Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 2nd December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brady (Con)]

My Lords, I refer the Committee to my interests, which are declared on the register. I support Amendment 12 in the name of my noble friend Lord Maude, especially proposed new Clause 1(3)(f). This would set a clear success metric for the IFR that it should incentivise

“industry-led agreements on the distribution of”

the Premier League’s broadcast revenue. This is absolutely critical for the future collective success of the football industry.

We already know that UEFA has written an alarming letter to the Government which said, among other things:

“Mandating redistribution which affects the competitive balance in the game and wider European competition would be of concern to us”


and

“would … prevent amicable solutions being found”.

This is why UEFA says that the backstop should be “carefully reconsidered”. I understand and respect that this is what Ministers genuinely believe they have done in relation to the backstop powers, which we will discuss in much greater detail later. However, I profoundly disagree that the backstop provides any such incentives.

I draw noble Lords’ attention to the fact that earlier this year Dame Tracey Crouch, the chair of the fan-led review, called the backstop powers “nuclear … coding” never to be reached for. However, the Football League chair disagreed, and said he fully intends to use the mechanism and that it is entirely logical. To extend the analogy, in the Bill the Government are doling out nuclear weapons to football authorities. They are doing so in the belief that these weapons will somehow create space for diplomacy. However, the evidence is already very clear. In the real world, one side is ready to press the button and launch its missiles. The powers clearly do not place the incentives in the right place. If they did, we would already have a new agreement and the football bodies would not have been driven so far apart.

This is why I have tabled amendments to rebalance the backstop, so it can create proper incentives and space for good-faith negotiations and diplomacy. The fact that the Bill has led one party to believe it can launch a successful first strike is proof that these powers have manifestly failed in their purpose already. That is why I am so supportive of my noble friend’s amendment.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

I have a couple of questions for the noble Lord, Lord Maude, but first, the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, said that the amendments provide clear metrics. I do not think they do; they are very subjective, particularly Amendment 12. What is

“globally competitive in relation to audience and quality”?

Regarding the phrase

“continues to attract significant domestic and foreign investment”,

what is “significant”? I do not think it is helpful to include words like that.

For what it is worth—my noble friend the Minister probably will not like this—I think paragraphs (e) and (f) of Amendment 12, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Maude, make sense, because we can clearly see what they mean. I would say the same of the Amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson. Amendment 7 is rather rambling and unclear and is not suitable for inclusion the Bill. We need something clear that can be measured, rather than words like “substantial”, which could mean anything or nothing.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Watson, just used two words which are of significance: “subjective” and “clear”. The problem with the Bill as drafted, judging from the lengthy debate we had last Wednesday and today’s proposed amendments, is that we are trying to provide clarity in relation to very subjective words, not least of which is “sustainability”, which is used several times. All these amendments are about looking at ways of making things clear, so that the football regulator can operate in some form or another.

The noble Lord was present throughout the debate last week, and during that debate I spoke about the threat to which the noble Lord, Lord Maude, has referred: that other sports and organisations will overtake our system—the Premier League and the other leagues—unless it is able to modernise and change as time goes on. What worries me genuinely about the Bill as drafted is that it almost implies ossification. It is an immovable process, because “sustainability” is just not clear.

Let us look at what we have seen in the past few days in terms of sport. This weekend the Middle East hosted a Grand Prix, a cricket tournament and a rugby tournament, so let us look at what might happen elsewhere. Equally, the Champions League, as was referred to in a previous debate, is changing and expanding. This Bill arose from a government reaction—an overreaction, probably—to the threat of a European super league whereby a set of clubs would be in a league of their own, never challenged. Quite rightly, the nation’s fans—not just this nation but a whole series of other nations—rose up and said that that is utterly unacceptable. Despite that, some clubs still believe that that is the right way to go. The Champions League has extended and we have the UEFA Conference League, et cetera. They are involving more and more British football clubs, and I welcome the success.

In referring to the football results of the past few days, I apologise profusely to my noble friend Lady Brady. But the success of the Premiership was identified in the fact that, albeit only briefly, Brighton & Hove Albion were second in the Premier League. That does not imply an unchanging, rigid position; it implies that the Premiership and the league system can develop. I was listening to the commentary on Liverpool v Manchester City—I apologise to any Manchester City fans for referring to yesterday’s game—and it was striking that, before the game, Radio 5 Live observed that there were more foreign correspondents covering that match than were covering the Liverpool v Real Madrid game only four days earlier. That indicates the very success and potential our system has—as long as it is reasonably developed and allowed to progress.

I have doubts, to be honest, about my noble friend Lord Parkinson’s amendment, because I do not think it goes far enough. I welcome that of my noble friends Lord Maude and Lady Evans, because it gives the Bill a better perspective and tries to provide clarity beyond the merely abstract word “sustainability”, and to develop some other aspects to which the football regulator should refer.

When I spoke last week, I was highly critical of the impact assessment, and I continue to be so. I know that it is largely based on the impact assessment prepared for the previous Bill, so I do not criticise the Minister; I criticise my colleagues in the previous Government just as much. However, I said that the impact assessment was intended to justify the current Bill, and that is made clear in paragraph 17:

“This Impact Assessment (IA) provides evidence and analysis to support the government’s case for intervention”.


In other words, it is providing support specifically for this Bill. It does not look at a range of other issues, which my noble friend Lord Goodman identified when he quoted from Tracey Crouch’s original report, relating to the overall success of the football industry in this country.

I believe that we need to provide greater clarity and greater indications of what we are trying to protect, develop and allow to go forward. Although last week I criticised the total lack of reference to “success” in the impact assessment, and I stick by that, I was very pleased, in part, to receive the letter from the Minister, page two of which has a section entitled “Proportionality and promoting success”. That is the attitude I want to see reflected in the Bill, in whatever phraseology we choose.

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[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friends Lord Markham and Lord Maude of Horsham for speaking to their amendments and for setting out the case for them. Before the Minister responds to them and to my Amendment 7, which I moved at the outset, I should say that I am not precious about my amendment vis-à-vis those of my noble friends in this group, Amendments 12 and 13.

The noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, said that he did not like my wording and found it rambling and insubstantial. I take no offence; I simply took the wording that the Government used in the Explanatory Notes and sought to put that in the Bill. If he finds that rambling, it may be that the Explanatory Notes are as well.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

The point I was making was that the wording was appropriate for the Explanatory Notes but not for the Bill.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord. My noble friend Lord Hayward said that he did not much like it either, but it is helpful that my amendment has been grouped with the other amendments, which are seeking to give a bit more precision than the two short lines that are in the Bill. As I said in moving my amendment, my contention is that they do not go far enough to define what “sustainability” means in practice, which will be important for the regulator looking at it.

I am grateful to my noble friends, particularly my noble friend Lord Markham, whose Amendment 13 proposes a few tangible benchmarks through which sustainability can be measured. It suggests inserting criteria, including increasing TV viewership, increasing match attendance, improving international sporting competitiveness and increasing the overall income generated. They are all very tangible and specific. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Watson, will prefer them and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about them when she responds.

Criteria such as those would provide a far more accurate and reliable understanding of the sustainability of English football. As my noble friend Lord Markham said, we all want to make sure that we are helping to deliver that with this Bill and to give the regulator the clarity that it needs to uphold it. The Premier League’s television exports alone were worth £1.4 billion in 2019-20. If the Government are serious about growth and supporting the success of Great British success stories, the regulator must ensure that that growth trajectory goes only upwards. By basing the standards of sustainability on objective metrics, such as those that my noble friends Lord Markham and Lord Maude have tried to set out, football would surely benefit, and the regulator would have the clearer frames of reference that I think we are looking for.

As my noble friend Lord Hayward said, there is competition from a growing number of countries that are snapping at our heels. As the noble Lord, Lord Addington, reminded us, there is no divine right for football to continue to exist in the way that it does in this country. My noble friend Lord Hayward pointed out some of the sporting fixtures that have happened this weekend. I enjoyed the Qatar Grand Prix, although I thought that the 10-second penalty for Lando Norris was rather disproportionate, especially since no safety car and no virtual safety car were deployed. I mention that not to take us on to another sport but to point out the difficulties that happen when a regulator—in this case, the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile—makes curious or contentious decisions.

Through the amendments in this group, we are seeking to give a clarity of purpose to the regulator, so that it can focus its important work on delivering the sustainability of English football in a way that matches what the Government have set out in their Explanatory Notes. For all the differences that have been expressed, I think that we are all united on that. But it is important that we give this extra precision and clarity, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.

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[Lord Maude of Horsham (Con)]

My Lords, the complexity of this debate—it is structurally complex as well as dealing with complex issues—illustrates how important it is that we explore these issues, because in every debate that we have another layer of the multifaceted success that is current English football becomes exposed and illuminated.

My noble friends’ amendments suggest that the regulator should be required to consider future fans as well as current fans and to take into account all fans not just fans in the locality. The truth is that, 20 years ago, there would not have been support across the world, particularly for the major clubs. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, just said, this is not limited to the top level of clubs. This is a moving scene. Globalisation, for all its critics, has not come to an end; this is more of a global village than it was. Top-level football in England is much more international than it was in terms of the background of footballers who play here, and that is unlikely to become less so. As more and more of the world’s population have access to a variety of television channels, there will be more. We can only expect the degree of global interest and support for English football clubs to grow. This is a moving scene, and we should be clear that if we are going to have this regulator, the regulator should think in those terms and to be aware of it.

Of course, there will continue to be an incredibly important local fan base for every club. I was a Tottenham supporter when I lived in Oxfordshire, when I lived in Warwickshire, when I lived in London and now when I live in Sussex. My son, who is also a Tottenham supporter, feels it so strongly that he bought a house five minutes away from the marvellous Tottenham stadium, so he has now become a local supporter having been a distant supporter. This will continue to be the way in which support for football clubs develops, and it is important. My noble friend does us all a service by raising the point and developing the complexity of the issues that we are dealing with here and that we might, if we do not get this right, be putting in jeopardy.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak primarily to Amendment 17A in my name. Before I do so, I want to reflect on some of the contributions that we have heard, largely on the last group of amendments but spilling over into this one. I am a bit concerned that, while the Bill is about the regulator of English football, several noble Lords have said that it would be appropriate to extend it beyond the confines of England.

I understand the economic arguments for that. I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan of Chelsea, who asked: are we really saying that we do not want English football equivalents of American football teams coming here? I saw American baseball at the London Stadium this year and thoroughly enjoyed it. But I do not care about their leagues. I do not care what effect it has on their leagues or their fans; it is up to them.

I do care about the effect of sending games abroad, as other noble Lords have said, and playing competitive matches: not touring matches, as my noble friend Lord Knight said, but competitive matches in other countries. That would be, to put it mildly, a very slippery slope and it would impact on something that the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, said in the last debate about comparing other sports. There is a very worrying trend of other sports—such as the grand prix that took place at the weekend—being funded to outrageous extents by foreign, often repressive and undemocratic Governments, to ensure that sports go to their countries. I do not want to see that sort of magnet placed in the way of football clubs in this country.

[Lord Hayward (Con)]

Can I clarify what the noble Lord has just said? He described the sporting events in the Middle East over the weekend—which were cricket, rugby and motor-racing—as “worrying”. Receiving literally millions of pounds of income for a football club or other sport in this country—is that really worrying?

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

It is absolutely worrying. These countries have the right to do what they like with their money, but we have a right to say, “I don’t really wish to engage with that”, because we become tainted if we do that to an unlimited extent. That is a slightly different argument from that of playing competitive matches in other countries. That surely is something that we all agree would be bad for the future of English football. There are plenty of ways of bringing money in from all sources—if clubs want to do that, it is up to them—but playing matches outwith this country is surely not where we want to go.

That impacts on the whole question of fans and my amendment, which is: what is a fan? I do not know whether my amendment is the way we should define it, but I think it is the narrowest definition of a fan that I have heard so far in relation to this Bill. How do you define the Liverpool fan in San Diego? What does she or she have to say about what is happening in the Premier League? They may watch it on television and that is fine. They may express a very definite preference for one club, and they are entitled to do so. But they do not have a vested interest in the club in the way that someone who pays their money to go and see a match does.

I will repeat the point that I made last week. Some people are unable to afford the price of tickets, particularly in the Premier League—although I have to say in all honesty that I bought a theatre ticket last week, which cannot really be equated with the cost of a Premier League football ticket. But the other question is whether some people are physically unable to go. It may be somebody who has been going since they were 10 years old; they reach the age of 70 and find they are no longer able to go. I would sympathise with that.

However, we have been talking in the Bill about the regulator ensuring consultation with fans. You cannot consult somebody if you do not know where he or she lives. There has to be a list somewhere of the people you are going to consult. You cannot just open it up online and say, “Anybody with an interest, let us have your view by email”. That is not consulting—or at least consulting properly. So people who have bought into the club by having a season ticket: that is a reasonable way of saying, “These are the only fans we can genuinely define”. You can put them in a box and say, when it comes to consultation, “That’s the group of people because they have put their names in”.

They do not go to every match, of course. I often laugh when I read the football results and they show the attendance. I do not mean any disrespect to Arsenal, but I will use them as an example. They are going rather well at the moment, but they were not going well five years ago in the latter days of the Arsène Wenger period. You would see a match the Emirates Stadium and it was perfectly clear that there were almost as many empty seats as filled seats, yet the next day the papers would say the attendance was 100 short of capacity. That means the club is saying, “Ah, now, but we’ve sold those seats. Season ticket holders have bought them but they’re not very happy at the moment so they haven’t come”. My argument is, “Okay, that’s fine, but the key to the attendance is the word ‘attend’. If people don’t go, there’s not an attendance”. Still, the point is that these people have made a financial commitment to the club, and that is a basis on which to go forward.

That is why I disagree with the other amendments in this group, particularly Amendment 26 from the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and Amendment 17 from the noble Lords, Lord Markham and Lord Parkinson, which refers to those

“who have an interest in seeing the club succeed”.

That is so vague; we have to have some way of pinning it down. If there is a better way of doing that than through season ticket holders, I am open to that suggestion and I will consider it. But, until then, I believe that is the only basis on which we can do it. I also want to see it in the Bill.

[Baroness Brady (Con)]

Suppose we base it on season ticket holders. If you take a club such as Bournemouth, whose capacity is 11,000-ish, it will probably have 4,000 season ticket holders—but they would not represent all the views of every Bournemouth supporter in the whole world.

In relation to supporters around the world, if a supporter gets on a plane from Sweden to watch Bournemouth play, are they a supporter or not? Some 5% of inbound flights to the UK involve taking in a Premier League game—I mean, the Premier League could run a successful airline. Putting that point to one side, though, it would be impossible for a regulator to try to rank supporters of the club in order of priority. We all know, respect and love our season ticket holders, but not everyone is lucky enough to get a season ticket—particularly if you are a Bournemouth supporter, because the capacity is only 11,000-odd.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

On the noble Baroness’s last point, I do not want the regulator to be doing this. That is why I want it in the Bill. This is not an issue where there can be any subjectivity. There has to be something tight.

Bournemouth may have season ticket holders in Sweden, I do not know, and if they come, they come. If they do not come, though, they are still a season ticket holder, so they are entitled to be consulted. But, if there is no financial commitment, I just do not understand how you can possibly meaningfully take the opinion of someone who just says, “Yeah, I’ve been at a couple of Liverpool games, I always watch them on TV and I’ve bought a scarf”. I am open to suggestions as to how we might pin this down better, but pin it down in the Bill we must.

[Lord Mann (Lab)]

My Lords, when it comes to taking opinion, I would rather not complicate things, but the divides that appear to be there are rather false ones, talking about issues that are not contained in the Bill but are contained on other issues.

I currently chair a supporters’ group that has branches all over the world. It has members—some season ticket holders, some not—who attend football. I am quite satisfied that the Bill says that supporters’ groups of different kinds should be consulted on issues that are of relevance to them.

I have a slight liking for “current and prospective” in the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, but possibly for different reasons from him, and I am not sure it can be encapsulated in statute, so I do not warm to the wording, even if I do to part of the meaning.

There is a danger at the moment that football, especially the Premier League and the higher echelons of the Championship, is full of people who are more like me, rather than young children. Season ticket waiting lists in the Premier League are prodigiously difficult to get up. There are long queues and many children are in them, which is a dilemma. Unless stadiums get bigger and bigger, which I would encourage, how do we get in the next generation of fans? If you do something as absurd as a team in Manchester has done and make it £66 for a child, in the long term you will probably lose competitive advantage. But the family and the children are losing something which is quintessentially British and English: being able to support their local team and occasionally go.

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[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I hope I might be allowed to say a few words about my amendment in this group, if everybody is okay with that.

I asked for a definition of “fans” because I had a nightmare, and this discussion featured largely in it. A fan is a self-selecting person who has made a commitment. If there is another definition out there, save it, please.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

A financial commitment.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

They have made a financial commitment or signed a pledge—I do not know, but they have made a commitment. They have said that they are a part of this and there is no compulsion; they have made a decision. That is why I felt we should have this in the Bill.

Apart from anything else, this is British law we are talking about, and the English leagues. I do not know why we are bothering discussing what people in South Korea or San Francisco are doing, because we can only deal with what is in our own legal framework. If they join a group over here and make a financial or long-term commitment, maybe then they are consulted. But it is here in the UK that you have to make a commitment; it is about the local base. These people are committing to something which is located in a place. That is why I tabled this amendment. My noble friend got to the guts of it when he said that it is an emotional commitment.

We need some guidance on what the Government are going to say. You are not going to keep everybody happy, clearly, but let us at least know why we are unhappy, and we will see what we can do about it at another stage if that is appropriate. That is what my amendment is for, and I hope we can reach that point with all rapidity.

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[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, very briefly, I support my noble friend Lord Parkinson’s excellent amendment. I think it is unarguable that in the last hour we have demonstrated why we need that amendment, because no one agrees what “local” means. I think that is a very important point. This whole debate reminds me of Humpty Dumpty in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, when Humpty says:

“When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less”.


We do not really know what “local” means. My noble friend Lord Moynihan of Chelsea talks about the importance of international fans. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Watson, that I fundamentally disagree with Amendment 17A because I think it is socially regressive and would lock out many people. It would actually go against my noble friend’s Amendment 8 in terms of getting new generations of fans involved: not everyone can afford a season ticket.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

I accept that, and I hope I made that clear earlier—but how do you consult the other people? You do not know who they are.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

The noble Lord asks a very reasonable question. I actually pray in aid the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Addington, because, for all his frustration with this debate, his Amendment 26 has at least tried to answer the question of what a fan is and what “local” means, and therefore I am quite predisposed toward that amendment. My only problem is that it absolves this House and Ministers from solving the problem, by kicking it into the long grass, so to speak, of the independent football regulator. So I agree with that amendment, but the noble Lord’s amendment is too restrictive.

When I was a child, I used to go to Charlton Athletic, the Valley, which in the good old days had a 66,000 capacity. Because I was a Charlton fan, vicariously, through my father, does that mean I could not be a fan of Millwall, which is in almost the next borough, the London Borough of Southwark? Could I not have been a fan of Crystal Palace, in the London Borough of Croydon? Could I not have been a fan of Leyton Orient, in the London Borough of Waltham Forest? You get into a rabbit hole of really difficult decisions if you do not properly talk about what is “local”.

I will finally finish by reminding your Lordships that, at Second Reading, I mentioned the importance of supply chains, because although fans are important, so is the wider football community. That includes businesses, commerce, supply chains, the people who sell the hot dogs and the prawn sandwiches, the people who provide the footballs, and the people who do the advertising, etcetera. We are dancing on the head of a pin, because—with all due respect to the people in the Box—the Bill is not well drafted. We have a responsibility to point that out. For that reason, I implore the Minister specifically to support my noble friend Lord Parkinson’s Amendment 9.