Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Evans of Rainow Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 11th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gascoigne (Con)]

My Lords, I am conscious that the debates on this Bill have been somewhat lengthy, so I will be incredibly brief. I support, with absolute delight, the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, on her Amendment 13. I do so for three reasons.

The first relates to the oft overused phrase “soft power”. No one can deny football’s huge following or the impression it has on so many—and that applies equally to fans in this country and abroad. As has been said already, the Premier League makes up the largest share of the UK’s television exports, and football is broadcast to over 1.5 billion people in just shy of 190 countries. As noble Lords have noted, throughout the ages football has pushed and campaigned on many important issues, so it is right that the many things that clubs promote at home and abroad should include the environment, nature and broader sustainability.

That leads me to my second point, which is, in effect, football’s hard power. Clubs can make a difference through not just all the sites they own but what they offer during matches to the fans.

My third point is broader: I wish to speak to those who cannot support this amendment, however well intentioned it is, because they do not support the idea of a regulator. The debate we are having now is about this amendment; it is not about the Bill in its entirety. Whether we agree with it or not, the Bill will end up passing. So the question to me now is not about the virtue of the regulator but about how we can improve it.

To conclude, this amendment does not have specific targets or rules on what exactly clubs should fund or what their boards should look like, or seeks to interfere needlessly in how they are run or how their games are played. The key is that this amendment calls for regard of what is already in other legislation. It is something that we are all expected to do ourselves and, as has been said, that so many clubs do already under their own steam: to play their part. If the noble Baroness presses her amendment to a vote, I respectfully urge all noble Lords to support her.

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly in support of my noble friend Lord Ranger of Northwood, as well as my noble friend Lord Maude’s earlier point about the individual who will become the regulator. While we are discussing Manchester United, I note that I am a season ticket holder of the club; my noble friend Lord Ranger made a point about the recent increase in ticket prices.

This regulator will be answerable to supporters, while at the same time—as my noble friend Lady Brady said—making it clear what the owners of the football clubs can expect for investment purposes. This independent football regulator will be located in Manchester. Given the sheer size and scale of the protests—75,000 people go to Old Trafford week in, week out, and they may be minded to go to the location of the regulator— I would be interested to know what calibre of person, he or she, will be able to cope with those protests, which will inevitably end up outside their premises. How will they interact with those supporters, while at the same time making sure that they act professionally and responsibly so that the owners of the football businesses can carry on with the investment that we all want? Ultimately, this is about the future success of the Premier League.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I welcome government Amendment 24, which reduces the minimum frequency of the revised football governance statements from every three years to every five years. That is a positive direction of travel, reining in a disproportionately burdensome bureaucracy. I was fearful that clubs might be in a perpetual state of having to fulfil the paperwork rather than improve governance, let alone improve football. I am glad to see that amendment.

Another worry that some of us have raised is the need to rein in politicised mission creep, so I oppose Amendments 12 and 13. Amendment 13 seems to be the focus, linking this Bill to the Climate Change Act and linking environmental sustainability to economic sustainability and making climate and environmental impact reduction part of the IFR’s objectives. I think this is incredibly unwise for a number of reasons. It goes against the Government’s Amendment 14, debated earlier, which all sides of the House lauded and I agree with, which is a commitment to avoid any adverse effects on the financial growth of English football.

Let us be honest: outside of football, even the Government are now acknowledging that net-zero targets and environmental regulations are often expensive and burdensome barriers to economic growth. They do not allow the Government and whole swathes of the corporate world to pursue, for example, infrastructure projects such as building houses. I do not think that it is uncontentious to say that, because “environmental sustainability” and “economic sustainability” will appear in the same provision, there is no tension between them; I think there is. I also think that this would really be an example of scope creep, which the Minister has assured us will not happen; UEFA and FIFA have been promised that it will not happen, as we were told earlier.

In Committee, I spoke against adding football clubs into this ever-greater, non-football-related political territory, setting essentially politically driven environmental hoops to jump through. In Committee, the Minister assured us that the Government had no intention of accepting these Green demands into the legislation, and I was reassured. But I want the Minister to promise, if she can, that the independent regulator will not—once this Bill is passed, which undoubtedly it will be—simply slip them into the governance remit. I am worried because the green lobby is very active, persistent and wealthy and, to be honest, has an interest in pursuing this after this Bill is long gone.

Larger clubs with lots of money might well be able to go along with a lot of these things that this Bill demands. We know that there are all sorts of Premier League football clubs at the moment that are more than happy to have sponsorship by green energy companies and so on. We have seen a lot of that happen. I think this could amount to eco-virtue signalling that ticks the social responsibility boxes of the big clubs and a sort of greenwashing that we know the corporate social responsibility industry does so well. But I fear that it will distract smaller clubs from their core role of thinking about financial stability and improving their governance so that we have better football clubs, and it will drag them into this extraneous environmental sustainability world.