Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord O'Donnell Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 17th March 2025 Lords Chamber

The health of the entire pyramid matters profoundly to all of us, which is why we need a mechanism that respects its complexity, not one that is reductive, crude and intolerably risky for both sides. I hope these amendments and the debate they are encouraging can be an important step in creating a process that is fairer for all sides, more balanced in the outcomes it delivers, and more respectful of football’s intricate financial architecture, as well as the rights and interests of all parties.

[Lord O'Donnell (CB)]

My Lords, I support this amendment. I should declare my interest: I am passionate about football. Wembley has been mentioned, and I remember my first trip there was in 1968 to see my team, Manchester United, win the European Cup—alas, that may not happen again for a while. Like the noble Lord, Lord Birt, my former boss, I was at Wembley in 1973 and 1974; unlike him, I was playing, but it was not quite the same crowd, because it was the Oxford v Cambridge match, but I was there.

I will not repeat all the excellent arguments of the noble Lords, Lord Birt and Lord Burns, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, but I support them all. We are now observing the Government having issues with regulators, saying they are not taking due account of growth. I think this tells you, when setting up a new regulator, to think very carefully about what you want them to consider. These amendments go into detail about that; that is absolutely important, because the current process has this absurd system where there are two numbers and you have to choose one. When they are trying to work out the right balance, they need to take account of these factors, and these factors should be made clear.

There are two aspects to this. The first is to make things clear. The second is: if you want fairness and competitiveness to be really important, you also need guidance about trade-offs. In my experience dealing with regulators, those are some of the most difficult issues—that is where politics gets involved—so we need to be clear what we are asking the regulators to do, what they should be doing and what they should be referring to others.

We need clarity on the role of the regulator, guidance on inevitable trade-offs and, ultimately—I agree with many here—we need fairness. We must keep the Premier League at the pinnacle of the global game. If we succeed in that, then Premier League clubs will repeat Manchester United’s 1968 performance and win the European competitions.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by asking the Minister, when she responds to this debate, to identify specifically whether she intends to accept the amendments in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Birt, and others now or to change anything for Third Reading. I believe that we need absolute clarity of the position both for this and future debates.

I suggest that the Minister should look at the people proposing this amendment. This is not some party operation: we have a former head of broadcasting organisations who, as he identified, spent his time negotiating the original football broadcasting rights; a former Lord Chief Justice; a former senior civil servant; and a current senior lawyer. It is important that the Minister asks herself why it is impossible for her and her team to accept the carefully considered and detailed amendments that we are debating.

When I spoke at Second Reading, I identified a willingness to consider the proposal as it is in the Bill because, unlike the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, I have faith in people, other than just lawyers, able to take an impartial decision. I speak, as I have identified previously, as somebody who has spent many years negotiating with trade unions—and I use the word “with” deliberately, as I was across the table from them. I always regarded it as a failure if we did not get to an agreement between management and the trade unions.

I have considered what we are talking about carefully. I have not discussed it with my colleagues, but have looked at my industrial experience and asked myself whether the proposal put forward by the Government or that put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Birt, is better. There is an inherent misunderstanding of what we are talking about here. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, identified, we are not talking about two sides. Earlier today, the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, referred to the different levels of the competition—the Premier League, the Championship and the lower leagues—so it is not a question of one versus the other because, as sure as eggs are eggs, once you get into the discussion about allocation of resources, you discover that there are not two sides and a pendulum that swings from one direction to the other. There is a series of different interests all the way up the league table to the absolute top. Therefore, you cannot ask us to accept a process that awards to one side or the other, when there are not in fact two sides but several sides, which will respond very differently depending on where they are in the league structure in any season.

I started by asking the Minister a very serious question, which I will repeat: can she please give a very clear indication to the Chamber of what the Government’s view is of the very serious, excellently drafted and well-debated proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Birt, and others?