Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 27th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goodman of Wycombe (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment moved by my noble friend on the Front Bench, and those spoken to by my noble friends Lord Maude and Lord Hayward. I will also offer some expression of sympathy to the Government, because it is not altogether clear what the origins of this word “sustainability” may be. I suggest that they go back to the original so-called fan-led review produced by Tracey Crouch, which I have here and which noble Lords will have read. The Bill is drawn expressly from the so-called fan-led review.

I say in parenthesis that “fan-led review” seems a strange title for it, since Dame Tracey emphasises in the report that its conclusions are hers alone. Although I pay tribute to the work she did and the consultation she undertook, she received 20,000 responses and there are some 33 million football fans, but we will leave that for a moment.

I will read the very opening of Dame Tracey’s foreword as it sets the tone for the Bill as a whole and for an element that is missing from it. She wrote in her introduction:

“For those who say that English football is world leading at club level and there is no need to change I would argue that it is possible simultaneously to celebrate the current global success of the Premier League at the same time as having deep concerns about the fragility of the wider foundations of the game. It is both true that our game is genuinely world leading and that there is a real risk of widespread failures and a potential collapse of the pyramid as we know it”.


So Dame Tracey made two points. One was about the success of the game and the other its fragility and the potential failures, but the oddity of the way the Bill is presented—my noble friends all picked this up and elucidated it in their speeches—is that the first part of the Bill refers only to the fragility of the system by using this word “sustainability”. There is nothing about success in it. I suggest to Ministers and to noble Lords that some reference to success would be a better reflection of what was originally in Tracey Crouch’s report and the balance that she gave between the fragility and the success of the game—for the two, after all, may be bound up together.

[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.

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[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

The simplistic argument is, “Well, I can just sell a player”. Actually, you cannot just sell a player. We have a one-month window in January and the end of the season. If it is mid-October and that happens, you cannot sell a player. What do you do then? That is the point. You cannot run a football club on a shoestring because it makes them competitive. That is not the name of the game. The noble Lord’s argument seems to be that if we give them all the money, they will not try their hardest anymore. That is fanciful; it is not true. Football clubs need to be sustainable. They need to be able to pay their way. I could not buy a car if I could not afford the deposit. I could not buy a Rolls-Royce tomorrow saying, “I’ll give you the deposit, but I don’t have it with me today, so give me the car and, when I do quite well, I’ll give you the money”. That is not how life works. Football is a business like every other business. The noble Lord seems to want it to run in a way that is foreign to every principle of business.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

Speaking as a former chief financial officer of a FTSE 250 company, I would say that, in those examples, if you found yourself in a situation where you could not sell a player until the next window, that would be very poor financial management by the CFO, who would probably get sacked pretty darn quick if they led their cash flow into those sorts of situations. In extremis, if you needed to do that, the bank would lend the money against that because there are assets on the balance sheet that they can borrow against. Every FTSE 100 company is set up in that way. They meet their cash requirements by looking at their assets and raising debt where they need to against them.

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[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, I have been in this House for 10 years this year. For eight of those years, I was on committees for secondary legislation and primary legislation. It is a little bit rich for the Conservatives to start complaining about Henry VIII powers, when I spent most almost 10 years trying to stop Ministers from across the previous Government taking Henry VIII powers at every single opportunity. I think people need to put this into perspective.

I hear what the noble Lords, Lord Moynihan and Lord Maude, are saying. I believe they are saying it with the right intentions and from the heart. The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, has opened the tin a little bit by saying that the conversation going on between the Government and UEFA is about finances but not about this.

So is there an element of sabre rattling? I do not know, but we on these Benches would like clarification from the Minister—this can be clarified quickly—on whether any of these three amendments are true, can be true or can be dealt with in the Bill. If they can, we can put this to bed quickly, but, if they cannot, there is some mileage in considering the alternatives, which are the last things that anybody wants. I do not want Stockport County not to be able to play in the Champions League in 30 years because of an oversight in this Committee one night.

Finally, can we end this love-in with Brighton & Hove Albion? You beat Manchester City once; you did not win the World Cup.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 2nd December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

I do not think anyone is talking about banning; it is about preserving our Premier League and some of our domestic competitions, and it is for fans of clubs in those leagues who want to follow their team, home and away, and their ability to do so throughout the fixture list of that league. Clubs such as Manchester City, Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal—and West Ham, I am sure—go on tour overseas pre-season to meet the needs of fans who are overseas, and maybe mid-season for all I know. Our teams are playing too many games. It is not sustainable for them to play the number that they are at the moment, but there are opportunities pre-season for fans from around the world to visit.

I love them coming to this country. When I am at the Emirates Stadium and I see all the banners from fans from all over the world who have come to see Arsenal it is a great joy, but we need to be constrained in the regulatory purposes of this to preserve our Premier League and domestic league competitions.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

Noble Lords need to understand exactly what the previous speaker was talking about. It is about preserving our leagues. The fan base of a club is not 200,000 people in South Korea or 20,000 people in New York. The fan bases of these clubs are in this country. The unintended consequence of what is being proposed could occur very quickly, easily and suddenly.

I am quite appalled by the number of noble Lords in this House who have two or three football clubs. You should have one football club; it is the club you support. I do not have a second or third club. I have one club; I am indeed suffering for that pleasure at the moment, but I have one club, through thick and thin.

What is to stop someone setting up a supporters’ group for my club somewhere else, without honourable intentions but with the intention of doing my club some difficulty or harm? That is what muddies the waters and it is where you get all this involvement. The supporters are local supporters. The other supporters can be supporters but, if local groups are going to be set up, they should be there for 12 months or two years. We need to know their history and regulatory rights. They are not being set up by football clubs, because that is another way that this could be done—to set up your own shadow group that plays lip service to this.

Noble Lords know that football supporters have robust views, and chairmen who really understand that tend to meet them regularly. Lots of Premier League clubs do that; they go and meet their supporters—working-class people in areas and towns, who will give them their honest views, which the clubs usually do not like. United is now increasing the prices for all tickets, which is not going down well with all the United fans, but there is still a 10 or 15-year waiting list for a season ticket. That is why the club can do that, but it is not really supporting the fans.

Let us just bring it back from this existential conversation about Burke and the father of the son. Does that go into politics—“I was a Conservative so my son’s going to be a Conservative”? That is changing—we all know it is—and it is a reasonable evolution. If you are the son of a miner, you might end up a Conservative Minister. That is great, that is the opportunity that this country offers, and it should be the same with football supporters.

But football supporters support their own club and are very wary about suddenly involving any number of supporters, because the numbers then become detrimental to doing what we are supposed to be doing here, which is protecting the pyramid. It seems that these debates are all leading in one direction: “Leave the Premier League alone, let it run football, and the rest of you can have the crumbs off the table”. That is the feeling I am getting from these conversations, and that is wrong.

[Lord Finkelstein (Con)]

I have a slight fear that I may be intervening in the intervention on an intervention on the answer to an intervention, but still. Among my interests is that I am a director of Chelsea Football Club and director of its foundation. I also had the honour to be a member of the fan-led review committee.

I urge that the Bill and the debate should define “fans” as widely as possible. I am afraid that I think the noble Lord is completely wrong, certainly as far as my club is concerned. We have hundreds of thousands—indeed, millions—of fans all around the world. We care deeply for them and I am very much engaged in our fan mechanism, in involving them. I am committed to the principle of fan engagement that the Crouch committee laid out. We want to talk to our fans all over the globe and we have an interest in prospective fans, not only current fans.

Of course, the fans who attend Stamford Bridge, which is where Chelsea play at home—I feel that I have to explain that—are very dear to us and play a core part in the definition of who a “fan” is, but they are certainly not the only fans. It would be a mistake for the regulator to start its work thinking that that is how the Bill considers it.

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[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I shall return to the spirit of the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the other amendments in this group. As my noble friend Lady Brady has said, the Premiership funds, in one form or another, enormous amounts of good work, but, as I have discussed with both my noble friend and representatives of the Premiership, it totally fails to identify the work that it does.

Until the Premiership sets about aggregating, in one form or another, all the contributions that different foundations make—whether in relation to football training, the disabled, the young or whatever it may happen to be—it will continue, quite rightly, to face the pressures that the amendments I have referred to attempt to address. Until the message is got across about the sums of money that my noble friend Lady Brady identified, certain attitudes will not change within the football world more broadly. The social work that is undertaken is so substantial, as my noble friend has said, that it will help to change other attitudes and enable progress to be made in all sorts of different ways that the amendments attempt to tackle.

So I do not necessarily support the amendments being accepted into the Bill, but I strongly support the message that is included in them. I ask the Premiership to get its act together in some form or another and convey the good work that my noble friend has just identified so that people understand that it is attempting to change attitudes, and in that way it will actually change attitudes.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

I support the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, in what she and the previous speaker have said and in all the work that she does. It is all there in the Deloitte report on the Premier League. The Premier League has missed a trick; the pages of the report show where the money goes and how it is spent, and it is all very laudable. Premier League football clubs, independent of the Premier League, do great schemes as well. Manchester City’s City in the Community started in 2003 with no funding from the football club, apart from one officer and that was Alex Williams, an England goalkeeper, who has just retired after doing 20 years at City in the Community. That is an example of the social responsibility of football clubs.

The reasoning behind these amendments, even though they may be just probing amendments, is that those things that can be given can be taken away. If football clubs in the Premier League fall on hard times and things have to stop being done, they may stop doing the things they do not have to do, and that effect will invariably come down to the poorest parts of the pyramid.

All we are trying to say with these amendments is: let us acknowledge the social responsibility that the Premier League has and the Premier League football clubs deliver but let us give the regulator the ability to ensure that that carries on. My noble friend is not being prescriptive and saying, “You should all pay that much”, but he wants to ensure that, to avoid unintended consequences, football clubs do not suffer in the event that some Premier League clubs or the Premier League itself cannot deliver those benefits in future years. I have no reason to think that will happen, because the Premier League is getting bigger and going global and more money is coming in, but that is the point of the fan-led review. How many football clubs did the review show were one match away from disaster? That why we are looking for a regulator. Sometimes the unintended consequences are too dire, especially for smaller clubs.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

Like others, I have a dilemma, in that I am mindful that the noble Lords, Lord Addington and Lord Bassam, and the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, are well intentioned and, on the whole, I agree with what they are trying to do. However, like others, I feel that there is the danger of mission creep. This is another area—we will be speaking about others later tonight, and over the next few days there are other areas that we will be adding—where each one on its own might not feel like a lot, but if we add layer upon layer, we move far away from the original intention of being a light-touch regulator and towards one that becomes overbearing.

It has been an education, probably for all of us, to hear, as my noble friend Lady Brady was saying, about the good acts that the Premier League is doing with local communities through local football clubs. There is probably more that can be done to make sure that the awareness of those, as the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, was saying, is enhanced and greatened.

Generally, the idea, as my noble friend Lady Brady was saying, of having a meeting with the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the Premier League to see how that can be more fostered, encouraged, known about and channelled is probably the right way. Where things are working, I much prefer the use of the carrot than the stick.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 2nd December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goodman of Wycombe (Con)]

My Lords, I will follow my noble friends Lord Moynihan and Lord Markham in their references to the Delegated Legislation Committee.

I hesitate to disagree with anything my noble friend Lord Moynihan says in any way, but he described me as a senior member of the committee, and I am afraid that this is not accurate. I am, in fact, the most junior member of the committee, having arrived only very recently, but certainly in time to consider this Bill. When I joined the committee, I found that it was very worked up about the rise in secondary legislation, as it set out in its key document, Democracy Denied?, published in 2021—I will come to the significance of that date in a moment. It criticised the use of Henry VIII powers, disguised legislation and skeleton legislation, saying:

“The abuse of delegated powers is in effect an abuse of Parliament and an abuse of democracy, and this report will, we hope, be a prompt to strengthen Parliament in the coming years”.


I find myself in an awkward position here with my own Front Bench, because in 2021 a Conservative Government were in office. The committee clearly feels that this tendency for skeleton legislation, Henry VIII powers and so on has carried on from 2021 to the present.

My noble friend Lord Moynihan will remember that at Second Reading, he drew attention, as I did, to Clause 92(3), which states:

“The Secretary of State may by regulations amend …the definition of ‘football season’”


and

“the definition of ‘serious criminal conduct’”.

Such is the exquisite moderation of the committee that we did not follow that matter up in the report, but we did concentrate on the issue, raised by my noble friend Lord Moynihan, of the leagues not named in the Bill. He has read out the relevant sections of the report, and I have no intention of reading them out again.

However, I reinforce the closing point made by my noble friend Lord Markham and put it to the Minister in the form of a question. Can she confirm or deny that if the leagues in the pyramid were to be named in the Bill, the Bill would therefore become hybrid? She is nodding, and she will doubtless amplify on that nod when she responds to the debate, but that is a very important point. If that is the case, did the Government refer to that in their discussions with the committee clerks when they were drawing up the report?

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, nobody faint, but on this issue I fully support the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson. I bear the scars of Democracy Denied? It was an excellent report that it took us quite a long time to bring through. The Government cannot have it both ways. We say that the purpose of the Bill

“is to protect and promote the sustainability of English football”,

yet it does not explain what English football is.

That is the nub of this. We spent hours on the first part of that, but the second part we seem to want to leave to the Government, because it is seemingly easier to amend delegated powers than primary legislation powers. That is not the point. What is in the tin should be on the front of the tin. It should name what it is doing, which is the Premier League and the Championship. It could go down the tiers and include leagues north and south. You would then have a full list of what this legislation is covering. It is probably just bad drafting, and no more than that. This could be done very simply. Everybody would then understand what the Bill is about.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I will speak to my amendments in this group, and I want to extend the point that the noble Lord, Lord Goddard of Stockport, has just made, as it is a very important one.

I appreciate this may have been a painful experience for the Minister, the Bill team and others. We have spent our first two days in Committee looking at Clause 1 and the definitions of “the sustainability of English football”. However, as the noble Lord said, the lack of precision in the Bill in that regard is what has elongated our debates over the last two days in Committee and so concerned the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee of your Lordships’ House. It bears repetition to draw the Committee’s attention to paragraph 3 of the committee’s report, published on 22 November:

“The fundamental purpose of the Bill is to ‘protect and promote the sustainability of English football’. One must go through a series of definitions only to find that the Bill does not, after all, provide the definition of English football. Ultimately, the meaning of ‘English football’ depends on regulations to be made in due course by the Secretary of State”.


That is why we have had some rather tortuous debates on the opening clauses of the Bill, and why we are concerned to ensure that this Committee brings the focus we need to the deliberations on this important Bill.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 4th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mann (Lab)]

There are vast numbers of Bills that could in theory be called hybrid Bills but are not, such as the Great British Railways Bill. It is a nonsense argument, and there are millions of football fans waiting to see some change made.

The thing that triggered the origins of the Bill, with Boris Johnson and others, was a European super league. If Parliament ever attempted to say that the clubs that tried to form a breakaway European super league have a specific hybridity status—in relation to the people, having voted for manifestos that wish to stop this, being able to do so—the whole concept of how we make rules of law would come into question. This Bill is not hybrid and could not be hybrid, in exactly the same way that vast numbers of other Bills which have an impact on various private businesses are not hybrid. I think many noble Members realise that.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, has hit the nail on the head. We did a bit of research as well; the question of whether this is a hybrid Bill was asked in the other place, and it confirmed that it is not, so it comes to us with that confirmation. The letter from the Minister is really helpful, in that it clarifies that position for these Benches, and we will be happy if the mover withdraws the amendment.

The best thing would be to retire this amendment gracefully today, bring it back on Report and if need be, force a vote on it and let people decide. This is endless. The Chief Whip said, “Let’s be brief”. We are now 30 minutes in, rehearsing the rehearsal of last week’s four hour debate.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brady, said that seven Premier League clubs met the Minister. I presume that the Minister invited all the Premier League clubs to that meeting; they would not have been selected. If only seven bothered to turn up, again, that gives you a clear—

[Baroness Brady (Con)]

I can confirm to the noble Lord that only seven were invited. They were selected.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

To be helpful to the Committee, could the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, give us the names of the seven clubs? That might shed some light on what is going on here. There seems to be an illusion that the Premier League was suddenly born out of the ether, and then provides for all. Players such as Ryan Giggs, Phil Foden and Alan Shearer do not just suddenly materialise; they come up from the other divisions. I get what the noble Baroness is trying to do, and I respect her position, but you have to look at this in a holistic way. This is about a regulator regulating for the five divisions, and if it is not blindingly obvious to anybody what those five divisions are, they may be sat in the wrong place.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. It has been worth while having it again, painful and irritating though it may be. I am sorry if that upset the Minister—it certainly was not my intention to do so. I did it because this issue matters.

By the Minister’s own admission on Monday, she did not know about the issue of hybridity until it was raised with her on Monday. Does she think that a few hours’ consideration, along with all the other matters we gave attention to in Committee on Monday, and a few minutes’ debate in Committee late on Monday evening, is sufficient to dispose of an issue as fundamental as this?

As I said in my opening remarks, the Government Chief Whip knew about this issue at the same time I was alerted by the clerks, on 26 November, almost a week earlier. I am grateful that he stayed to listen to our debate on this group. Maybe he, if not the noble Baroness, can tell us what discussions he had in light of that issue being raised with the usual channels on 26 November. This is about engagement with the people, organisations and businesses that this new law will profoundly affect. I was shocked to hear what my noble friend Lady Brady said about only seven hand-picked clubs being given just half an hour of—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Jackson and to support the three amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Parkinson. I spoke a few days ago about how the Premier League became so successful, so popular and such an enormous contributor to the soft power of this country around the world, as well as to our finances in the many billions of pounds of taxes it pays. I spoke about the very delicate nature of entrepreneurial activity and the danger that comes from overregulation.

As noble Lords will know, I am not keen on the whole idea of this regulator—particularly one that is given so many powers in such an enormous Bill. But there is only one thing worse than a regulator given many powers and that is one given untrammelled and unscrutinised powers. Therefore, if we are to have this regulator, it is absolutely crucial that there is sufficient scrutiny of what it does.

We know that regulators like to regulate. People who are attracted to the idea of supervising other people like to get really involved and talk about what they would like to happen and how they can make that happen. They want to have the powers to make it happen—and preferably without scrutiny. I do not know how many Members of this Committee have had the experience of many years of scrutiny by regulators who decide, “You’re a wrong ’un and we’re going to go after you”. The process becomes the punishment.

And as many noble Lords have asked already this evening and earlier, who is going to come into this game? Who is going to apply their entrepreneurial flair if they believe that an untrammelled and unsupervised regulator is going to be able to second-guess everything they do, consider their fitness and will be able—from what we were told earlier—to reach into their funds and, through the backstop, extract them for whatever purpose, unchallenged, unsupervised and without any scrutiny. I submit to noble Lords that these amendments, if we are to have a regulator, are absolutely crucial for the regulator’s good functioning and for the future success of this wonderful part of our economy.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

On these Benches, we broadly support these measures. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan of Chelsea, because he speaks his mind and I like that. There is no ambiguity in what he is trying to say; he just says it. That, to me, is refreshing.

In supporting the amendments from the noble Lords, Lord Parkinson and Lord Markham, with respect, we do not need Erskine May or Burke. It should be common sense to us that the regulator must be accountable to Parliament. We are the heart of democracy and the social fabric of the country, and we are funding it. So, if there were an overwhelming reason why the Government did not want this, I would find it unfathomable; the regulator should be accountable.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brady, was passionate in what she said, and I understand the pitfalls she can see coming, but this is really about regulation and accountability. That is the fine line that we draw. We are not overregulating but we need that accountability. I suppose it is about scope and the number of times we may be calling people, and which Select Committees can call them. I would suggest it should not be just any Select Committee; it should be pertinent to the business.

The Government will ask that the amendments be withdrawn today, but could they commit that this will be somewhere in the Bill? Without an agreement that the regulator will be held to account by Parliament and will report to Parliament, this group of Peers—the small and happy band that we are—will be less than supportive of not supporting this, if that makes sense.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, building on what was just said—this comment is not particularly for the Government but is perhaps a reflection for both Houses—as this will be a completely new regulator, there should potentially be a committee of both Houses, unusual though it may be, with representatives from both sides. It might be quite useful for a committee to be set up to look at this regulator, not least because of all the issues we have been discussing, as it is something completely new.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 9th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I rise to speak to my amendment to Clause 71 on financial redistribution, and to add to the very valuable points made by my noble friend Lady Brady.

What the Bill seeks to do—which I have not seen in relation to any other regulator in the UK—is to give the regulator unprecedented powers to take money from one part of the sector or certain companies and give it to another. In any other field, this would be unheard of. Can you imagine the FCA saying, “I think HSBC should give some money to Barclays”? Can you imagine Ofwat saying to Severn Trent, “Thames Water is having a bit of a hard time, can you help it out”? Can you imagine Ofcom saying that Sky should help ITV out where advertising revenues are going down? That is unheard of among regulators.

I value the days in Committee as there is such knowledge around the House, so I would love it if any noble Lord could come up with an example of where a regulator has got the power to take away money from a part of the sector or company and give it to another. I would love to hear it.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

On the noble Lord’s point, can he explain to me what happened to the banks when the financial crash came and they ran out of money, or the money was disappearing? Who stepped up then and financed all the banks? The Government did. That was an example of rebalancing and ensuring that the money supply could keep going throughout—that is why they did it.

This Bill will ensure that the rest of the pyramid can survive and carry on. One document I read today says that in 2022-23,

“20 members of the Premier League and five … in the EFL … received 92% of the distributable”

wealth—£3 billion—while

“the other 67 professional clubs”

got £245 million. Is that fair?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

That goes right to the heart of this conversation. I can point out loads of industries where there are only one or two top companies. Think of the share of the search revenue that Google has. Is that fair? Is it the role of a regulator to get involved and say, “Oh, Google, you should give some money to Bing, because it’s not doing that well”? That is exactly my point.

The noble Lord made a point about the banking sector. The Government stepped in there because they felt that there were wider consequences for the whole economy. They stepped in; they did not say, “Barclays, you should give some money to HSBC”. What we are talking about here is fundamentally different. It is a different set of regulatory powers that I do not think anyone has seen—

--- Later in debate ---

The regulator’s role as envisaged by the Bill is supposed to safeguard financial sustainability; it is not a social engineering body. It has neither the expertise nor the mandate to wade into matters as sensitive as the make-up of a club’s fan base. Football is inherently competitive; clubs live and die by their ability to attract and retain fans. A regulator forcing their hand on this front is just not necessary and is completely counterproductive. Clubs are not perfect, but they understand their communities better than any regulator ever could. Let us not risk eroding that bond.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

I hear what the noble Baroness says about diversity. This weekend, a West Ham player, Antonio, had a terrible car accident and is in hospital now. If you had seen some of the vile and disgusting comments on social media about the player and the club, you would begin to understand why we need diversity.

I have just looked it up, and the dictionary says that diversity is

“the practice or quality of including or involving people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds and of different genders, sexual orientations”,

and that

“equality and diversity should be supported for their own sake”.

I do not have that rosy picture of football supporters. I lived through the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and heard the chants at various football grounds, which we cannot now repeat in this Chamber. Things are getting better and more acceptable, but it has not gone away. We need diversity to be brought to the fore.

As for the idea that we can just let the clubs do nothing and let this evolve, that just will not happen. We need to make statements. We need, via the regulator and via some of these amendments, to enshrine things in a regulator’s role. What is wrong with having a diversity report that a football club would produce once a year? It is not a tick-box exercise; it stops comments being made about certain footballers about gender, colour, creed or whatever. The more we can introduce that and embed it into football, the less vitriolic nonsense we will get. You still hear it, even on Sky, when they then say, “If you heard anything you shouldn’t have heard, we apologise for that”. That is what you get as an answer—but it needs stopping. These kinds of amendments are needed to enshrine in the regulator the ability to say to clubs, “You will give that report and commit to doing all those things around what diversity means”.

[Baroness Brady (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his comments about the West Ham player, Michail Antonio. It was a real shock to me on Saturday when I received a call from the police about his car accident, but I am pleased to report that he has had an operation and is recovering well. I take the opportunity to thank all the NHS staff and all the emergency services, including the air ambulance and the firefighters who cut him free from his car.

I agree with the noble Lord that the comments footballers are subject to is a terrible shame. It is absolutely horrific and that is a problem with social media. Clubs themselves do everything they can. At West Ham, we have the highest standard of equality and diversity; you cannot be awarded any higher standard than we have. We take it very seriously and that feeds down through our entire club. I thank him for making those comments. Football is trying to deal with those things, but there could be help from other places. We know about the Online Safety Act and that could really help.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I have put my name to Amendment 72, but shall comment briefly on the amendments in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Mann and Lord Addington.

We need to be clear that this is a regulator for the men’s game, not the game of football. I am really excited to see the growth of women’s football; it has a massive impact on society. Some 80% of women are not fit enough to be healthy, and football is one of those sports that connects and is changing the relationship between girls and physical activity and sport. I was at the Wales v Northern Ireland women’s game the other week and the groups of teenage girls coming to support in a way that they might not support the men’s game, and the little girls dressed in their Welsh kit and goalkeeper’s kit, was a really beautiful sight to see.

But the women’s game needs to be protected and nurtured, and I do not want to see any unintended consequences of regulation or anything that makes it harder for women to be involved in what is an incredible game. I am meeting the Minister this week, and this is one of things I will be discussing with her.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, I will be very brief. In my view, these are proper probing amendments about unintended consequences—such as with Solihull—and the need to support women to get to the elite level, as well as the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. This is not about having an argument or asking the Government to rethink anything; these are truly probing amendments asking the Minister and those who work on the Bill to look at these points and make the Bill better. I am so thankful for the support of the noble Lord, Lord Markham, in that. This group gets to the nub of an issue that can be dealt with very quickly.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

I will pick up on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, and refer to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Mann. My understanding is that the regulator cannot take the women’s game into account, even where, in theory, the accounts may relate to both. Indeed, on the face of the Bill, as I read it—I look forward to the Minister’s clarification—it would be possible for clever accounting to move money and, indeed, even financial exposure, across to the women’s game and therefore exclude it from the consideration of the regulator. I hope I am wrong in that. I can see that there would be ample opportunity for approaches to the accounts and the financial strength of clubs to be manipulated in a way that I am sure was not the intention of the Government or the regulator. The Minister will no doubt clarify that when she comes to respond.

This goes back to the possibility of amending the scope of the Bill in the future. In other words, as the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, said, this is exclusively a men’s regulator. I was a bit concerned about the language in the report to Parliament and to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which was prepared by the department, recommending that women’s football be “given a chance” to self-regulate. That is rather a condescending phrase to the sport. Therefore, it is not surprising that a number of people in the sport have been rather concerned that the women’s game has not been given equal opportunity. UEFA has brought in solidarity payments for the Women’s Champions League clubs to support the growth of the women’s game. That is not the case in the UK. I can completely see the arguments that people like Kelly Simmons have made: if the benefits of the regulator are as strong as the Minister has expressed to the Committee, then it could enhance and expand club licensing criteria to raise standards in women’s football—the performance of women’s football as well as medical and welfare provision.

If the Bill offers so strong a benefit to the sport as the Minister makes out, it is unfortunate that the women’s game should be put to one side and simply told it is being given a chance to prove itself and, in due course, might see the benefits that the Minister says exist in this Bill for football. That is my biggest concern. I think it is a concern felt by many in women’s football; I see the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, nodding in assent.

It is important for the Minister to address both the role of the regulator in relation to what a football club does to promote women’s football and the wider implication that many in women’s football feel: that they are being somehow excluded from the great benefits we have regularly heard about in Committee from the Minister about the game as a whole.

I hope the Minister will respond to both those points; that would be helpful to the Committee. If they are not positive responses, then this will perhaps be something we should return to at a later stage, to make sure that the women’s game is not disadvantaged by the introduction of the regulator.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 9th December 2024 Lords Chamber

All the other principal, individual protagonists in this drama are defined—from owners to officers to senior managers. Groups or collectives are also defined, such as clubs, teams and competition organisers, to name just a few. Even football itself has its own definition, and esoteric matters such as heritage are defined, but fans do not get a look-in. That is somewhat strange, given that the central purpose of the Bill is to represent fans’ interests. Why are fans not defined? My question to the Minister is: why is the key protagonist in all this, the fan, not defined in the Bill?

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

Can I help the noble Lord? The debate on defining sustainability was about three hours on the first day and, on fans, about two and a half hours on the second day. I think we have done both of those subjects to death, for hours and hours.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

We did not get to a conclusion.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

We may not have got to a conclusion, but what about repetition? Here we go again. We have had the discussion; the Minister gave us her answer; we move on. But we have not moved on because, two days later, it is brought up again—and again and again.

This is the frustration that some people are having. I understand the need to examine and tease out but, if we do not like the teasing out, we cannot keep going back every day to keep teasing out. We will never finish; that is the problem with it. We have had an enormous debate on sustainability and on fans.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

I rise to make one point of clarification. I support the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Watson, and would be very pleased if the Minister indicated her support for it, because I have been having discussions about whether we should table further amendments on players in other parts of the Bill—but I will wait on the interest.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brady, referred to players and touched on the question of staff. It is not only players who should be included; there should also be references to staff because, after all is said and done, any football club employs not only players but large numbers of staff. Both players and staff should be covered by any amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I say simply that, while some very good arguments have been put forward, we have to be very careful here. The whole question of listed events that the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and I have been engaged on for many decades, let alone a year, is a complicated and difficult issue.

Currently, the Secretary of State has to opine as to whether listing an event meets the criterion of having “special national resonance”. That, in its own right, is a difficult thing for the Secretary of State to opine on. The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, will recall that, only five years ago, the then Secretary of State made a famous speech on listed events where she put forward the idea that whenever a men’s event was listed, the women’s equivalent should be too. That brought into play a whole series of complex questions, which were important but certainly set the hares running among the people who were focused on listing events.

This is complicated further by virtue of a generational change. Young people increasingly access, and are comfortable accessing, all forms of media to watch the sporting events that they wish to see, sometimes in ways that do not necessarily follow the rules. The changing media landscape, certainly for young people, means that the listed event question may even become obsolete. I am not saying that it will but that is the sort of question that is now being posed as a result of the different patterns of media accessed particularly by young people, as opposed to our generation. I am being courteous to the noble Lord, Lord Watson, when I say that, because he looks a good deal younger than I am.

In that context, I would hesitate to push the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, as valuable as they are, to further consideration in this Bill. However, it is important and probably timely that we now look at the whole question of listed events separately because they are vital to many sports. Equally, in the context of football, and without the wider issues that I have sought to bring to the Committee’s attention, we may be too focused on one sport and not considering the wider implications of what should and should not be listed in today’s media landscape.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan. The amendment is probably badly worded, but I am sure the inference is about the England football team rather than league clubs and football teams. I was lucky enough to watch England win the World Cup in 1966. I was 14, and it was on television. After that match, loads of people who did not particularly like football began to play football. Geoff Hurst, Martin Peters and Bobby Moore—I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Brady—show the power of that. Geoff Hurst still goes around inspiring people, even now in his later years in life. If you are speaking of putting people on committees, you could ask for no finer a person than Geoff Hurst.

If we are talking about free to air and it is a national team, that is where you will get more of an audience—to see England play live, rather than having to pay to watch it on any of the paid-for channels. The noble Lord is right: it sits with the golf, the cricket and all the other important sports. But football is our national sport, and our national football team should be live on air, especially major competitions.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, in introducing this amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Addington, used the phrase “hiding behind a paywall”. I wonder whether that is really a fair description of paying for something. When I got my phone, it was hiding behind a paywall: it was not given to me free; I had to shell out for it. I need a new car at the moment; my heap of junk of a Nissan has collapsed. The new one is hiding behind a paywall, and I have to pay for it. I had to pay for my dinner tonight; it was hiding behind a paywall.

There is an assumption here that there is no such thing as private property or free contract and that everything ought to be somehow at the disposition of regulators or of state officials. That is not how we got here. If you do not respect the fundamental ability of sporting clubs or indeed broadcasters to do what they think is in their best interests, you end up with suboptimal outcomes. This is a very neat demonstration of why, once you create these regulatory structures, they expand and expand—because people airily demand things and feel very virtuous in demanding them without any thought for the practicalities of the people who have to implement them.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 16th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maude of Horsham (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment of my noble friend Lord Markham and strongly disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. We constantly hear that the purpose of the Bill is for the regulator to be agile, to be as light touch as possible and not to impose unnecessary additional burdens on football. Every million pounds spent on the cost of running the regulator, as well as the additional compliance costs for football clubs themselves, means there is less of the pie to be distributed under the redistribution parts of the Bill.

Surely one of the key ways in which we can do our best to avoid that cost burden being excessive is to avoid duplication. The reality is that the competitions, the leagues, already exercise a self-regulatory function—not regulating themselves but regulating the clubs that are members of the leagues. That is in their nature: there are conditions of belonging to those leagues that they rightly enforce, and they are going to be obliged to carry on doing that anyway. It is possible that not all of them have done that perfectly, and that not all of them will continue to do it perfectly in the future, but it is also possible that the independent regulator will not do its job perfectly. We should consider that possibility at this stage of consideration of this really important Bill, given that many clubs—not just the Premier League clubs but right down through the pyramid—have concerns about the costs, imposition and impact that creating the regulator will involve. When we move on to the next group, we will be looking at the really big, crunchy part of the Bill that covers the regulator’s operating licensing powers.

If we are to be sensitive to these genuine concerns of football clubs—which, by and large, have been pretty successful over the decades—this is a good way of showing it. If this amendment is passed and accepted by the Government and goes into the Bill, none of it says that the powers have to be delegated to any particular competition organiser; but at least giving the possibility of avoiding this overburden of new regulation, cost and impositions on something which is already very successful would be a very good signal for the Government to send.

I hope the Minister when she responds to this amendment will not rule it out out of hand but will take it away and say that we should now be looking for ways to address some of these genuine concerns. This would be a very good way of doing it.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to comment on the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Markham, which, on the face of it, sounds sensible, obvious, simple, light touch and low cost. I rise also to defend the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, for pointing out the blindingly obvious biggest bear trap of the entire Bill up to now: delegating the power of the regulator to the very people it is trying to regulate. It would seem to any right-minded person that this is the least sensible thing to do. Being concerned about the power of the regulator but trying to persuade us that it could give some of its powers up to someone else to help them along the way defeats the object of having the regulator.

[Lord Maude of Horsham (Con)]

Before the noble Lord sits down, there are two groups which, if the Bill goes through and is enacted, will be subject to regulation. There will be the competition organisers, of course, but the biggest burden will be on the clubs themselves, and that should be our principal concern. If the competition organisers, who would themselves be overseen by the regulator, are able to discharge the regulatory functions effectively without creating a whole new panoply of compliance and enforcement mechanisms and apparatus, surely that is worth looking at and considering.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

There is some merit in what the noble Lord says. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, and I met Rick Parry and some people from the EFL this week and they are quite content with this. They do not see this as an onerous burden on them. They are looking forward to the regulator, a level playing field and a real chance for them to progress, so they are not going to oppose this resolution.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Mann (Lab)]

My Lords, I again refer noble Lords to my interests in the register relating to this debate. I was in a meeting with the chair of the supervisory board of one of the more successful German football clubs discussing regulation. I asked him if there was one thing that could be done to improve football from regulation inside England what it would be. His advice was that the best thing that could be done—which is not actually available to us in this House as an amendment—would be to tax football agents in the UK through the British tax system.

Why might the head of a major football club—a competitor—wish to see that happen? If that happened—or if anything else threw into question the transparency of football finances, particularly in relation to the acquisition and departure of the key asset players—behaviour would be modified. I recall discussions with people who gave graphic detail of how, in the olden days—but not old enough for me not to have seen it happen—there was the notion of “cash in the boot”. A player would be signed to a team, suddenly and unexpectedly, and would play a few games. In doing so, cash would be handed over. I do not think that; I know that. I will not cite examples even though I could—it would not be fair to do so—but that was not uncommon.

In the modern game—today’s game—the amounts of money are much greater. One has seen situations where football clubs get into financial problems, usually because of relegation from the Premier League, and do not seem to know who owns their assets. There is a myriad of situations. That includes contract details—I can think of some in the recent past, where the fans, sponsors and others were rather bemused to find that certain players were able to go, at no fee, to play for other teams because of a clause in the contract that most people were unaware of.

My Amendments 129 and 248 seek to deal with the specific problem of how agents behave. There are examples I could cite where, pre transfer, players have been sold or bought for significant amounts of money and, literally at the very last moment, they suddenly change agents. I will give a hypothetical example, rather than shine too much specific light. Let us say that a player is sold for many tens of millions, and they have a single agent. The day before their transfer documents are signed, they then change agency. The agent then sues the player for their loss—for the cut that they would have got—even though the agents’ fees are very significantly higher than the worth of the individual agent. Why would anyone choose to do that? If you are a purchasing club and you are competing with others for a prized asset, you might well be prepared to pay more money and whatever requirements there are. But why would a selling club do that? What would the advantage be? The answer is there is zero advantage to a selling club—none—or, potentially, a disadvantage. If there are £15 million or £20 million in agents’ fees, that amount of money might come in to your club. So what is the motivation?

One of the things that has bedevilled football across the world, not just English football, has been people taking a percentage. I have spoken to people who have been offered money to give statistics on 12 and 13 year-olds in their own club—a cash-based suggestion that would accumulate over time, should the player get to a level of being worth lots of money. That is the minutia, but the major cases will involve major financial transactions. Fans are often perplexed by certain purchases and the amounts of money spent on players. They say, “What is going on here? This player does not appear to be worth quite that amount of money, or indeed anything near it. It must be because of bad football decisions”.

I put it to the Committee that perhaps the transactions are determined not always by football decisions but by loans. Most fans can cite times they have been bemused when their club has loaned a player in and paid a very large amount of money to do so, even though no one has ever heard of them before. The player then disappears a year on, and no one ever hears of them again. Why would you pay £1 million or £2 million to loan a player who no one has heard of, who has no track record and who then has no future track record?

The taxman has an interest, which is why, if I were able to do so and it would have been within the rules of this Committee, I would have proposed that taxing agents via the UK tax system would be the best answer. While that does not give public transparency, it seems that it would mediate behaviour. However, these two amendments seek to allow the regulator—not the general public—to be able to see and assess what is being paid and what is in the contracts. That would not be in a public way, but in a private way—and that would modify such behaviour.

If we are interested in competition in the sport, taking out externalities that have nothing to do with the business of the sport is in the interests—including the business interests—of the industry and the sport. Shining a light so that people do not feel it would be appropriate to do their decision-making based on how much they receive as a reward for their wisdom in, say, selling a player would be to the health of the game. Anyone in the Committee who thinks that does not happen, and has not happened, is being extremely naive. Anyone who thinks that this happens only at the lower end—the non-league, with a bit of cash in a back pocket—is also being naive.

Because of the way the football business has worked, there is a lot of money to be made, and people have managed to find ways—legally—of making additional profits for themselves, particularly out of the movement of the key asset players. These two amendments seek to allow at least the regulator to see exactly what is going on. Indeed, this is important in the critical situation where, say, a club does not own the assets that everyone thinks it has, because it has managed to sell them off in advance to some third party and therefore cannot cash in on them. There are examples that I am very familiar with, where clubs have gone insolvent because of that. In some way, this power needs to be in the Bill, unless the Government could be persuaded that HMRC would be a better decision-making body and have all football agents’ transactions in this country taxed through the UK tax system. I beg to move.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, I was getting overexcited listening to the noble Lord, Lord Mann, because we have lives outside this Chamber, and for my sins, I go in the Dog and Duck every now and again, where, somehow, people find out that I am involved with this Bill. My pint goes flat before I have had a chance to drink it, because they ask, “Well, why do you not get this sorted?”

One of the main questions that comes across is: “What are you going to do about the agents?” I did not think that that was really grating with supporters, but it is—from the top right to the bottom. I know because I support Manchester City, which used to be at the top, and I look after, where I can, Stockport County, who are reasonably not near the bottom any more.

Supporters are human beings. They work hard and pay their money to go to watch the football. Nothing grates more than when they find out how much agents get for doing these deals. As has been said, there is confusion about player ownership. Do two or three people own a player? Does a company own a third of that player? If we wish to sell that player, does that mean we need the permission of those other people before we can sell him? Is that value for the club? Those issues need teasing out.

I am attracted to the idea of an agent having to pay UK tax, which would really add some clarity to the Bill. To be honest, supporters do not quite get it. I am not saying that I am above them or anything like that, but they see it as nebulous. They want to know what practical things the regulator can do for them as football supporters. If the Government were fleet of foot, they would put agents’ fees at the front of the Bill and say that any agent of a UK footballer should pay tax in the UK. That would be universally supported by all supporters.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 16th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

I do not disagree with the noble Baroness’s principles or beliefs when she talks about the nanny state and it being up to individuals, but where does she sit on smoking? Smoking was acceptable and everybody smoked, and sponsorship in sport was rife, with motor racing teams and darts competitions named after cigarettes. People do not smoke any more; society has changed. Unless you take positive action, you do not get that change. There is nobody in this Chamber now smoking; there is nobody in the hospitals smoking; there is nobody inside or outside football grounds smoking. That is a great thing. It is called taking responsibility for society. I wonder what the cost of gambling is to the NHS and the various other bodies that have to pick up the pieces of our individual choices and liberties. Those liberties are your own until they affect me and you, and him and her, and the NHS; it then becomes my responsibility to say something about it.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I was on my last sentence, but I will now make it two sentences.

The noble Lord says that nobody is smoking now. It happens to be the evening of the Terrace Club’s Christmas bash. That is the House of Lords smokers’ group, and I can assure the noble Lord there are quite a lot of them smoking, cross-party, including from his own party. They are drinking and smoking, and every party is represented. It is in the hut round the back, by the way, in case anyone wants to pop out. There are quite a lot of people who smoke still.

Smoking advertising was taken out of sports, and a number of sports nearly collapsed—darts and snooker had a real problem. The funny thing is, guess who came in to save them? The gambling companies came in and saved those working-class, grass-roots, rank-and-file sports. Good on them, I say. The working classes were grateful at the time, and they did not all become problem gamblers as a consequence. They enjoyed the sport.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 18th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

The noble Lord has pre-empted the further comments that I was going on to make. I can address this here. Clearly, in the example that is given regarding Russia, anyone connected to a state that is subject to sanctions would not pass the test. That is a straightforward way of picking up some of the concerns that he has raised.

The intention with all this is to ensure that the test can be applied consistently and remain fair, transparent, robust and focused on whether an individual is suitable to own a football club. Furthermore, the Government have been clear that the independence of the regulator is vital. That is the point I want to stress here and that is why the Government have removed the requirement for the regulator to have regard to His Majesty’s Government’s foreign and trade policy objectives when assessing an owner’s suitability, which is the precise requirement this amendment seeks to include.

Turning to Amendment 191, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, and assure him that the intent of his amendment is already achieved in the Bill as drafted. The Bill sets out a number of matters the regulator must take into account when considering an owner or officer’s fitness as part of the owners’ and directors’ test. One of these is whether the owner or officer has been party to civil proceedings. As with all public bodies, the regulator must take into account all relevant matters and must disregard irrelevant matters when it comes to making decisions. That means that the things listed in Clause 37(2) will affect the regulator’s decision only if they are relevant in a specific case. That picks up on the issue of relevance.

In other words, the regulator must treat these things as potentially relevant to its decision, but it must consider the specific facts and context in every case. The noble Baroness, Lady Brady, also picked up on the issue of relevance. For example, the regulator will not be concerned with whether an owner or officer has contested a speeding ticket. However, it will be concerned if a civil court has found that an owner or officer has acted in a seriously dishonest way or if they have a track record of civil cases that cast significant doubt on their integrity. The test is designed to allow the regulator to make a holistic evidence-based assessment of suitability, taking the context into account, as I have mentioned previously.

I turn to Amendment 192, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and Amendment 201 in the name of my noble friend Lady Taylor of Bolton. On the latter, I completely agree that an unspent serious criminal conviction is likely to affect whether an individual is suitable to be a club’s custodian. That is why the regulator is already required to take any criminal convictions into account when assessing an owner or officer’s suitability —it does not have a choice: it has to. I reassure my noble friend that we take her comments seriously and are grateful for the way in which she expressed them today.

The Bill does not set out exhaustive details on every element of the fitness test as to what constitutes a pass or fail. Instead, it allows the regulator to make a holistic assessment, which, crucially, is able to take into account any context and relevance. We believe this approach is key. If someone’s criminal history makes them unsuitable, the regulator can fail them on that basis. By comparison, the binary nature of the league’s current tests leads to a less sophisticated assessment of suitability. That is why this test takes a different approach. I reassure noble Lords that the Bill as drafted already requires the regulator to consider any unspent serious criminal convictions, and we fully expect the regulator to treat these as very significant factors in its assessment.

I turn now to Amendments 195 and 198 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson—

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

Can the Minister help me? She said she would comment on the amendments. What are her comments on Amendment 192, tabled by my noble friend Lord Addington, which would require the Bill’s propriety test to include equality, diversity and inclusion? We had a long and wide-ranging discussion on that the other night, and the Government made it clear that they supported including equality, diversity and inclusion in the Bill. I would like some clarity. The propriety test seems fixated on criminal charges and litigation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 219 relates to Clause 46 and the question of the disposal of home grounds, and the kinds of approvals that are going to be required. I have just three points to make. First, are the words “home ground” sufficient? We suggest that we should say “specified properties”. This relates very much to what I was saying the other night about assets of community value. I said that when my own club, Bolton Wanderers, made its ground an asset of community value, it covered not just the ground itself, the pitch and the stands but the concourse. We have to talk about whether it should cover a training ground and even advertising hoardings, car parks and the fan zone. If we simply say “home ground”, will that cover an item such as a fan zone? That is why the amendment I have tabled suggests that we should have specified properties. They may be different in the case of different clubs, but a home ground is more than just what is on the pitch or even within the boundaries of the stadium. That is something that I hope the Minister will consider.

My second point is that this should relate to the assets of a club being used as security for a loan by the owner. There is clearly potential danger there if the loan is called in but the owner does not have the wherewithal to cough up the money that he has borrowed. Could that situation jeopardise the heritage of a club if it is vulnerable because it has been given as security? That is a valid consideration.

The third point is the need to make sure that fans are fully consulted and engaged in any discussion about the disposal of the specified properties. Often, when we are talking about which properties might be involved, it is the fans themselves, especially if there is a fan zone, who have a clear vested interest. We have talked on the Bill about moving five miles. In any circumstances, the fans have to be involved and, therefore, I hope the Government will consider the amendments that we have tabled.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

I support the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, and the noble Lord, Lord Bassam of Brighton, because I have walked this tightrope. When I was leader of Stockport Council, we had to financially advise and support Stockport County on several occasions. In the end, in 2013, we acquired the freehold and leased it back to the new owner of Stockport County, Mark Stott, for 250 years. That enabled him to get investment in and get the football club moving back into the league and climbing the divisions. That is where we start from: the position of the club and its value as a loan against something.

If we can get local authorities and other people to get hold of the freeholds, that will save Toys-R-Us from being built on certain football grounds on the south coast and give the clubs real opportunities to move forward. So we should support the amendments. We should also probably be thinking about how we can strengthen that in future. There is more involvement in the community value and the asset to a town and area of a football club, so we could be a bit more imaginative about how we protect that, rather than just arguing over how we should cover a loan against the ground.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I will say a few quick words about my amendment in this group. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, and the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, and other noble Lords for their amendments in this group. My Amendment 236 would introduce a new duty encouraging clubs to consult the Office for Place before making any decisions regarding their home ground or the construction of a new one.

I know that the Government have proposed to wind up the Office for Place, but I wanted to draw attention to its work, and in particular the excellent work of its interim chairman, Nicholas Boys Smith, and the board and staff who were working in Stoke-on-Trent. I think a lot of us share the disappointment, because we saw the Housing Minister after the election tell the BBC that the Office for Place would be kept. But, following the Budget, I understand that the Government are proposing not to keep it. I did think it could play an important role here, as it has in so many other areas of public policy.

My amendment offers a clear benefit in terms of promoting meaningful engagement and ensuring that football clubs consider the broader social and cultural impacts of their decisions. That is a theme that noble Lords touched on when introducing their amendments in this group. I think we all want to see clubs take a more holistic and responsible approach when planning changes to their home grounds, helping to preserve the heritage of these much-loved sites while ensuring that development is in the best interests of both the club and the community in which it is rooted.

In light of the need for more thoughtful and inclusive decision-making, my amendment tries to strike the right balance between promoting consultation with an expert body, fostering collaboration and ensuring that long-term planning for home grounds is done responsibly. I appreciate the points that noble Lords raised in their amendments and look forward to the noble Baroness’s response to them all.

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[Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, very much. My two teams are Liverpool and Tonbridge Angels of the National League South. One is an internationally competitive team—and the other is Tonbridge Angels; but place is crucial to both teams. If you are a fan of Liverpool from Los Angeles or Singapore, the place of Anfield and the locality and the community relationship are absolutely part of what it is you support. Home and away fixtures are a routine part of how the Premier League competition is conducted. That is why this is essential, not just to large clubs but to small clubs across the country.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

This issue has arisen before. The FA Cup is the oldest cup competition in the world, yet one club that held the title did not enter it the following season in order to play a match in the world championships in South America. Does the Minister think the regulator would have the power to prevent that happening in future? It is the kind of thing regulators should be looking at.

[Lord Wood of Anfield (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. That is a very live issue as well, but I do not want to expand my amendment to that.

I am conscious of the time, so with those caveats, and with thanks to colleagues who have intervened, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 15th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[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.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, for the first hour of the debate today, I honestly thought I was in a different Committee. The thoughtful amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Birt, and the reasoning behind them were more favourably reflected on by the Minister than almost any other amendment I have heard over seven nights. The helpful intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, about some technical issues, and his offer—probably to be accepted—of redrafting for a further thing, emphasise that we are drawing to a place where I think we can begin to make progress. Even the noble Lord, Lord Markham, was concise in his comments on those amendments in the spirit of trying to move the evening on, while still making the political points that he needed to make.

I was going to comment on the speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, but the points have been made by the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, far better than I could: the Premier League does not have all the right answers, and it is about the pyramid and the lower clubs. This afternoon I met disability groups, women’s groups and other people concerned about the economics of football, and their real concern is whether they will ever see the benefits of whatever happens with this regulator, so that it does not just stay between the Premier League and the Championship. It is fine to say that the Championship is now one of the six best leagues in the world—that is to be supported—but below that are League One, League Two and the National League teams. We need to keep all those thoughts in our minds as we move forward.

Personally, I have absolutely no problem with the Premier League. It is a fantastic thing and I pay my money to watch it if I can—I wish I could have switched the fixtures around from last night to tonight, so that I would not have had to endure City throwing away a two-goal lead at Brentford. I could have missed that, listening to the enjoyment in here, but that is just the way the fixtures are thrown up, unfortunately.

What I am trying to say, clumsily, is that the regulator needs to be given responsibility. We can influence that responsibility by way of amendments in this and the other place, but it is very important that the Minister understands where those amendments are coming from, and for what reasons. I do not think that anybody in this Chamber does not believe that football deserves the very best governance and the very best people running it to keep its status as our national game. It is our national game, from Liverpool at the top right down to Southend and clubs at the bottom. Our group on these Benches just wants to ensure that we keep that focus, because you can lose it in the argument of the to and fro of the money, the percentages and how it is not fair. The fairness is not the point. The point is the 92 football clubs, which should be at the forefront of all our minds.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I did not intend to speak on this group of amendments but, as with all the best Committees, you are sometimes prompted to contribute by the ebb and flow of the debate.

Just to respond very briefly to the noble Lords, Lord Pannick and Lord Bassam, of course we all want to see the best possible legislation. This is a scrutiny and oversight House, and we want to make sure the Bill is improved as it goes between the two Houses of Parliament. But we also do not want to respond merely to anecdote, whether it is the financial difficulties of a small number of clubs or the issue of the super league evolving as it did in 2021. I have gone on record as saying that the Bill is suboptimal—and that is polite. I would have said the same under a Conservative Government, and it bears repetition tonight. It was terrible then, and it is even more terrible under this Government.

I want to try to explain to noble Lords why, specifically on the issue of whether Clauses 61 to 64 should stand part, some of us have a philosophical issue. At the moment, I believe that although it can be quite robust and in many ways brutal, there is a self-correcting mechanism for the way football clubs are operated. There is a predisposition not to take inordinate risk in the future of small community clubs supported by the local communities in towns and cities across the country.

What slightly worries me is the concept of moral hazard, as we have discussed before, which is obviously quite an arcane economic concept. Incidentally, with respect to the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, I do not see that it is necessarily axiomatic that the Premier League has some moral duty, as businesses and as private entities with shareholders, to necessarily be a pseudo-charitable outfit and to provide for those in other leagues. The noble Lord might want to elucidate why he feels that is the case. Whether we believe it is a good or practicable idea is another issue.

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[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

I just make the point that the only reason we are pushing this so strongly is that if the regulation set by UEFA for European league and other competitions is at odds with what we are considering in this Committee with regard to the regulation that we are looking to put on the statute book, we will have a very real problem. We have the potential for English clubs not being able to participate in European competitions. That is why this is so important.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

Just to reply to that, let us be straight: is the noble Lord seriously alleging that the Government are holding back information that could exclude English football clubs from playing in Europe and the World Cup?

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I just think that this is very easy; it could be cleared up a minute. If there is nothing to hide and no concerns, just release the letter. Then we can say, “That’s fine; there are no concerns. Fantastic”. No one will be happier than all of us. What has been clear through all the Committee days is that we are all here, up to whatever hour at night, because we care about football. We are all football fans here; we have all declared our interests and our various season tickets because we care about football. That is why we are going on about this.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 11th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, eloquently explains why the Secretary of State and the IFR must seek to avoid conflict with UEFA and FIFA regulations. They are the governing bodies, despite the lunacy of some of their decisions, most recently the FIFA proposals to expand the World Cup to 64 teams and to extend half-time so that there can be a concert while players seek to maintain warmth and fitness. Notwithstanding that, they are the governing bodies, and the structure of English football recognises this.

It does so because both UEFA and FIFA impose in their rules and regulations an obligation on member associations—the FA, as the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, says—to comply with UEFA and FIFA regulations, and to ensure that clubs and leagues also comply with UEFA and FIFA regulations. The FA imposes a similar obligation on member leagues and the Premier League—its rule B14. It imposes a contractual commitment on clubs and the Premier League to comply with the statutes and regulations of FIFA and UEFA.

Notwithstanding all this, I am, with great respect, doubtful as to the wisdom of Amendment 4 from the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan. Do we really wish to incorporate into English law, so that it is a matter that can be raised in the High Court, the statutes and regulations of UEFA and FIFA? Is it really our wish to allow those who are concerned by a decision of the Secretary of State or of the IFR to go to court and say that the decision is a breach of a UEFA or FIFA regulation? It would be welcomed enormously by sports lawyers such as me. The opportunities for litigation are endless because, regrettably, the UEFA and FIFA regulations are not always drafted with the precision and clarity—I put it modestly—that we expect and see from the parliamentary draftsmen in this country.

I would be grateful if the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, could address this point when he comes to reply. There will be a further enormous expanse of litigation in football, and we will find that decisions are even more regularly open to litigation—to challenge in the courts—if his amendment is accepted.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, I almost expected the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, to withdraw these two amendments following the meeting we had yesterday with the FA. I am absolutely certain that his shoulders dropped when we asked a question of the FA regarding FIFA and UEFA, and the FA confirmed to the people there—I was there, as were the noble Lords, Lord Birt, Lord Moynihan and Lord Addington —that it had had letters and emails from FIFA and UEFA supporting the regulator. Their only concern was—choose the words you want—state creep, scope creep or mission creep. Providing that those things do not happen, they are content that we have a regulator.

The threat from UEFA and FIFA was discussed time and again in Committee. I think that fox was completely shot yesterday because the FA openly and honestly said, “We have had letters and emails saying they have no problem with the regulator, providing there is no state creep, scope creep or mission creep”, which I believe there will not be.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, I chaired the meeting referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, and I too was very puzzled that the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, decided to proceed with his amendment today. The FA was very clear that UEFA and FIFA were very happy with where we had got to with the legislation and that they were satisfied. It made clear too that DCMS was right not to want to publish the correspondence to which the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, made clear and obvious reference.

I agree with the arguments made by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. I was somewhat surprised that he—the lawyer and expert in football litigation that he is—made some of them. As he said, only one group of people will benefit from this—those who do sports lawyering.

I invite the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, not to press his amendments—they are not necessary. If we were to be mistaken and accepted them into the Bill, it would slow down the operation of the independent football regulator, and I do not think anybody wants that. It could lead only to a reduction in the effectiveness and speed of the regulator’s operation. I hope that having heard what the FA said about it, as he did yesterday, and the assurance it gave to me and others in the room that it is happy and that UEFA and FIFA are happy, he will in good grace not press the amendments.

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[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, we are on the same lines as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, on the degree. Naturally, the removal of

“a higher degree of influence”

seems to be watering down the regulatory powers of the regulator. That is a very dangerous road to go down. I would like to hear what the Minister has to say about that. If Amendment 7 were pushed to a vote, we would not support it.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Moynihan for the forensic way he set out the case for his Amendment 7. The example with which he illustrated it—one he has used throughout the passage of this Bill—is certainly one that captured my attention, coming from Whitley Bay. It is causing some concern across Tyneside and among Newcastle United’s many fans across the world. I would be failing in my Geordie duty if I did not take this opportunity to wish the team the best of luck for the Carabao Cup this weekend.

I understand that the Minister cannot speak for a regulator that is to be independent and that does not yet exist, but I hope she will be able to say a bit about the implications of the Bill, such as the one that my noble friend Lord Moynihan set out. It clearly has some very serious consequences, not just for Newcastle in the example he has given but potentially for other teams in the future. I look forward to hearing what she says.

I want to say a little about my two amendments in this group, Amendments 46 and 47. As we said in Committee, among the many changes the Government have made to the Bill, compared with the Bill that the previous Government brought forward in the previous Parliament, was one we understand the case for. In the earlier version of the Bill, there was a provision stating that the regulator must have regard to the Government’s foreign and trade policy when making determinations for the owners’ test. This is an example of a concern that UEFA raised. That has been reported publicly, and the Government were very clear when they made the change to the Bill now before us that it was in response to concerns by UEFA that this undermined the independence of the regulator and that if it was to have regard to the Government’s foreign or trade policy, it would be too close to the Government’s view, in the eyes of UEFA.

I can understand the rationale for making that change, but in Committee I expressed some concerns about the unintended consequences of that and the potential loopholes. I gave the example that if there were to be two potential foreign owners of a club, one from a friendly nation and one from a nation with which this country does not enjoy friendly relations—we can all think of some examples that would spring readily to mind in the troubled world we face today—we would all be clear on which way we would like to see the independent regulator come down, even if the Government are not able to direct it, or if it is not able to have regard to the Government’s foreign policy.

My Amendment 46 would insert a provision highlighting

“whether the individual is reasonably believed to be, or have been, involved in terrorism related activity”.

I am sure that noble Lords would not want such a person to be an owner or director of one of our prominent football teams.

Amendment 47 sets out a number of agencies—the National Crime Agency, the Security Service, the Serious Fraud Office and others—that the new regulator may consult in carrying out its test. I have watered down my amendment from Committee to say “may consult”, not “must consult”, in the hope that this will find some greater support from the Government. I understand the reasons for the change that they have made to the Bill, but I do hope that the noble Baroness will be able to look at these ways in which we might be able to tighten up the potential for a loophole, so that we can avoid seeing the sorts of people that none of us want to see taking control of English football clubs.

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[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

It was slightly disingenuous of the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, when we are talking about pre-scrutiny of approval, to name a proposed candidate when, apparently, there are two proposed candidates. If he knows the other candidate, perhaps it might be helpful if he named him or her as well.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I was merely reporting what had been published on Sky News, and I think thousands of football fans would have considered it. I hope to reassure the noble Lord, Lord Goddard of Stockport, that no disingenuousness was intended.

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[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

Only one name was mentioned on Sky?

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

Yes.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

Okay.

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I thank noble Lords for their amendments. On Amendment 8, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Maude, I understand the desire for the scrutiny of the appointment of the regulator’s chair and I am grateful for the thoughtful speech he made outlining the reasons behind the amendment. Getting the chair right, both now and in the future, will be pivotal for the success of the new regulator. I will not go into names or press speculation. I understand that progress is being made on the appointment. I am not involved in that, so I will not comment further.

The chair, as the public leader of the regulator, must be a competent and strong individual, free from any vested interests. I assure noble Lords from across the House that the existing public appointments process is robust, run in accordance with the Governance Code on Public Appointments, and one that Parliament can and should have faith in.

As per Cabinet Office guidance, parliamentary Select Committees can already carry out pre-appointment scrutiny hearings and offer their views to the Secretary of State. The chair of the regulator is subject to that scrutiny. The Secretary of State will, of course, weigh any committee’s views carefully, as the Cabinet Office guidance already sets out; this will be the case for the future.

However, the Governance Code on Public Appointments sets out that Ministers have the ultimate responsibility for appointment decisions for which they are accountable to Parliament. It is not common for Parliament to hold a statutory right of veto over such public appointments and we cannot see a reason to set that precedent with this regulator. In response to my noble friend Lord Bassam of Brighton, our view is that this amendment would represent a veto.

Amendment 10, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, seeks to place a cap on the number of members of the regulator’s expert panel. The regulator’s independent expert panel will play a vital role in making various important decisions across the regulator’s regime, when and where it is appropriate. It is essential that the panel has a range of relevant expertise and experience to reflect the diversity and complexity of decisions that may come before it.

The number of members of the expert panel is to be determined by the chief executive officer in response to the operational need. The Government do not want to fetter the effectiveness of the expert panel by introducing a cap on the maximum number of members of the panel as this amendment seeks to do, however sensible that level may appear to noble Lords. The regulator needs the flexibility to react in the event of high workload for the panel. The regulator will be required to deliver value for money and has a regulatory principle underpinning this. We do not believe that the CEO would appoint and maintain an unnecessarily bloated panel.

Finally, I turn to government Amendments 9 and 11. In Committee, my noble friends Lady Taylor of Bolton and Lord Bassam of Brighton, among others, emphasised the real importance of protecting the regulator from conflicts of interest. The Government are in complete agreement that the independence of the regulator must be protected, including against vested interests. Although the Bill already makes provision for managing such conflicts of interest, we have tabled government amendments to strengthen these protections even further and beyond any doubt.

The amendments require the regulator to establish and maintain a system whereby the members of the regulator’s board and its expert panel must declare their relevant interests, and a record of these interests must be kept and maintained. This will ensure that all board and expert panel members declare relevant interests from the outset of their appointment and on an ongoing basis. This is good practice not only for transparency but to help the regulator manage any conflicts and to insulate its decisions from potential vested or competing interests.

I hope that those reasons have reassured your Lordships’ House and that noble Lords will not press their amendments. I will move government Amendments 9 and 11 in due course.

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[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

My Lords, I will support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, makes a substantial point about why in law it probably will not really help, but in spirit I am with it.

More importantly, the noble Lord, Lord Ranger, made an important point about fans not being able to afford to watch football. I have been amazed for a long time, probably about 20 years, that working people in particular, with perhaps two children, might visit two games a week. I do not know how they afford it. It has always been, generally, a working person’s game—it is not a class issue, but I think, generally speaking, it has been—and it has inelastic demand. By that, I mean that it is a tribal thing: we cannot explain the reason that we get excited and depressed about football teams. I am hoping that Sheffield Wednesday will win tonight; I will be depressed, I will be—

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

Amazed.

[Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)]

Not surprised when that does not happen.

There is something within us that is very hard. The most obvious thing a football fan could do would be to stop going to the games to effect change in a club, but it is very hard for them to do so. Therefore, a regulator asking reasonable questions of a club about why it has increased ticket prices is a very sensible option. If it is there to check on the validity and, I suppose, the due diligence around the ownership, I would have thought that this is the very least it could do in looking around the due diligence and looking after the fans.

No one else really looks after the fans. Outside the Premier League, the quality of looking after the fans is pretty awful. From the toilets to the restaurants—if they ever pass as that—it has traditionally been pretty diabolical. I would have thought that the regulator ought to be looking at such things, as well as whether the money going into the club is straightforward and comes from the sources that are alleged. I will certainly support the ticket price amendment, should it be put.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Goddard of Stockport Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 17th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

We support the amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. I have had a long conversation with her around the state of the women’s game and the lighter touch in the Bill on aspects of women’s football. In essence, it runs parallel and there needs to be some cognisance of that. There needs to be an understanding of that in the Bill. It may come through the reviews that are going to come forward, but I would just like it acknowledged somewhere that women’s football is emerging, developing and encouraging young girls and young women to play football and sport, which helps the NHS and everything else. There should really be some cognisance from the Government that there should be a line in this Bill that acknowledges and supports the noble Baroness’s objectives.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Goddard of Stockport, has just said, and we are grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, who has spoken up for the women’s game from Second Reading all the way through the Bill. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, for moving the amendment today on her behalf. We touched on this a little when we were looking at the thorny question of putting in the Bill the types of competitions, leagues and so on that would be covered, where we ran into the problem of not wanting to make this a hybrid Bill, but we were interested in the consultation that would be needed if the women’s game were to come under the scope of the Bill and the regulator. So I am grateful to the noble Lord—and the noble Baroness, in her absence—for returning to this today.

I shall speak to my Amendments 36 and 95, which have been put in this group. My Amendment 36 seeks to ensure that the regulator has power to restrict funding from sources that it deems

“harmful to the interests of the United Kingdom”.

This is intended as a slightly softer approach to the duty now removed from the Bill to have regard to the foreign and trade policy of His Majesty’s Government, which we discussed during our first day on Report. Rather than providing for the regulator to consider the Government’s foreign and trade policy, my amendment focuses on conduct it considers harmful to our national interest, allowing the regulator to interpret that as it wishes and, crucially, independently from the Government of the day, as we know that UEFA and others are very anxious that it should.

My Amendment 95 reflects some discussions that we had in Committee in which there was cross-party support. The noble Lords, Lord Addington and Watson of Invergowrie, spoke at that point in favour of the suggestion that the Secretary of State might make regulations for Part 3 to come into effect only at the end of a relevant football season, rather than partway through. Clearly, there will be burdens on clubs that will have to comply with the new regulatory regime and it would be easier and simpler for them if they were able to do so at the start of a season. So I have brought this matter back in the hope that again it will receive some cross-party support. It is intended as a constructive suggestion and I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

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[Lord Markham (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 52 seeks to reverse one of the more surprising changes to the Bill. The previous Conservative version stated that the regulator must consult on all changes to the levy rules. This seemed fair and proportionate. If the regulator is to change how it charges the levy or how much it wishes to charge, it seems pretty reasonable that those who will bear the burden of that charge are consulted.

The changes introduced by the Government provide that the regulator does not have to consult if it considers those changes to be minor. The issue is that the definition of “minor” is to be determined by the regulator. What would happen if the regulator tries to claim that somehow a change is “minor”, but other interested parties do not agree? Is there not the possibility here for the regulator to skirt around important consultations by simply claiming that the changes it is proposing are not significant enough to warrant discussion? The problem here is that this could create endless discussions about what warrants being termed “minor”. Surely it would be far simpler for the regulator just to consult on all changes, as was the case in the previous Bill.

Separately, it is welcome that the Government have accepted the principle that interest charged by the regulator on unpaid levy charges should be capped by the legislation. This was an amendment that my noble friend Lord Parkinson and I tabled in Committee. At the time, the Minister said that

“setting the rate of interest charged on non-payment of the levy is an operational decision for the regulator, which needs the flexibility to charge interest at a rate that deters non-payment”.—[Official Report, 18/12/24; col. 337.]

We disagreed with this assessment at the time. Although it is right that some flexibility is needed, it is not right that the regulator should be the one that sees fit to charge whatever it thinks is right. I am therefore very pleased that the Minister has changed her mind on that matter and brought a government amendment to this effect.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendments 55 and 56. I received a satisfactory reply on the four amendments from the previous group, which I submitted to the Government and the Minister. I also submitted Amendments 55 and 56, but I did not quite get such a full support for them, so I think it is worth explaining to the House what they are—plus a slight history lesson.

The Minister’s statement in the debate on 16 December 2024 set down the clear intent that the regulator should have primacy ahead of all competition organisers:

“I want also to stress that the regulator will not stop the leagues imposing their own competition rules so long as they do not conflict with the regulator’s regime”.—[Official Report, 16/12/24; col. 40.]


The then Government’s consultation response document noted:

“The Regulator will set the legal baseline for regulation in areas within its remit. There may be scope for industry bodies to layer on top, but the Regulator would coordinate with these bodies to ensure that any additional rules were supportive of the regulatory approach and objectives. This means that industry bodies will need to be receptive to working with the Regulator to potentially streamline and adapt their existing rules, to allow for a coherent regulatory landscape that minimises burdens on clubs”.


However, this is not reflected in Clause 55(6), which requires only that the competition organisers “consult” with the regulator. That is not what was previously said.

Through discussions on the Bill, we have seen that the level of co-operation of competition organisers has varied, so it is not satisfactory to rely on their good will to resolve regulatory conflicts. Indeed, recent Premier League consultations have resulted in a legal spat with the Professional Footballers’ Association, the EFL, the Government and FIFA, and various disputes with the Premier League executive. The proposed amendments aim to ensure that the regulatory system is clear and coherent and avoids the confusing overregulation of rules. The IFR can act as an important safeguard.

We have seen a number of recent legal cases that have demonstrated deep flaws in some of the competition organisers’ approach. For example, the Premier League lost a case to Leicester City, where Leicester was held to be a member of neither the Premier League nor the EFL, due to poor and contradictory drafting of Premier League rules. That was a report from the Appeal Board.

Of even greater concern, the Premier League rules on associated party transactions were found to have been illegally introduced to advantage one set of clubs over another, and to have abused a dominant market position. As a result, three years of those rules were held to be void, as though they never existed, and there are more damages claims to come. These rules came about because of rushed processes. The panel noted that they had not been subject to proper analysis or examination before introduction:

“There does not appear to have been any discussion or analysis as to how such an exclusion would affect the effectiveness of the PSR, and the principle of sustainability of club finance which underlies the PSR”—


the profit and sustainability rules in competitions. That was from a judgment in favour of Manchester City, which additionally found that:

“Nor was there any evidence that the PL had in fact carried out any analysis as to the impact of the shareholder exclusion on different clubs and to seek to justify such an exclusion”.


Many of these difficulties have come about because of the inherent conflict in the regulated entities—the clubs—being the ones that set the rules. Clearly, the independent regulator will be able to act on that. It will act effectively to regulate the financial sustainability of English football and undermine its entitlement.

The proposed amendment is targeted at financial and business regulations; it leaves sporting regulations completely untouched. It is of no benefit to anyone in the game for there to be rushed, ill thought-through or illegal market regulations, from whatever source. It will benefit all to ensure that the IFR can act with quality checks on future attempts by competition organisers when they attempt economic market regulation. The Premier League has clearly demonstrated that it is not good at economic market regulation; in doing so, it has ended up costing the Premier League and its constituent clubs tens of millions of pounds in legal fees and dislocated activities.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Markham, in relation to Amendment 52 on consultation. As noble Lords will know, Clause 54 requires the regulator to consult persons including all regulated clubs before making, amending or replacing levy rules, and consultation is a vital component of fairness. However, Clause 54(2) says that this obligation

“does not apply in relation to amendments to or replacements of levy rules if the IFR considers the changes to be minor”.

The noble Lord, Lord Markham, is absolutely right: it is not for the regulator to determine whether changes are minor; it is for those who are potentially adversely affected. Consultation on matters that the regulator may consider to be minor is no great impediment. If the changes are in truth minor, as perceived by the regulated clubs, the consultation will not take very long and will not involve any great effort by the regulator. I hope that the Government will accept Amendment 52 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Parkinson and Lord Markham.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by reminding the House that the Bill will not abolish parachute payments or change the architecture in the way that has just been suggested. When the noble Lord, Lord Markham, talked about the need to have confidence, so that clubs can invest in new players and have confidence in the strong club structure and financial position, he mentioned only the Premier League. He did not refer at all to the rest of the football pyramid. The Bill needs to make sure that we have sustainability, not just of those clubs in the Premier League, but of the whole English football pyramid. It is important to bear that in mind because, while parachute payments may have a place—as most people have acknowledged, certainly at the moment—there is no doubt that the level of parachute payments is such that it distorts competition in the Championship. I asked the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, when we were in Committee, whether she would acknowledge that, and she declined to comment.

If we look at the actual figures involved, there is no doubt that the current arrangements distort competition. At the moment, clubs that are relegated receive, in year one, £48.9 million. Other clubs receive £5.3 million. The redistribution that is often talked about from the Premier League to the EFL does not help all the clubs in the EFL equally. It distorts competition, which is something we should bear in mind when we are talking about parachute payments. Although they may help a few, they do not help the sustainability of the whole pyramid, as they could—and should—if we had a fairer system of distribution.

[Lord Goddard of Stockport (LD)]

I support the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, especially after Saturday’s result between Bolton and Stockport County—thereby hangs a tale.

I was following the thread from the noble Lord, Lord Markham, really well until he mentioned that every game is competitive. Ipswich Town supporters would not agree with that this season. The evidence suggests that is not the case. If we look at leagues across Europe, they have jeopardy. There are last games of the season where relegation and promotion come to the edge. It is not the be-all and end-all.

It is right that you need a fairer distribution than this endless three up, two down, three down, and that money needs to go further down the pyramid to encourage further clubs to be able to compete. It looks as if the three that came up this season are going to go down. If that continues to happen, it will have a detrimental effect on the Premier League—it must have. It gets more and more difficult every year to sustain. The Brightons and the Bournemouths have burst through, as have other teams, and they are managed really well. But there are unintended consequences if we do not look at these things in totality and just isolate them. If we say, “Leave the parachute payments alone—everything is all right with it”, that is not making progress, and we need to make progress. That is why we need to look at this within the bigger picture. It is not in the Bill but it needs looking at.