West Midlands Police: Maccabi Tel Aviv Fans

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for that question. I have already made it clear that the Policing Minister has written to West Midlands Police to find out precisely what intelligence it received about what happened in Amsterdam and how that is reflected in the various press reports. On a wider scale, we are looking at how intelligence is provided to safety advisory groups, through a review by HMI. On the noble Lord’s other point, of course, we deplore all kinds of public disorder at football matches.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, this was a disgraceful decision. First, can the Minister tell me why it is going to take HMI five months to come back with a review? It cannot take that long. Secondly, he will know that the inspectorate looked last year at the powers of intervention of the Home Secretary and said that legislation and guidance do not

“clearly define the boundary between police operational independence and appropriate external influence or accountability”.

Will he look again at a government response to that report?

[Lord Lemos (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend. On his first point, I have already said, but I am happy to stress, that we do not intend that feedback on the intelligence received from the Amsterdam match and HMI’s assessment of it waits until the overall report, which is due in March; the Policing Minister should have some information before that. We think it is very important that we review the safety advisory groups overall and how they are handled. On his second point, the Government do not interfere in operational police matters, except in very particular circumstances, but frankly, on this occasion, we were prevented from intervening because Maccabi Tel Aviv decided not to take its ticket allocation.