Lord Kennedy of Southwark
Main Page: Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Labour - Life peer)
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in paying tribute to my noble friend Lady Taylor of Bolton for putting this Question down for debate today. Football is a great part of our national life and of our local communities, and we need to have further debates in your Lordships’ House on these issues. At the outset, I should say that I have supported Millwall all my life, I am proud to be a season ticket holder and I declare an interest as such.
I very much agree with the other noble Lords who have spoken about improving the governance of football and giving the fans—the people who turn out loyally to support their teams every week during the season—a greater say in running their football clubs. Without the fans and without their loyalty, there would be no football clubs.
Like Supporters Direct, as my noble friends Lady Taylor of Bolton and Lord Knight of Weymouth said, I very much welcome the announcement by my friend and fellow Millwall supporter Clive Efford MP, detailing Labour’s plans for a shake-up of football governance. These plans will deliver on the objective of ensuring that fans have a real role in the ownership and running of their clubs. They will give supporters’ trusts the power to appoint or remove up to a quarter of the football club’s board of directors and create a formal relationship between the supporters’ trusts and their clubs. The importance of having a seat for fans at the boardroom table where decisions are made cannot be overstated. I am proud that Millwall is one of the clubs that has delivered on this. Mr Peter Garston was elected by all season ticket holders and Millwall Supporters Club members to the board of the club. I also welcome the proposal for a right to buy 10% of the shares on offer during a change of ownership.
As I said earlier, I have been a supporter of Millwall all my life; it is the local team in the part of south London where I grew up and where I live. It is situated inside the London Borough of Lewisham, just yards from the London Borough of Southwark. It is a great community-focused club with a proud history. Our songs from the terraces with lines like “No one likes us, we don’t care” and “Let ’em all come down to the Den” are known by many; some of the other things that the club does may not be.
Local residents will always be grateful for the support the club gave to the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign. The players supported the campaign on the pitch; they wore it on their shirts; they came on the marches; they brought the bus to the rallies and they brought the team mascot along so that the children and a few adults could have their photographs taken with him. They helped raise money that was used in the judicial review that proved so successful. The club understood how important the hospital’s survival was to the local community.
Various charities are supported by the club, including Prostate Cancer UK, Help for Heroes, the Jimmy Mizen Foundation and many others, including the London Taxi Benevolent Association for War Disabled, which raises money to send World War II veterans back to mainland Europe for commemorative events. In addition, local charities can write in to ask permission to hold bucket collections at the ground on match days. Collections are also held for the Peckham food bank on match days.
The club has refused to have anything to do with payday lenders; you will not find a single advert for them anywhere in the ground, in a match programme or on the club website. I congratulate the club for that and hope very much that, one day, no clubs will have anything to do with payday lenders.
In conclusion, I thank my noble friend for putting down this Question for Short Debate today. I wish we had more time to discuss it.