. One of my grandfathers, whom I knew, was brought up in the 1890s, only 200 yards away from Anfield football ground. Perhaps unsurprisingly, all my grandchildren are now impassioned Reds. The noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, has just left the Chamber, but I am mystified that he could have grown up in Whitley Bay in the north-east and managed not to be indoctrinated in the pleasures of supporting Newcastle.

Football’s very success has made clubs targets of responsible, capable, well-funded entities but also, on occasion, of owners with neither the skill, means nor financial acumen to run them properly. There can be no excuse whatever for any club in the world’s richest leagues suffering a loss; that is simply bad management—and the noble Lord, Lord Harlech, has just given us a very vivid example of that. The provisions in the Bill to protect clubs from rogue owners, promote effective board governance, mandate financial prudence and solidify fan engagement are all most welcome. However, I have some significant reservations about the Bill as it stands.

First, it fails to address some critical issues in the game—for example, player welfare, which the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, mentioned earlier. Football is now inducting talented players from a very young age, yet we know that 99% will not finally make it to the top tier. I know from personal encounters that not all clubs are scrupulous about ensuring that young players maintain their studies to the level of their academic ability or about preparing them for what can be the psychological trauma of ending up with no future in football. Moreover, Sheffield Hallam University and others have identified indefensible practices and behaviours in a minority of clubs across the leagues, with apprentices used as cheap labour, facing humiliation, enduring punishment regimes and exposed to homophobia.

The second major shortcoming of the Bill is that it does not explicitly address the issue of fan safety. We have had some narrow escapes in recent years. I feared for my life at the UEFA Super Cup in Istanbul in 2019. We experienced anarchy at Wembley in the 2020 Euros final, and the 2022 Champions League final at the Stade de France, which I also attended, was a well-chronicled episode of near-disastrous failure on the part of all the multiple organisations involved, inadequately supervised by UEFA. Let us heed these warnings: fan safety, at home and abroad, requires regulatory attention. The present system has not been working.

I come to the third shortcoming. Neither the Bill nor the regulator should inhibit the development of football. The proposal for a European Super League by common consent, as an exclusive enclave, was a significant misjudgment, but I see no objection in principle to the emergence of small, tiered European leagues that are purely based on merit. We must allow the game to continue to develop, as I hope my opening observations about life in the 1980s underline and illuminate.

Finally, like a number of noble Lords, I am wholly unconvinced by the mechanism in the Bill for regulating fund flow down from the Premier League to other leagues. The Premier League is not a closed shop: three of 20 clubs go down each year and three go up—and 51 clubs have been in the Premier League since its inception. In 1992, Bournemouth were in the old Third Division; they are currently bang in the middle of the Premier League, and so far this season they have beaten both Arsenal and Manchester City. This is a league where good club governance and effective management at every level can bring success.

In the 2023-24 season, the Premier League distributed around £500 million down the football pyramid, including to the grass roots and the women’s game. That is a seventh of its broadcast media pot, and it is by far the biggest transfer of funds by any league in any sport anywhere. Absent a regulator, that has been a purely voluntary act on the Premier League’s part.

The annual transfer from the Premier League to the Championship is itself a hefty £370 million. With rising revenues of its own, the Championship, as my noble friend Lady Brady reminded us, is now the sixth-richest league in Europe, notably larger than the tier 1 leagues in Portugal, Belgium and the Netherlands.

It is crystal clear that this model is very definitely not broken. Worse still, the method proposed in the Bill for resolving a negotiating impasse between the Premier League and the Championship is a form of Russian roulette. It is simply bizarre and will mightily deter investors of quality. A number of people have spoken on this, including my noble friends Lady Evans and Lady Brady, and the noble Lord, Lord Wood.

[Baroness Wheeler (Lab)]

Time.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

I am on my closing remarks and the time is advisory, as the noble Baroness knows. I am about to conclude.

A regulator-backed land grab of Premier League funds risks undermining the extraordinary success of the Premier League, killing the goose that lays the golden egg and reducing the massive, beneficial impact that the Premier League has had on the whole of English football and on our national life. I ask the Government to think again.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Birt Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 27th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise for missing Second Reading. I feel like I am coming on at half-time into this debate, but sometimes if you come on at half-time you have a little bit more energy.

I want to address the sustainability issue, because it is fundamental to what we are trying to do. I am not sure whether any other Member of this House has been in the unenviable position I was in as a leader of a borough, when the local football club came to me and said, “We’re going to go bankrupt and go bust unless you financially support us”, which I had to do at Stockport. We offered all our support, and we did it for a reason. It is more than just a football club, as other speakers have said; they are part of the fabric of society and of communities. They are economic drivers for towns. Most of these football clubs were built in town centres. They kick off at 3 pm on a Saturday because men, predominantly, used to work Saturday morning and they would go to the football in the afternoon. As we watch global football now, we see football matches at 5.30 pm, 8 pm and 10 pm. No one cares about the supporters. When Newcastle played West Ham the other night, the last train home from Newcastle left before the final whistle.

There is a bigger picture at stake here about how you regulate and control football, so my opening comment is that the sustainability bit—the bit that says a football club must be able to sustain itself—must be core to what we are trying to do. On all this saying, “The Premier League will look after itself”, I wish people would not keep bringing the Premier League in as the golden egg. It is the Championship, League One, League Two and the non-league teams—that is your pyramid. That is part of the regulator’s job: to secure their sustainability.

I say to all Members when they go through the Bill —some things in it are quite laudable and supportable—that the aim is not to get into the situation we have got into before, where the six that were going to join the European league could have collapsed the pyramid. That needs to be stopped again. Owners buy a football club like somebody buys a yacht or a hotel. That has to be stopped, as does changing the colours a team plays in and changing the ethos of a club. That is regulation, but at the heart of it is sustainability. That needs to be woven into the Bill somewhere, if not on the face of it: sustainability absolutely must be included in the regulator’s remit.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, sustainability is an insufficient word to describe what the Bill should be trying to achieve. It is necessary but not sufficient. We need football to flourish, develop and innovate and the Bill should make that extremely clear. As I mentioned at Second Reading, I have been around a long time and remember when football was highly conservative. I remember when football bitterly resisted the notion of live broadcasting, which was completely and utterly to transform and create the modern game.

The regulator must not stop football developing, and that needs to be crystal clear in the Bill. Football needs to continue to innovate, as it has done over the last 30 years. The notion for the European super league was quite wrong and rightly kicked into touch, but there are other possibilities in the modern age for having European leagues based on merit and allowing the game to develop. Live-streaming games which are not broadcast live on a subscription service for fans would be a perfectly reasonable way to allow the game to develop. Let us ask the regulator not to stand in the way of the game continuing to improve as it has done so successfully over recent decades.

[Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to make a few brief comments, not least because, as I have been here rather a long time, I know what is happening when speakers use the words “word search” and “dictionary definition”. It is not exactly intended to accelerate the passage of a Bill. I will be brief even if others, perhaps, were not. I remind Members opposite that this Bill came out of an inquiry from a Conservative former Sports Minister and was a Conservative piece of legislation introduced in the other House, so it is not exactly rushed. In terms of sustainability, there are a heck of a lot of clubs that would settle for any guarantee that they had a future and that the future was more secure for them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Watson of Wyre Forest (Lab)]

My Lords, I continue to be humbled by the gentle kindness and grace with which Members of this House help relatively new Members understand the list of amendments in Committee on Bills. I am particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, for helping to steer me back on course. To reciprocate the kindness, I say that I enthusiastically support his amendment and that of the noble Lord, Lord Maude.

I apologise to my noble friend the Minister for adding to her confusion. She withheld comfort on that first debate in relation to the clarity I was seeking on whether English football teams and England will be able to play in European and international competitions at the end of the Bill. I say to her that now is the time: she can end my confusion, give the clarity that this Committee deserves and end the ambiguity by saying that England and English football clubs will be playing in international tournaments, because these important amendments are trying to get that reassurance to every football fan in England tonight.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

I agree that that reassurance is essential, but the only way to get it is not through publishing the letter but through knowing that UEFA and FIFA have agreed that we would be compliant.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

On that point, I think that is the only way. We all agree that this would be such a big risk. I looked it up before the debate, because this is not just the equivalent of us scoring an own goal, it is like a hat-trick of own goals, so I looked at whether there has ever been an example of a hat-trick of own goals. I found out that the most own goals ever scored in a match was 149. We may go close even to that. There is a real point here, and it was very well made by my noble friend Lady Brady, but I really want to unpack it.

What we are talking about here is a lot more than what the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, was saying about the pure financial sustainability of clubs. The concern of UEFA is:

“A Member Association may … be suspended if state authorities interfere … in such a significant way that … it may no longer be considered as fully responsible”.


The Premier League has thought very carefully about how it wants to bring in such things as parachute payments in order to, as we were talking about before, have competitiveness right the way through the game. It is to encourage those clubs—again, I have spoken to clubs about this—to invest, even though they might be in the bottom half of the table, because if they get relegated, they have that safety net. Without that safety net of parachute payments, they would not invest, so they would not be competitive.

What we are talking about here is that if we start to alter those parachute payments and the regulator starts to get involved in that, that is fundamentally altering the competitiveness of the game, so interfering in a way that I feel that UEFA, given the comments it is making, is absolutely going to say that we are overstepping the mark. To my mind, the only way to overcome that, while it is helpful to have these amendments, would be to have a meeting with UEFA—I know meetings have been had—and having a letter from UEFA clearing it, saying that this is something it is happy with and that it will not cut across it. If we do not do that, there will be a fundamental danger of what I think all of us would agree would be the biggest own goal of all.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Birt Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 2nd December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I am very grateful to the Deputy Chairman of Committees and to the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, for trying to bring us back to the point.

This underlines the importance of the debate we need to have in this group. I was tempted to intervene on the noble Lord, Lord Wood of Anfield, but seeing as it was an intervention on me, I do not think that I could have done.

We do not need to focus so much on consulting fans of Liverpool in San Diego. I am interested in the opening clause of the Bill and whether the interests of fans of Liverpool who are based in Weymouth, Whitley Bay or Walthamstow should be taken into account at the moment when we are defining “sustainability”. The Bill currently says:

“For the purposes of this section”—


referring to Clause 1(3)—

“English football is sustainable if it … continues to contribute to the economic or social well-being of the local communities with which regulated clubs are associated”.

Liverpool do great work not just on Merseyside but for fans across the country and we need to have a useful debate about the inclusion and the limiting factor of the word “local” there because there is a domestic point to be made. But, as the intervention from my noble friend Lord Moynihan of Chelsea pointed out, I think we should also avoid looking like little Englanders and being too restricted simply to the domestic benefits here. There is a large group of fans in Thailand, Japan or South Korea, where I was over the summer and where people came up to me and asked which team I supported and wanted to talk about football. I am sure noble Lords across the House have had the same experience when travelling overseas—whether we have places such as Anfield in our titles or otherwise, it is one of the first questions we are asked.

It is a source of pride for this country that a sport we invented and export is something that 1.5 billion people across the globe enjoy watching and can take some of the social and economic benefits of. Through my Amendment 8, I am simply testing whether “local” really ought to be the limiting factor here. I think there are two stages that would be helpful to consider: across England—and, indeed, perhaps the United Kingdom—and across the globe more broadly. I think it would be helpful at this point if I let the debate continue to move by now moving Amendment 8.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

I am sorry, but I hope it is appropriate for yet another Liverpool fan to intervene in this debate. I think we have to segment the fan base and that is essentially what is happening, so I wonder how much we are really disagreeing with one another. As I said at Second Reading, my grandad was brought up 200 yards from Anfield; my father had to walk to the match; and when I was young, I had to take a train and a bus. We all know about those intense fans that live locally. They are chiefly the fans who go by train to away games and love the game and it is a critical part of their whole life. Any organisation which segments its fan base is going to pay a great deal of attention to that cohort.

But we live in different times from my grandfather and my father. Television changed all of that and created a fan base for a high proportion of clubs, not just those in the Premier League, right across the country. In more recent times, in the satellite age, the fan base is truly global. Any organisation benefits from a dialogue with its customers, and the fan base broadly defined is the customer and it is that fan base that provides the investment into the game. It provides the investment at local, national and global level, chiefly through the agency of television rights. Any sensible organisation—whether it is the regulator, the leagues or the clubs—should engage with the full complexity of that fan base. Like any good business, you talk to your fans, you listen, you learn, you adapt and you grow and that is surely what, in one way or another, I hope most of us could agree with.

When the league made the bad mistake that we all know about of saying there would be a closed shop in Europe, the fan base, broadly speaking, rose up in 24 hours and it was knocked out of the equation. I happen to think it would be a mistake for the Premier League to play “home games” in another country, because it antagonises the fans who have the most intense feeling. But we do have to talk to and be informed about the totality of the fan base, whether local, national or global.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Birt Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 2nd December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maude of Horsham (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for drawing your Lordships’ attention to that. It is absolutely the case. When Governments consult with a sector, the people they consult with tend to be the big ones. I spent a lot of time thinking about this and trying to work out how to deal with it in previous contexts. If you run a small company, business or operation—a small football club—you are far more concerned with getting on with whatever the next thing is on your agenda. You have got relatively few people around to do the work. Big companies have a machine that is set up to deal with all this, so the point that my noble friend makes is entirely right.

The point behind this amendment is incredibly important, and my noble friend has done a great service in raising it in the vivid way that he has. We have to consider this, because once you create an independent regulator, you have created something that is supposedly independent, and it is much harder to come back. Later in these debates, we will come to my noble friend Lord Goodman’s proposed sunset clause. That would be some kind of constraint because the threat or certainty of there being a proper, serious review after a given length of time will focus the minds of the regulator. But without that, without the kind of amendment that my noble friend has tabled, I think we stand in great danger.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, absolutely nobody is going to support the idea of overregulation. I spent my whole career, however, in a highly regulated industry: broadcasting. The BBC was the result of a regulatory regime imposed over 100 years ago, and ITV was heavily regulated, with enormous benefits as a result. We have the best broadcasting system in the whole world, so good regulation makes things better. I agree that we do not want to see overregulation.

The strongest part of this Bill is that it tries to ensure that every club is well managed, and that is to be welcomed. Let us recognise that that has not been the general picture, and there is no club that I know of that has not been badly managed, including my own, at some point in its history. Somebody else gave the example that, for a few hours this weekend, Brighton were number two in the Premier League. That is absolutely 100% down to the fact that they have been exceptionally well-managed in recent years.

In my career, I encountered many boards of clubs at every level and, frankly, it was an extremely mixed picture. We name no names. Some of them I encountered were very well-managed, some were managed by rogues and many by people who had a bit of money—not enough money—and were attracted to football for the wrong reasons but completely and utterly lacked any ability to manage a club properly. The great strength of this Bill, in demanding proper boards and financial probity, will bring, I hope, a great improvement to the generality of English football down the leagues and have strong, competent boards wherever you look.

I cannot resist one short story. I know of a Prime Minister—I will not name who the Prime Minister was, but it is not the person you think that I am thinking of; it is somebody else—who was invited to a match and to have lunch beforehand. The Special Branch at Number 10 looked at all the other guests, and every single one of them had a criminal record. That is a true story. That is what we want to put an end to. We want good, strong boards and prudent financial management.

What is the justification for that intervention? It is all the things we have already mentioned. These clubs are not just normal commercial assets; they are deeply embedded in their communities; they have their own heritage; they have their own history; they are culturally important. That justifies appropriate and proportionate regulation and intervention.

Having said lots of nice things, I do have profound reservations about the mechanism for establishing fund flow down the pyramid, but that is a matter for later in our deliberations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I thank noble Lords and I think the point about Amendment 72 was well made. Why I believe this is so critical is that when we have been talking about big clubs the feeling almost is that they are going to look after themselves and somehow we do not need to worry about the Premier League. But, as we have all said, the clue is in the word “pyramid”. The fact that the Championship is the sixth-richest league in the world—richer than Portugal, Belgium and the Netherlands—is because of the money passed down from the Premier League. Fundamental to the health of the whole game, all the network and all the clubs is the health of the Premier League.

As my noble friend Lord Maude was saying, I am afraid that the more that I look into this Bill and the more I understand it, the more worried I become. As we have said before, if the only objective of the regulator is the survival of clubs, as the shadow regulator mentioned, the only tool it has in its locker is to get them to deposit cash as a cushion. I do not think there is any other mechanism. Again, I would be delighted if anyone else can come up with another mechanism and I will sit down and hear it. I really would be delighted.

But the only measure is to say “Okay, we want to be sure that there is no chance at all of you getting into financial difficulties, so put this money aside”. There have been figures of £20 million a club—£400 million—but, as noble Lords have said, maybe the bigger clubs are better able to cope. I bet the top eight or so—the Liverpools, the Manchesters, the Tottenhams et cetera—will be better able to cope. It will be the smaller clubs, especially the ones that are just trying to break in—such as Brentford and Brighton, which have now broken in, but as they were trying to get there—are the ones which will be disproportionately affected.

It is not just the Premier League clubs because, of course, we would be talking about clubs right the way down the pyramid having to make deposits to make sure that there is less risk of them getting into financial difficulties. Of course, the further down the pyramid you go, the more of a hardship that becomes. Let us understand it more. The shadow regulator was talking about his concern about dependence on rich owners and what you can do about that.

We can give two examples recently from my club, Chelsea. I think everyone would say that Matthew Harding was a very reputable business guy, had very good intentions and was an absolutely stand-up person. He was tragically killed in a helicopter crash. No one could have expected that. The club was in financial difficulties and had to be sold. What would the regulator’s answer to that have been? Probably, “Oh, you were dependent on a rich owner. You have to deposit more money in case, God forbid, they die in a helicopter crash”. Our next owner, Roman Abramovich, was very well regarded for about 18 years and was absolutely fine. Then Russia invaded Ukraine and, all of a sudden, he was no longer a reputable owner. What could the financial regulator have done about that? Well, clearly, it has to look at all the owners and think “Ooh, what could happen in your circumstance? Could your country end up doing something bad on the world stage? Deposit more money”.

It goes beyond that. Lots of noble Lords have said, “What do we want? We want better management of our clubs”. Are we asking the financial regulator to assess managers and say “Oh, I don’t think you’re very good”, or “I don’t think your business plan is very good”. What can a financial regulator do if they do not like the management of the club? They cannot sack them. What can they do if they do not like the business plan very much? They can say, “Well, please try better, please make it a bit better”. The only thing they can absolutely do at the end of the day is say “I don’t like your management very much, I’m not very confident in them, and I don’t like your business plan very much, so I’m going to ask you to put more money on deposit”.

Then you get into a situation where I guess you follow that through to its logical conclusion and some clubs are going to have to put a lot more on deposit than others, because the regulator has decided, you know, “I don’t like the cut of your jib”, for want of a better word. What sort of situation are we going to get into there? We can see as we peel back the onion that this is fraught with more and more difficulties. You are asking the regulator to opine on each club, each business plan, each set of owners and each set of management and say, depending on all that, how much money a club should set aside—with only one criterion for success for that regulator: that that club financially stays in its place and never gets threatened with going bust. There is only one criterion, so every time we are going to have an ever-increasing ratchet to de-risk every club, and the only mechanism to do that is to get them to put more and more money on deposit.

Again, please, I would be delighted. I know the Minister cares about football and the welfare of the game, so I would be delighted if someone could come up with another tool on how the regulator can try to manage sustainability. He could not come up with one the other day, so maybe we should ask him.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

Is it not far more likely that the regulator will simply insist on having a good-quality, conventional board—I know from the noble Lord’s experience that he will know what that looks like—with a mix of skills, a proper CFO and a real sense of financial accountability and risk management? That is the direction of travel a regulator is likely to take. I am sure the noble Lord would agree from his experience that that tends to lead to strong institutions—and that is not a description of many football clubs at any level.

[Lord Maude of Horsham (Con)]

Before my noble friend responds to that, he is on a very important point here about the remedies that are available to a regulator where they have concerns. The noble Lord suggests that you put in some great and good, experienced, splendid people, and they will make it all better. We have rightly heard a lot from the noble Lord opposite about Brighton & Hove Albion. If a visionary owner had a view of how you could, by investing in the right way, in the right kind of players and the right methodologies, have a different approach to managing and developing a football club, what would a great and good, wise and sage board have said? It would have said “Ooh, very difficult”. Board members would have pursed their lips and sucked their teeth and possibly stopped there being this great success story.

What would a regulator have done? They would have said, “This all looks very risky. How can you justify this great vision you’ve got?” Would they, as my noble friend suggested, say “Well, you’ve got to put more and more money on deposit as a hedge against possible failure”? What are you then going to say to fans when they say, “Well, why aren’t you investing in the players that we need to create the success?” This is why so much of this is of concern. It goes back to the point we made earlier about sustainability. It is all about downward pressure. It is putting a cap on aspiration, vision, excitement, ambition and the possibility of having these great romantic stories of huge success. Is that really what we want the future of English football to be?

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Birt Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 4th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

This is exactly why we want to have these sorts of debates in Committee. Funnily enough, I put my name to this amendment. As noble Lords know, when I talk about media interests, I do so as a former director of a pay TV company. I was thinking about media interests less in relation to broadcasting and more that—the noble Lord, Lord Birt, will know this—when you are making sports media rights bids, all information is good information. You would then be party to a lot of privileged, and maybe even inside, information.

I agree that there is a balance to be struck, because these are exactly the sort of people you want involved in the regulator as well; but if they have a current role that involves them bidding for media sports rights, that would probably rule them offside—if you will excuse the pun. Again, that is exactly why we bring issues such as this to Committee to discuss.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

There is a potential conflict on both sides. There are many different roles in media but obviously, it is a single role that might be filled here. I would feel very uncomfortable if someone were sitting in both camps, were I to be in the decision-making capacity ever again in a broadcast organisation.

[Lord Londesborough (CB)]

My Lords, I shall address Amendment 40 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Parkinson and Lord Markham.

Before I do, I have remained silent for the last few days, taking in what has been said. I have a problem with Amendment 40, which I will come on to in a moment, but I want to reflect on the role of the regulator and the CEO. We are now on day three in Committee. It is important that both sides—I am trying, as a Cross-Bencher, to act as an honest broker—work productively and do not lose sight of what the majority of us want, which is to establish a new regulator with a clearly defined remit that does not stray into areas of overregulation or overreach.

That is not to say that issues such as environmental sustainability, CSR, women’s football or player welfare are not important; they are, but if we do not focus tightly on the core responsibilities of the regulator, I fear we are going to end up with a very complicated Bill that lacks pragmatism and leaves the regulator, whose salary I will come on to in a moment, in a pretty unworkable and unpopular role, at increasing expense to the football clubs in terms of the licence fees. I am thinking here particularly of the clubs in tiers 3, 4 and 5.

I would like to bring back a bit of financial perspective to this debate. Remember, financial sustainability is really what brought us here. Yes, there is fans’ engagement, but we have rather lost sight of that. The Premier League is the richest and most-watched league in the world, a fantastic creator of jobs and a multibillion-pound generator of exports. However, we have warning lights flashing on our dashboard that we ignore at our peril.

Total debt across the Premier League is fast approaching £4 billion—not the £2 billion that one of your Lordships mentioned on Monday—and that figure comes from the University of Liverpool. Losses across the Premier League are running at close to £1 billion per annum, per season. As we have heard, typically, 16 to 17 of its clubs generate losses, while in the Championship 80% of clubs have negative equity, and not one of those clubs generates an operating profit outside of player trading.

Having said that, I appreciate that we need to strike a balance and not interfere unnecessarily. I have listened carefully, this week and last week, to the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, among others, when she spoke about the danger of overreach and the need to be careful that we do not kill off the ambition, aspiration and calculated risk-taking of clubs—in other words, that we do not kill off the excitement and jeopardy of the game, which of course involves financial risk. That is a really important point.

Taking that into consideration, we need to be disciplined and define the parameters of the IFR with an eye on realism, pragmatism and effectiveness. The Bill runs to 120 pages, with 99 pages of Explanatory Notes. We have 340 amendments, which, thankfully, are reducing—and I think we are still on page 4. That is not a great advert for productivity.

Anyway, that is enough background from me. I return to Amendment 40. We are going to need a CEO of the highest calibre for the regulator, and that CEO is going to have to show great leadership skills and profound and relevant domain experience. Capping his or her salary at £172,000 per annum will simply make the recruitment of a high-calibre CEO that much more difficult. I appreciate that we need to control costs, but that is not the area in which to do it.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Birt Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 4th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Jackson for his Amendment 50, which looks to protect the taxpayer. I particularly support my noble friend Lord Hayward’s as ever forensic analysis, which really focused on the burden to the smaller clubs. These things easily get out of control and, as my noble friend mentioned, £140 million in anyone’s book is a lot of money, and that is just the central case—it is not even the highest example.

I will speak to my two amendments in this group: Amendments 171 and 253. Amendment 171

“restricts discretionary licence conditions to include only internal financial controls”.

Interestingly, this was the drafting of the original Bill that was brought before the other place before the general election. We have heard many times in the Chamber how this Bill is substantially the same as the original one. However, this time round there is a key change in the wording: instead of “internal financial controls”, the word “financial” has been taken out, so now it is just “internal controls”. I think we would all agree that there is a world of difference between looking at the financial management of a club, which is something that we would understand, particularly with regard to the sustainability argument, and why that might be in the remit. Removing “financial” from that, all of a sudden, so you are just looking at the internal controls of a club, is obviously a massive moving of the goalposts, if I may say so.

In trying to understand the thinking behind it, I looked at the Explanatory Notes. In those, it mentions that, broadly speaking,

“Internal controls refer to the system of policies and processes established by the management of a club that allow it to continue operating in an effective, orderly and efficient manner”.


That may seem innocuous, but it goes once more to the whole issue of mission creep. The Bill does not define internal controls—and remember that we are talking about 116 clubs, and we are saying that a regulator is suddenly going to have powers to explore those internal controls.

Again, the Explanatory Notes say that those internal controls are looking to make sure that the club is being run

“in an effective, orderly and efficient”

way, and that they help a club to operate in such a way. First, is that the role of a regulator, to get involved in the internal controls of every club, as to whether it is running efficiently? Suddenly, we seem to have appointed a management consultant on steroids, who will be looking into the cost of each club and opining on it. Surely that is not the sort of thing we want to do for 116 clubs.

Then, what does that bring in? Why not the IT department of a club? I think we would all agree that digital information technology comes into the definition of the effective, orderly and efficient operation of a club. So, are we now asking the regulator to do that? Maybe we should be hiring Capgemini, IBM and whoever else to start to get into it.

Suddenly, we start to see this mission creep. Then, we realise that the other parts we are trying to bring in, on having protection for clubs and the taxpayer in Amendments 50 and 253, become all the more important. Not only have we now got the concern that this regulator will be looking into every nook and cranny of the internal controls of a club, but who will be footing the bill for all of this? There is a blank cheque that either the taxpayer or the clubs are going to have to foot. I think we would all agree that we probably do not want either of them to do it, but as this is set up here and now, the regulator has absolutely been given the remit to do that.

In my Amendment 253, I am trying to make sure that at least this does not fall on the taxpayer; I think we would all agree that we do not want that. I must admit that I do not feel particularly comfortable about that, because I do not want it falling on the small clubs—or any of the clubs for that matter—but I am absolutely sure that I definitely do not want the taxpayer to be funding a regulator to look into the internal controls of 116 clubs and whether they are effective. However, I do not think that we want the clubs to have to do that either.

It is a long-established principle that the regulator is paid. I am familiar from my old media days with Ofcom being funded by the broadcasters, and that has to be appropriate, because we do not want the taxpayer to do it. However, what sort of control do the clubs have over this? All of a sudden, the regulator says that it is going in and to look at every single nook and cranny of their internal control to opine on whether they are efficient and effective—and the really good news is that they are going to pay for all of it as well. Is that really what we want from a regulator? I do not think it is. We started off with a very small mission and, suddenly, the regulator is looking into the internal controls of 116 clubs. I really do not believe that this is what we want.

That is why, in my amendments, I am first trying to return the regulator back to internal financial controls, which we can see a role for. Secondly, I am making sure that this does not fall on the taxpayer. However, if this falls on the clubs, we need to think about how we can give them some sort of control to avoid them having to pay a blank cheque for all of this.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

Most of what the noble Lord said would be done during an audit. All of these companies will have audit, and almost everything he mentioned will be conducted by the auditors. Plainly, it would be completely duplicatory for that to be done twice over. The issue is whether the regulator would have access to the audit. I agree with the noble Lord about the need to avoid cost, and wherever the cost falls, audits—as I am sure he knows—are ever more expensive, because the obligations on auditors are increasing the whole time. There is a lot at stake here.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

This is another example of the benefit of getting different brains on the committee. I absolutely hope that that would be the case, but it is probably a question for the Minister to answer. It is definitely logical.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Birt Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 15th January 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Birt]

295A: Clause 60, page 49, line 21, after “given” insert “and to the extent that the question or questions for resolution relate to financial distributions, that mediator must be appointed in accordance with the requirements in section (Appointment of mediator) to section (Guidance and review)”

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 295A and to speak to my other amendments, 297A through 297G. While I have, of course, had expert help in the drafting, the approach in these amendments is entirely my own. They are my response to discussions I have had within football and right across this House about the single most radical measure in the Bill: the process for determining fund flow down the football pyramid.

I have already made clear my conviction that the precious and unparalleled role that football clubs play in their communities justifies regulation. Fans should be listened to, and they deserve protection from the occasionally bad, if generally well-intentioned, stewardship of owners and management who take ill-considered risks and lose control of their finances—the overwhelming reason why clubs fail and falter.

I wholeheartedly welcome the provisions in the Bill for promoting good and prudent management. They should have a major and beneficial—indeed, radical—impact on English football. I believe, however, that the precise mechanism set out in the Bill for determining fund flow carries severe risk and could adversely impact the whole of the English game. I note the cogent reservations about the mechanism set out in the EFL’s own briefing paper from last November. I note, too, that the Bill’s progenitor, Dame Tracey Crouch, described the backstop mechanism as the “nuclear equivalent for football.” She observed, quite rightly, that in a nuclear conflict, he who pulls the trigger may not be the winner.

The backstop is an inappropriate measure to resolve issues between two groups who live cheek by jowl and whose membership is interchangeable every 12 months. Next year, any club might find itself sitting on the other side of the table. The essential task of establishing an appropriate flow of funds down the leagues is to balance two public goods, and “balance” is the key word: on the one hand, to maintain the extraordinary success of the Premier League; and on the other, to share sufficient of the fruits of the Premier League’s success to encourage the healthy operation of the whole of the football pyramid and to ensure that any well-managed club can rise to the very top.

Why is the Premier League the world’s most successful sporting league? It is because 40% of the world’s best footballers play in it—twice as many as in any other league. In its squad, Liverpool has nine players, from all over the globe, who captain their country. I mention only Egypt, the Netherlands, Scotland, Brazil and Japan. Premier League players are trained to extremely high levels of fitness. Their skills are honed and developed by the most expert professional support staff available anywhere. Game by game, they are schooled in ever more sophisticated tactics by the world’s best managers.

Ian Graham, the pioneering data scientist who had such a profound impact on the modern Liverpool football club, tells me that all the top Premier League teams are now far stronger than any national side anywhere in the world. So—and this is the absolutely critical point—week after week, fans and viewers all over the globe experience not just the best football in the world, but the best football the world has ever seen. That is the core reason why the Premier League attracts such high revenues and why we must do nothing to threaten that.

The second reason for the Premier League’s success is that English football is so competitive: 51 clubs have played in the league since its inception and only six clubs have survived the whole journey so far from 1992. It might surprise noble Lords to be reminded that Man City are not one of them. Three seasons ago, Nottingham Forest were in the Championship. This day, they are second in the Premier League, and the only team to beat Liverpool in the league this season—unfortunately, a game at which I was present. Eleven seasons ago, Luton were playing in the Conference Premier League. Over 10 years, they rose up through League Two, League One and the Championship to the Premier League. Most impressive of all, in 2008, Leicester were in League One. Eight years later, they won the Premier League, 10 points clear of Arsenal in second place. Plainly, therefore, the necessary balance of which I spoke has been struck: sufficient funds have been flowing down the football pyramid to enable well-managed clubs to prosper, and that must continue.

Currently, around £500 million each year flows down from the Premier League to the rest of the football pyramid, which is hardly parsimonious; but I entirely accept that a regulator must bring conceptual clarity and rigour to this critical arrangement. I have sympathy, for instance, with the EFL’s unease about the balance between parachute and solidarity payments. The current process set out in the Bill for setting the precise quantum of fund flow is, however, unlike anything I have experienced in a long and varied career. It would be divisive, and it could be destructive. It is likely to lead to both sides gaming, not to rational, evidenced negotiation aimed at achieving the necessary balance I have identified.

The core process set out in my amendment embraces the valuable concept in the Bill of a state-of-the-game report; requires the regulator to appoint a heavyweight, experienced commercial arbitrator; allows both leagues first to meet each other alone to discuss their response; and then proposes that the two sides convene under the chairmanship of the arbitrator to try to reach an agreement. If they fail to reach agreement, the arbitrator then determines the settlement according to the detailed and comprehensive criteria set out in these amendments —criteria notably absent from the Bill as it stands.

Keeping everyone in the room and talking is key. Arbitration is a proven process for crafting a solution that balances the interests of all sides, for a substantial and neutral person in the room encourages constructive dialogue and discourages posturing. Moreover, arbitration is likely to foster tailored solutions consistent with the complexity of football’s ecosystem.

Perhaps most importantly, unlike the nuclear and binary final-offer process proposed in the Bill, arbitration is widely used in commercial contexts where relationships are of critical importance. English football would surely benefit more from collaboration and dialogue than from conflict and division. Moreover—and this is no small matter—the criteria set out in these amendments are rooted in public law principles and neutral considerations of sporting competition, thus making it far less likely that the regulator’s decisions would be challenged in the courts.

I do not make these proposals lightly. I hope all sides of the House will see the benefits that this approach would bring. Above all, I hope the Minister will not reject this approach out of hand, but rather, agree to reflect on it and to consult with the key parties before we move to the next stage of this important Bill. I beg to move.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, I have added my name to amendments in the next group that also propose changes to the resolution process, to which I will speak shortly. However, if the Minister is favourable to the proposed arbitration approach of the noble Lord, Lord Birt, as set out in these amendments— as opposed to those I have added my name to—and would be willing to accept and reflect further on the noble Lord’s proposal, I will be fully in support of that as I believe that his model is unquestionably preferable to that in the current legislation.

The intent behind the noble Lord’s approach is the same as mine—as he eloquently set out, to avoid the divisive approach currently contained in the Bill that could lead to both sides simply facing each other down, and instead to propose a mechanism that would ensure a tailored solution to the distribution of revenues that balances the interests of all sides and encourages constructive dialogue and collaboration to the benefit of the game and clubs at all levels.

As the noble Lord, Lord Birt, set out in his remarks, arbitration is a proven process; it is widely used in a range of commercial contexts and would lend itself effectively as a mechanism for helping to determine the revenues that flow through the football pyramid. In appointing an independent, experienced arbitrator to oversee the process and work with a set of detailed published principles, the regulator itself would remain one step removed, which the Minister has referred to in previous comments. I very much hope that she will look favourably on this well-considered and credible proposal.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords who are here for this debate, especially those who have missed football matches to take part in a game for the greater good of football—that is something we all agree on, whether or not we agree with the exact form of the regulator or whether we have amendments on which noble Lords may have a different view from me and the Government.

Before I address the amendments in this group, I would like to make a brief clarification regarding a comment that I made in Committee on 18 December. It pertains to an issue that comes up in the next group, but I felt it important to clarify it at this point of the debate. In response to a question from the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, regarding whether there was a similar final offer mechanism in use in the UK and how it has delivered the outcomes that this model intends to achieve, I said that the Competition and Markets Authority had used a final offer mechanism. While the CMA does have a similar final offer mechanism, it was incorrect for me to say the process had been used, as the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act only received Royal Assent on 24 May 2024, so the new regime has only just come into effect and has not yet been used by the CMA to come to a determination. We are clear, however, as the previous Government were clear, that this is an evidence-based model developed in tandem with leading economists, which has successfully achieved intended outcomes in other jurisdictions. I hope that through this evening’s debate I can reassure noble Lords that this is also the correct model for use in this case. As I mentioned, the model is discussed in considerable depth in the next group.

I note the question from the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, and I will seek clarity before the end of the debate. If I do not get it, I will come back to him on that particular point. Like him, I noted the request from the Chancellor on that point.

Moving on to the specific group that we have just debated, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Birt, for his amendments and insightful contributions. I also welcome his broad support for the principle underpinning the Bill around the independent football regulator. His knowledge and expertise are hugely beneficial in supporting the House to scrutinise this legislation. It was also helpful to have a reminder of the movement and the fluidity within and between leagues. That is an important point for your Lordships’ House to note and remember. The noble Lord, Lord Birt, has played an important part in the development of football broadcasting in this country and, as we have heard today, has a number of really valuable thoughts around this issue. That is also apparent in the thorough scrutiny that the noble Lord’s amendments provide on the design of the backstop process. It is important for us to examine why the Government believe that the backstop process remains the model that we should rely on when we come to setting the independent football regulator to work.

To reflect on the concerns of the noble Lords, Lord Birt and Lord Markham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Evans of Bowes Park, among others, I first restate that the intent behind this mechanism is not to create a heavy-handed regulatory intervention. There is a mediation process built in and we agree with the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, that this is an important step. To respond to the noble Lord’s specific concerns, the intent is to provide a last-resort process, only to be triggered if the leagues cannot come to an agreement themselves. It is genuinely intended to be a backstop. It cannot take place until mediation has concluded.

A number of noble Lords questioned why government intervention in this space is even necessary. A clear distribution agreement is in the interest of both the public and of football. Indeed, the Premier League recognises that financial redistribution is needed to ensure the vibrancy and sustainability of the football pyramid. As the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, has outlined on a number of occasions during Committee, that is why it already voluntarily distributes its revenues to lower leagues.

The EFL and the National League are important talent pipelines to the Premier League. Similarly, the Premier League is an important financial supporter of various programmes across the lower leagues. The football pyramid is a mutually beneficial structure, but only when a suitable distribution agreement or order is in place. The mechanism would not be necessary if the industry were able to come to a new agreement. I want to reassure noble Lords that, should the leagues choose to come to an independent agreement without the backstop, the regulator will not need to get involved and will not do so. One of the leagues has to apply to trigger the regulator’s process. It has to meet a high threshold, so leagues cannot unilaterally trigger it. This is not regulatory overreach into corporate agreements. If a voluntary corporate agreement is made between the leagues, then there is no role for the regulator. It is an alternative route by which a suitable deal and distribution scheme can be put in place, should the leagues require it. We recognise the value of preserving the competitiveness of English football. This process is designed to ensure its long-term financial sustainability and not to force a regulator-designed agreement on an industry.

Taking the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Birt, sequentially, I want first to address Amendments 295A and 297A. We acknowledge and respect the amendments’ intent to ensure that the mediator has the appropriate legal expertise to mediate successfully a complex financial and legal agreement alongside preventing potential conflicts of interest. I am not going to repeat the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. I agree with the sentiment expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Birt, that the mediator should be a relevantly qualified individual. However, we think that adding these specific requirements would disqualify potentially qualified and appropriate candidates and limit both the leagues and the regulator in their selection of potential mediators. As drafted, these principles for hiring may be too prescriptive and could lead to an inability to appoint a mediator if no suitable candidate were found who met all the conditions.

Amendment 297B seeks to add a formal arbitration mechanism to the backstop by providing another forum for negotiation before a final decision is made by the regulator. I must reiterate the point that the leagues have not been able to agree a new deal under an existing agreement since 2019. The addition of another negotiation step after the mediation stage would require not only the hiring of another formally qualified arbitrator but the introduction of a new set of statutory timelines. These new timelines, by which various crucial decisions must be made, would make the backstop process functionally unusable from a timing and resources perspective. It is also unclear what formal arbitration would be likely to achieve after a mandated and guided mediation process. The leagues can already come to an alternative agreement at any stage in the backstop process. This ability is explicitly protected in the Bill, so this added arbitration step would add complexity and would potentially—or even likely—delay the process.

On Amendments 297C and 297D, the introduction of a determination process would fundamentally override the final offer stage of the existing process, representing a significant shift in government policy towards a different type of arbitration process and moving away from the final offer mechanism. The process outlined in the amendment would offer the arbitrator greatly increased discretion regarding the design of the final proposals, requiring them only to consider evidence presented by the parties rather than to accept the design of one of their proposals. While we are sympathetic to the desire for the regulator to be required formally to consider expert analysis, systemic implications and the practicality of the proposals, allowing a third party to propose their own form of determination would remove entirely the incentive which the original process is designed to create. With a third-party decision-maker introduced to the process, it is likely that competition organisers would simply dig in to an inherently adversarial position rather than move closer to a middle ground and allow the third party—the arbitrator—to decide for them. It is our view that this amendment would increase reliance on the regulator and move us further from an industry-led solution.

Amendment 297E seeks to ask the regulator to provide more detailed information about the implementation of their decisions. This would include outlining transitional arrangements and compliance requirements, alongside outlining when orders can take effect. Again, I am sympathetic to the sentiments expressed by the noble Lord, as minimising adverse unintended impacts on business should be a top priority for the regulator when implementing a decision. The Bill requires distribution orders to include a summary of the questions for resolution, a copy of the final order, information detailing the reasons for those decisions and information on potential consequences of non-compliance. We would also expect the regulator to stay in constant communication with the leagues throughout the implementation process.

Amendment 297F would add to the ability of the leagues to appeal decisions made as part of the backstop process to the Competition Appeal Tribunal. Regulatory decisions made as part of the backstop process are already considered “reviewable decisions” open to appeal under the existing appeals process outlined in Part 9 of the Bill. Functionally, therefore, this amendment only makes more explicit a process that could already be triggered under existing clauses.

Finally, I turn to Amendment 297G, which would require the regulator to publish guidance on their decision-making and implementation processes and for them to keep this guidance under review for potential update in future. While we are not opposed in principle to the idea of regulatory guidance and the backstop, there is already provision in the Bill for guidance to be prepared by the regulator at their discretion and in consultation with such persons as they consider appropriate. In addition, the amendment would lock the appointment of a mediator behind the publishing of the guidance. In practical terms, this would significantly affect the timeliness of the process and open a window of opportunity for the process to be stalled by the leagues via extended consultation. We are keen for the leagues’ views on the process to be heard and taken into account by the regulator, but we are also conscious that football has already gone quite long enough without a suitable new arrangement. To reiterate, a timely, satisfactory agreement is in the public interest, as it is vital to the continued sustainability of the game. I repeat that I am always happy to engage with any noble Lords and other stakeholders on this point and to go through how the process might work, as I have already done with the Bill team. For the reasons I have outlined, I must reject the amendments from the noble Lord in this instance and ask him not to press them.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

I am genuinely grateful to the Minister for her long, detailed and considered response. It gives me hope as I hope it gives hope to other noble Lords across the Committee. In going into the detail, the Minster registered how complex these issues are. This must be capable of being improved. Some of the doubts that exist on all sides of the Committee should be further considered to be sure that all these considerations are truly reflected at the next stage of the Bill when we come back to this matter, as we definitely will.

I am also very grateful for the broad support for this approach from right across the Committee, including from the noble Baroness, Lady Evans of Bowes Park, and the noble Lord, Lord Markham. I did not divine the 40% figure myself—as noble Lords know, there are a lot of data scientists operating in football. I am sure that it is highly arguable, but, intuitively, it rings true for me, not least because the Premier League has far greater resources than any other league, so it would be surprising if that did not result in it having by far the highest proportion of the world’s best players. If there is one key performance measure here about the appeal of British football, it is that we have the best players in the world playing in it. That is something we cannot forget. We cannot afford to reduce that percentage, whatever it is.

I am particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, who has made many excellent contributions to the Bill. Above all, I am very pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Addington, retains an open mind about the possibility of improving this important part of the Bill. I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, and the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, to please read the amendment as written, because it is designed to avoid the very situation that they stood up to complain about. It is designed to bring mediation, collaboration and consideration, and, at the end of the day, binding arbitration. It has everybody in the room. It has not worked these last couple of years because the right people have not been in the room in the right circumstances. I want a resolution in the interest of the whole of football and I firmly believe that the approach set out in my amendment is far more likely to deliver it than the potentially divisive process in the Bill as it stands.

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[Lord Birt (CB)]

To respond briefly to what the noble Lord just said, in my remarks I said that I think there is a case for looking at the weighting between solidarity payments and sustainability payments. That is exactly what I think the kind of measures that we discussed earlier would bring some clinical analysis to and come up with a considered answer.

Forgive me if I point out something else to the noble Lord. I am a lover of stats, and I have just looked up a stat, which is what proportion of Brighton’s revenues come from the Premier League. In the last year for which figures are published—so this will not be from this year—73% of the revenues of the noble Lord’s club came from the Premier League. He has to face the issue that if there were a material change in that, it would have an impact on the club and the Premier League and its appeal. This is about getting the right balance in all these things.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

I agree that it is about getting the right balance—there is no disagreement between me and the noble Lord—and obviously I acknowledge the size of the support that Brighton & Hove Albion get. One should also put on record that our fans—I am a great fan, a season ticket holder and a 1901 Club member, for that matter—are incredibly grateful to Tony Bloom for the investment that he has put in. I do not entirely buy the argument that it is because of parachute payments. Back when Brighton were pressing for promotion in 2016-17, that was not foremost in anyone’s thinking, and I doubt whether it was foremost in Tony Bloom’s. But obviously we have to look at where the resource is spent, and that is why it is for the IFR to make that determination and to treat this issue with great care when it comes to a conclusion, based on the “state of the game” report.

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I want to finish with a match update. In a rare display of solidarity, Arsenal and Spurs fans have joined forces to call for Hamas to release Emily Damari, a Spurs fan held hostage in Gaza for 467 days. Please God she will be released and coming home in today’s deal, but I want to remind us that football fans are grand. It is very moving and amazing what they do. Although it is not the main point, in the end those fans will not thank us if we do not think of the unintended consequences of a well-intentioned piece of legislation and regulation.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, I started the evening feeling extremely cheerful, but I do not feel as cheerful now as I did earlier. As so often in the past, the analysis by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, was very pungent.

Unlike many who have spoken, I am a strong believer in regulation. I do not think that there is anybody else in this Chamber who spent many decades, the whole of their career, in the way I did. We are talking about how successful British football is. I worked in another world-beating part of Britain, its broadcasting system, plainly over many decades simply the best in the world and a regulatory achievement of all Governments over the best part of a century. So I am a very strong believer in regulation. My doubt is whether the scale of regulation that is imposed in this Bill is remotely appropriate. I worked in a world of highly effective but light-touch regulation and I am sorry to say that this whole dialogue illuminates the fact that we are in danger of creating a system which is overcomplex and bureaucratic and will stifle a highly energetic and brilliantly successful part of the British economy.

We need something that is highly effective but much more light-touch than this sounds at the moment. Yes, cost is important, and all those who emphasise the impact on small clubs are quite right to do so, but beyond cost is the impact that over-stifling regulation could have on the system as a whole. We have debated real issues this evening. We debated the quantum of flow down the leagues. The noble Baroness, Lady Brady, made an impassioned and very compelling speech about parachute payments. The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, rightly emphasises solidarity. These are testing issues that need resolution. Of course, the quality of governance is much easier. It is about the world of compliance and financial prudence, which is a very important part of the Bill and can be done with a relatively light touch.

We have to get it down to something simpler and more effective. I come back to what I said earlier: the “state of the game” report should be analytically powerful and help to balance. I used the word “balance” earlier and balance is the right approach here on all these complex trade-offs. The last thing we need is binary: we do not need two proposals on the table and you choose one rather than the other on the toss of a coin. That is the quite wrong way to resolve the kinds of issues that have come up during the course of the evening. It is about getting the right people in the room, with the right kind of support, bound to come up with a solution.

So the Government need to think a bit harder about proportionate regulation. I say that not as somebody who is opposed to regulation but as somebody who strongly believes in it and has benefited from it through the whole of his career.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

The noble Lord makes a thoughtful and instructive speech. Is he saying from his BBC and other broadcasting experience that light-touch regulation can be achieved by legislative provisions, or is it a matter of attitude? What is it?

[Lord Birt (CB)]

It is a matter of creating the right institutions. In the golden days of ITV and Channel 4, it was the IBA—a relatively small but highly effective organisation. The noble Lord does not want a long speech from me about what it achieved as an organisation, but it was extraordinary. Obviously, the BBC has had 100 years as the most successful broadcaster in the whole world. The light-touch governance through BBC governors was powerful and impactful and it worked.

I am not suggesting that you just import those models, but we need something that is not stifling and bureaucratic, in a dynamic environment where people can get round the table and sort out these issues.

[Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Lab)]

My Lords, I just want to pick up on some of the points made. It is right that we need a proportionate system and we have to be careful in what we do. But we cannot afford to be complacent about the state of British football today. Yes, the Premier League is doing very well at the moment, but we have to acknowledge the difficulties of many other clubs and the serious need for some change in the way in which many football clubs are run.

A report published on Monday this week from Professor Nick Lord and lecturer Peter Duncan in the department of criminology at the University of Manchester shows some of the dangers that Premier League clubs could face if we do not get the right financial structure, and how certain clubs could be, because of the complexity of their ownership, vulnerable to their funds being used for illicit purposes. I mention that because we do need regulation and we cannot be complacent and pretend that all is well even in the Premier League.