Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Birt and Lord Markham

Committee stage
Wednesday 27th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[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.