Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Maude of Horsham Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 11th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, I echo what the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, has said. I too have greatly benefited from the constructive engagement of the Minister and the Bill team, and I am very grateful to them for the time they have taken and the listening they have done to the concerns that were raised during Committee. I should declare my interests for today. One of my areas of practice is as a barrister of sports law; I represent Manchester City in disciplinary proceedings —and I am a supporter of Arsenal Football Club.

I have one lawyer’s point on Amendment 1 from the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson. His proposed new Clause 1(1A) and (1B) would put on the face of the Bill that the Secretary of State and the IFR, in exercising their functions, must have regard to the purpose of what will be the Act. That is entirely unnecessary because one of the basic principles of modern administrative law is that powers conferred under an Act may lawfully be used only to advance the objectives of the Act. That has been the law since the statement of Lord Reid in the Padfield case of 1968. It would be unfortunate if this Bill included something that is otherwise implicit in all legislation; it would cast doubt on Bills that do not include such provisions.

[Lord Maude of Horsham (Con)]

My Lords, I rise merely to add my support to what has been said, and to commend the Government for having been on a journey to recognise some of the points made in Committee, which, as my noble friend Lord Parkinson said from the Front Bench, was some two months ago. I hope I will not be thought ungracious if I simply comment that it was mildly irritating for us to be criticised for submitting this Bill to the scrutiny that we did in Committee, and to be accused of filibustering, when the Government were all the time listening to what we were saying and moving in the direction we were advocating.

I would merely comment that a number of us across the House advocated in Committee that an obligation to pursue growth in English football should be a key part of the purposes of the Bill. That was rejected by the Government at the time—almost contemporaneously with the Chancellor of the Exchequer using her bully pulpit to advocate that all the other regulators should be doing precisely what we were proposing.

We welcome the conversion and the journey, and we hope that more concessions will be made towards making the activities of this regulator less damaging than seemed to be the danger in the way the Bill was originally constructed. There will be more for us to discuss on that subject later.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

I will speak briefly about the growth amendment in my name. Like other noble Lords, I welcome the Government’s recognition of the importance of growth and, generally, I welcome the input from the Minister and the collaborative manner.

I want to make one point quite clear for the record. There are two main reasons for the success of the Premier League. First, as the noble Lord, Lord Birt, pointed out, it has 44% of the best players in the world. Secondly, every game is competitive. Why is that important in this context? Two elements that the regulator can be involved in could impact that. One is the backstop: if there is too much redistribution between the Premier League and the other leagues, the Premier League will no longer be able to attract the best players in the world, and that will impact the attractiveness of the sport. The other element is the parachute payments: if those are impacted to a degree that clubs no longer feel confident to invest in new players if they have just been promoted or are under threat of relegation—making those games less competitive—the Premier League will become less attractive.

That is why it is very important to put on the record that, instead of having one just dimension where the regulator considers the sustainability of clubs—that would always point it towards redistributing more money —it now has the twin objective of growth. That will mean that it needs to counter that with making sure that the Premier League and all of football is very successful—because it can attract the best players because it has the financial resources to do so—and that all clubs want to invest because they know that they have the safety net should they be relegated.

Again, I am very pleased to see that that extra dimension is now added in there. That will be an important point that the regulator will always have by its side as it considers the Bill.

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[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, in case everyone thought a bout of consensus had broken out, I beg to differ. I have some reservations about this group. I find myself at odds with the noble Lord, Lord Addington, which neither of us will be surprised by, but I also find myself at odds with the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, which is perhaps more surprising having been through Committee.

Let me raise some of my reservations. We have been consistently told that this legislation is necessary to protect football clubs precisely because they are such intrinsic parts of our community and interwoven into our society. It is those authentic, organic relationships with local areas and generations of fans I am worried this Bill could undermine. I am not convinced that the clubs need a regulator to add something that could become a performative and unnecessary corporate governance duty. That is one of my reservations.

I was also somewhat surprised to see the Government’s Amendment 32, making a club’s contribution to the economic and social well-being of its local community part of its corporate governance. That was somehow quite insulting, as though clubs need officialdom to tell them to be socially responsible. As the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, indicated, that is very much the ecosystem of connectedness that is in clubs’ DNA. There is a danger of overregulation here.

In a later group on regulatory principles, the Government’s Amendment 18—which I do welcome—states as a regulatory principle that the independent football regulator should have regard to whether any requirement or restriction is necessary before it imposes it and asks the IFR to consider

“whether a similar outcome could be achieved by less burdensome means”.

Amendment 32 seems to fail that test. I am worried about putting in the Bill a regulation that could be interpreted as asking football to take on responsibilities far removed from football in a regulatory fashion that makes them behave somewhere between social engineering and social work. I would like some reassurance that this will not contradict or add a burden of regulation on clubs in what they already are doing. Why do we need to have it written down in the Bill?

[Lord Maude of Horsham (Con)]

My Lords, I think there is a severe danger of there being a consensus around the sentiments, at any rate, reflected in this group of amendments. The point has been made by a number of your Lordships that this is what good clubs do. Successful clubs are deeply rooted in, and serve, their communities, act as a focal point for social action and social activity, and can do enormous good.

On Thursday evening, I shall go, in hope, to watch Tottenham play in the Europa League. The following morning, I shall attend the governors’ meeting of the London Academy of Excellence Tottenham, which is a brilliant sixth-form academy that serves disadvantaged young people with academic promise from across the community. Its principal business sponsor is Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. Its premises are in the Lilywhite House, which is the office headquarters of the club. It is brilliantly successful. Tottenham, like most successful clubs, is deeply entrenched and embedded in the local community.

I therefore have some sympathy when the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, asks about whether this is necessary. The clubs that take their social and community responsibilities seriously because that is what they need to do as part of their success and their obligations—it is part of the debt they owe to the communities they are part of—will not find it a regulatory burden, because they are, as the noble Baroness said, doing it already. While I am generally allergic to new regulatory powers when the case for them is not overwhelmingly proven, I am willing to make an exception in this case.

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, I would like to offer praise to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, for having a go at a very necessary social responsibility question in his Amendment 3, so I thank him for doing it. His name is also on Amendment 32 in this group, which is a distillation of what I think he would like to say to already successful clubs that are engaged in social responsibility in their area. Amendment 32 would be the one I would go for if a vote were called, whereas the noble Lord’s Amendment 3 has woken us up to the possibility that if you are working in a community and living in a community, you have a responsibility to it—you should not just take the money out.

As a vicar in Tulse Hill near Brixton, when most of our houses were not in very good shape and I was living in a vicarage, I felt that my duty and responsibility to Tulse Hill estate and St Martin’s estate was to engage the local council fully, and it agreed to provide a lot of change as a result. I understand the question of responsibility, but I think Amendment 32 gets what the noble Lord wants in Amendment 3, so he should go for Amendment 32 and not for Amendment 3.

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Moved by

[Lord Maude of Horsham]

8: Schedule 2, page 85, line 12, at end insert—
“3A “(1) The Secretary of State is to nominate a person (“the nominated person”) to be the chair.(2) The nominated person must appear before a relevant Parliamentary Committee if invited to do so.(3) The Secretary of State may not proceed with the appointment of the nominated person unless the relevant Parliamentary Committee has held a confirmatory vote if the Committee wishes to do so.(4) Where the relevant Parliamentary Committee has expressed a negative opinion on the appointment of the nominated person, the Secretary of State may not proceed with the appointment of the nominated person.(5) Where the relevant Parliamentary Committee has expressed a positive opinion on the appointment of the nominated person, the Secretary of State may proceed with the appointment of the nominated person.(6) A relevant Parliamentary Committee is any Committee of the House of Commons, or House of Lords, or of both Houses, which has notified the Secretary of State, in writing, that they have assumed the function of scrutiny of football regulation.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment provides that the chair may undergo pre-appointment scrutiny and be approved by a select committee of Parliament.

[Lord Maude of Horsham (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 8 is in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Goodman of Wycombe. I do not need to detain your Lordships for long on this.

The amendment puts into the Bill what the Minister has already committed to in her letter to my noble friend Lord Moynihan on 13 January, in which she said that the chair of the independent football regulator will be subject to pre-appointment scrutiny by the DCMS Select Committee. We welcome that commitment. It is a good commitment. Of course, her word is her bond. But her word is not necessarily the bond of future Ministers, and it is important that this commitment is in the Bill. It is very hard to see why there could be any objection to that.

I am not wedded to the wording of the amendment. If the Minister is inclined to say that she will bring back at Third Reading an improved version which gives effect in substance to what is contained in my amendment, I will be content not to press this amendment to a Division.

However, it is important to reflect on why it matters that this appointment, which will happen if this all goes through, will happen on a regular basis. New chairs will be appointed. The nature of the debates that we have been having in your Lordships’ Chamber today illustrates how important it is. It remains the case that what is being introduced for the first time is a regulator of a sport which includes the most successful sporting league in the world of any kind. English football is a huge success. We take risks with its success at our peril but also at the political peril of the Government of the day, who, if things go wrong, will rightly be blamed for setting this up in a way that has created that peril.

I know from my own experience that subjecting the chair of an important public appointment to scrutiny by a Select Committee can be hazardous. I remember an appointment that I made as a Minister was subjected to that scrutiny. The candidate whom we had selected did not measure up under the examination of the Select Committee. We had to re-run the process. That candidate had not shown themselves to be across the issues and the sensitivities, and that was an appointment which required strength and the ability to stand up to the Government and resist the blandishments of the Government, whoever the Government were—and it was the Government that I was a member of. The Select Committee was right. So it is important, given how the actions of this regulator can damage something which is important economically for the country but also very dear to the hearts of billions of people across the world. It gives pleasure and, periodically, as we all know, pain, to many of us. It is very important that the person carrying these awesome responsibilities is fully tested before they take up their role.

While we welcome the commitment that the Minister has made, that this appointment will be subject to scrutiny by the relevant Select Committee, I urge the House to support the idea that this commitment should be in the Bill, for other Ministers in the future who may not have the same good intentions that she has. Therefore, I urge the House to support this amendment, unless she is willing to commit that she will come back at Third Reading with something giving substantive effect to what this amendment would introduce. I beg to move.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords, to respond briefly to the noble Lord’s comments, I quite understand where he is coming from in ensuring a proper and effective process in securing good-quality public appointments. His reflections on his experience were very interesting.

However, this amendment possibly goes a bit too far. I am not sure the noble Lord would have approved of giving Parliament the effective veto that his amendment, looking at the detail, clearly does. I am sure my noble friend the Minister has made an offer in good faith to ensure that there can be pre-appointment scrutiny of the post of chair of the regulator. I hear what the noble Lord says but, tempting though it is, it would lead us down a path which is not common in our jurisdiction. I know that in the States, there are public appointment processes in which, effectively, Congress can veto an appointment, but I do not think that is the road that we want to go down.

[Lord Maude of Horsham (Con)]

Of course, it is right that it is usual for an adverse vote in a Select Committee where there is pre-appointment scrutiny to be only advisory. I cannot remember, but there may even have been an example of a Government ignoring that, and it has not been binding. If the Government want to come back with an alternative version which reflects the comments the noble Lord is making, I would be willing to withdraw the amendment in favour of that. But the reality, of course, is that whether in the Bill it is a binding vote of the Select Committee or an advisory vote, the effect is pretty much the same.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

Paragraph (4) of the noble Lord’s amendment says the following:

“Where the relevant Parliamentary Committee has expressed a negative opinion on the appointment of the nominated person, the Secretary of State may not proceed with the appointment of the nominated person”.

According to my interpretation, that is clearly a veto. I am sure the Minister will reflect on the noble Lord’s words.

The other amendments in the group which the Minister has tabled today, and which my noble friend Lady Taylor and I have signed up to, are pretty straightforward and I am sure the House will support them. They simply make sure that there is a proper process to ensure declaration and registration of members of the regulatory board and the expert panel, and I commend the Minister for bringing those forward.

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[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.

[Lord Maude of Horsham (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords for their contributions to this important debate. On the comments made at the outset by the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, I am open-minded about whether the Bill should contain what is effectively a veto or whether it should accord with the more usual practice. As I said, if the Minister were to give an undertaking that she would come back with an amendment framed in those terms at Third Reading, I would be willing not to press this amendment to a Division, but I have not heard that commitment from her, which is a disappointment.

We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who is obviously scarred by his personal experience. I simply remind him that hard cases make bad law, and his sounds like a particularly hard case, for which he has my sympathy.

The noble Lord, Lord Addington, seemed to be recommending—arguing, really—that there should be no pre-appointment scrutiny at all, let alone whether it should be in the Bill. Therefore, he is presumably urging the Minister to withdraw the commitment she has made that there should be pre-appointment scrutiny. On the substantive point he made in arguing that scrutiny would turn the regulator into a political football, the reverse is actually the case. It is important that the regulator should be genuinely independent, and my experience of observing these scrutiny procedures is that Select Committees are particularly concerned to test the capability of the nominee to exercise genuine, robust independence. Rather than turning the nominee into someone who is overly influenced by the scrutiny, it is to test whether they are capable of withstanding it. That is the consideration.

I am grateful for all contributions, but in the absence of the quite modest commitment I have requested the Minister to make, I want to test the opinion of the House on Amendment 8.