Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Hayward Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 27th November 2024 Lords Chamber

This is an important set of amendments. It is important that we spend time working through what is involved—the tone and the colour that will be imported into this incredible success story for England. We must set out at the beginning, very clearly, that the purpose is not just to keep everything going as it is but to promote growth and success and to build on what we already have.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, before I start my comments in relation to my amendment and the others in this group, I want to thank the Minister for her kind comments at the end of Second Reading, when she said she hoped she would not need to call on my refereeing skills too often. I appreciated the thought, but when she made that comment she was probably unaware that, when I qualified as a rugby referee, the laws said that the decision of the referee was correct and final. Given that breadth of my ruling, I am quite willing to use it on any number of occasions.

At Second Reading, the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, drew attention to our failures at national level, but, of course, this legislation relates specifically to the league clubs. In proposing amendments to the Bill in a number of places, I am not saying that everything that exists within the leagues is perfect—it is not; what I am asking in my amendments and in my probable support for others is whether this Bill needs substantial change.

I have tabled an amendment to insert “success”. I said at Second Reading that I was disappointed that there was no reference to success at any point within the Bill. My noble friend Lord Maude just referred to project creep. Clause 1 says that the purpose of the Bill is to

“promote the sustainability of English football”,

but the Explanatory Notes refer to

“the primary aim of ensuring the long-term sustainability and resilience”.

Somebody has immediately written in another element of what the regulator’s responsibility would be. There inevitably will be creep, and it is therefore important that we include some other terminology to which any regulator needs to operate.

The world of sport is changing and changing fast. We cannot, as the noble Lord, Lord Maude, said, work on the basis that one is going to have an English Football League and a Premier League, and that is fine, and it will achieve what it achieves now without any change. We see the NFL hosting matches in this country. Why is it doing that? It is because it wants to extend its footprint and income on a worldwide basis; it wants to challenge other sports. Equally, American college football has reorganised recently. If we look at tennis, cycling and every single major sport, we see that they are reorganising because they are trying to extend their footprints to a worldwide base. The IPL is a classic example of how a sport has been changed. I agree completely with what the noble Lord, Lord Maude, said about how, with the way this Bill is phrased, football will be surrounded in aspic, it will carry on, and we will protect everything; there will be no change. What will happen then is that other sports take over on a worldwide basis in terms of viewership, income, finance and therefore attention around the world.

My amendment would insert “success” in the first clause and in one or two other places. I looked at the impact assessment—I intend to return on a number of occasions to that, because to be blunt, it is not an impact assessment. As the noble Lord, Lord Maude, suggested, the figures are interesting; I would be generous to say that I think they are interesting. My understanding is that some of the clubs that were asked to give an indication as to the costs that would be involved said they did not know. I would like the Minister to indicate what detailed figures were identified by the clubs that were consulted.

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[Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Lab)]

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

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

I have great respect for the noble Baroness, but she just made reference to comments I made in relation to word search. I believed that doing the word search emphasised the point I was trying to make in relation to the amendment that I had tabled and the comments that other people had made as well.

[Baroness Taylor of Bolton (Lab)]

That is how the noble Lord saw it, and I will say it how I saw it. What I was going to say in relation to the last contribution was that, yes, we all want the football leagues—the Premier League and everybody—to flourish and be more successful, but football will be a success only if the whole pyramid can flourish and be sustainable.

I want to say a word about Amendment 10, which is just one practical suggestion that could be considered to help clubs manage their own financial stability. One of problems we have seen in football over recent years is a degree of optimism on the part of football management about what it can achieve by minimal investment. Amendment 10, which my noble friend Lord Bassam and I have tabled, suggests that regulated clubs under the Bill should meet a financial commitment to have resources for at least six months. Many businesses are under very similar obligations. Charities have to have some financial security, so it would be worth considering whether we should actually make that kind of obligation something that the regulator should look at because, unless we get the overall funding of football clubs more sustainable, the whole pyramid will not be sustainable.

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[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

I am going to come on to that in a minute. Only two clubs have won the Championship more than twice. Three clubs have won it once. If you ask people how many times Liverpool has won the Premier League they will probably say four or five. No, it has won it once, the same as Leicester City and Blackburn Rovers. Of course there is jeopardy; many clubs can be very competitive within a game, but winning the league is something different.

I know that noble Lords have talked about selling television rights and said that it is a very attractive league across the world, and I accept that. However, we have to tone it down a bit on the competitiveness of the Premier League, because there are not really all that many clubs that can aspire to become its champions. That is not to disparage it, but it is just a fact of the past 32 years.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

Will the noble Lord accept that since 2000 the four major leagues in Europe—Spain, Italy, Germany and England—have effectively produced the same number of different champions in each case, either six or seven?

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

Yes, I can accept those figures. I accept the noble Lord’s general premise, although I am not sure about Spain. I do not think that more than two clubs have won La Liga; actually, the two Madrid clubs and Barcelona have won it.

The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, talked about comparing England with France and Germany. I am not sure that is a fair comparison because in Germany the clubs are fan- owned. No club can have more than 49% ownership—51% is owned by the members of those clubs. There is not a direct comparison there. Yet Germany has been disproportionately successful in European competitions over that same period.

I want to move on to something else that my noble friend Lord Mann talked about— the opposition of many on the Opposition Benches. Unless I misinterpreted my namesake, my noble friend Lord Watson seemed to say that he was not in favour of the regulator having the powers that the Bill suggests. On the question of the role of the state, I thought that my noble friend Lord Mann was going to say that the Taylor report, which followed the terrible events of Hillsborough, was driven by the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. Quite right—I do not think anybody would object to that. There are cases where state intervention is appropriate and the only answer. If it had just been decided that we would hope all clubs produced all-seater stadiums for safety reasons, we would still be waiting for some of them.

That is one of the issues that we will probably come to later. The other one is the question of who is a fan. It is not for today, but it is very important to define what a fan is. The noble Lord, Lord Jackson, talked about Peterborough and how Posh fans are spread right across the fen-lands and beyond. If you are defining a fan, it really has to be a season ticket holder, because otherwise you cannot pin them down. Manchester United and all the big clubs have fans across the world. You could not possibly consult them. I am sensitive that noble Lords will not necessarily agree with that. What about somebody who cannot afford a season ticket or who is not physically able to go to a match? I accept that, so we have to try to pin that down, and it will be one of the most difficult aspects of the Bill, because if we are going to take the views of fans into account, we have to have a means of corralling them and then taking those opinions. At this stage, I do not see how we can do that beyond season tickets.

My noble friend Lady Taylor talked about the sustainability and the success of English football, not just the Premier League but right down the system. The noble Lord, Lord Goddard, talked of Stockport County. They sunk right down to level 6 in the National League North after going through some very traumatic periods, but have been able to come back up to level 3. My noble friend Lord Mann talked about AFC Wimbledon; in nine years they came from, basically, parks football to being back in in the Football League. It is natural that we tend to concentrate on the Premier League, but there has to be some understanding that the clubs below them are important. I am being opportunistic, but the Labour Government have talked about fixing the foundations. In any sense, when you look to go forward, you must have strong foundations. The foundations of English football are right down at the grass roots. I am not talking about the amateur level.

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Amendments 226 and 231 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, focus on the sale or use of a home ground as collateral, or a home ground relocation. For these, the regulator would be expected to consider the impact of a proposed sale or relocation on the financial sustainability of the club, through the lens of its general duties. These amendments may risk a more short-termist approach to sustainability by inadvertently pushing the regulator to look at short-term success over the long-term successes of the club. I hope the noble Lord is persuaded that this is not an approach we want to risk. For these reasons, and for the reasons I set out in relation to this and other amendments in this group, I hope noble Lords will withdraw or not press their amendments.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

May I just seek clarification? She has covered a very wide-ranging debate as quickly and reasonably as possible, and I have no criticism of the manner in which she has done that. The key debate has been around the word “sustainability”. I think that, earlier in her reply, she said that it was defined at some point. The powers to operate are in Clause 1 and there is no definition in Clause 2. If she has given clarification at some point, I will check it in Hansard, but I am seeking clarification as to whether there is, within the Bill, “sustainability”. For that purpose, the powers identified in Clause 1 do not define it, and looking under key definitions in Clause 2, it does not appear to be there, either.

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I draw the noble Lord’s attention, and other noble Lords’ attention, to the first line on page 2. Even if it does not have the word “definition”, it is quite clearly a definition. It says:

“For the purposes of this section, English football is sustainable if it … continues to serve the interests of fans of regulated clubs, and … continues to contribute to the economic or social well-being of the local communities with which regulated clubs are associated”.