Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 4th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beith (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for his introduction to what I am going to say about Berwick Rangers. I declare an interest as having for some years been the honorary president of Berwick Rangers Football Club, which has existed for 143 years. During virtually the whole of that time, it has played in Scottish leagues, despite its stadium being in England. My amendment is there simply to secure clarification, which I am confident the Minister can give—although clarification would not necessarily survive subsequent amendment of the parts of the Bill to which I shall refer.

It appears to me that none of the regulatory provisions applies to a team in a competition that has not been specified by the Secretary of State. Under Clause 2(3), the Secretary of State does not have power to specify a competition in which the majority of the teams are not English teams. Thus, the Secretary of State could not designate the Scottish League, or the Lowland League or the Scottish Cup, in all of which Berwick play or have played.

Furthermore, Clause 15 makes it clear that operating licences are required only for a club operating a relevant team, which is defined in Clause 2(1) as a team participating “in a specified competition”. That would not apply to Berwick Rangers, because competitions in which they play could not, under the Bill, be specified. However, references in the same clause to a club with a stadium in England does raise in people’s minds the question about whether the Bill could be extended to Berwick—which would not be the Government’s intention, I am quite sure. Not only do they not seek to extend the Bill to Berwick Rangers, I do not think they are trying to move into the world of Scottish football, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Reid is well aware, is quite distinct in many respects, some of them desirable, some of them perhaps less so.

It has been the privilege of Berwick-upon-Tweed to play in Scottish football for almost the whole of its existence. Indeed, it has led to occasions on which we have played Glasgow Celtic, when I was able to welcome the noble Lord, Lord Reid, who came with the team for that fixture. We have played Glasgow Rangers on a number of occasions, defeating them in 1967 and holding them to a draw in the Scottish Cup on another occasion. To have a club playing such distinguished teams is obviously an asset to a town and, if there is any regulatory structure to be put in place, it should be the same one as for other teams in the Scottish league in which they play.

Berwick’s notable history is a very powerful case for making sure that any legislation deals properly with it. I am confident that the Government have no intention of causing us problems in this respect, but it would be helpful if the Minister could give us some clarification and would keep the matter in mind if there is any redrafting of this part of the Bill.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

I just want to make a point that has emerged in this short debate—or has become obvious to me in it. The first thing is to say to the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, that I take issue with his characterisation that England is “littered” with clubs from Wales. There are only four. There is another one at level 6, Merthyr, but that is not the point I want to make. I am concerned, looking at Clause 2, that subsection (3) refers to

“teams that are members of … or … participate in”

competitions being

“exclusively or predominantly English teams”.

However, Clause 2(4) says a team

“is an ‘English team’ if the ground at which the team customarily plays its home matches is in England”.

These are contradictory because, as we have heard, there are two Welsh clubs in the Championship, one in League One and one in League Two. So I think perhaps on Report there will have to be an amendment, which I am happy to bring forward if it is helpful to the Minister.

I also take the point that the noble Lord, Lord Beith, makes about Berwick Rangers, who made a contribution to Scottish football over many years. I was sorry to see them drop out of the Scottish League and I hope that they will soon be back. But they do play in Scottish football still at a lower level. It is unusual; UEFA, the governing body for European football, is very strict on clubs not playing their matches in another country. The practice of Welsh clubs playing in the Welsh FA Cup and representing their teams and cities in Europe was stopped by UEFA. Now it is only the much smaller Welsh clubs that are able to do that, because UEFA said that clubs had to choose which jurisdiction they were playing under. The only other example I can think of within the UK is Derry City. For reasons that might be quite obvious, since Derry is right on the border of the Republic of Ireland, they play in the League of Ireland, not the NI Football League.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Mann, with his very pertinent points on agents and fans. I rise briefly to support my noble friend’s Amendment 27 and to make a point about owners being fit for purpose, fans’ interests and consultations and unintended consequences. Along with other noble Lords, I spent last Friday afternoon with the shadow regulator. I asked whether they were aware of how unpopular they could be. I used the example that has already been used of Newcastle United, which has a new owner and a sovereign wealth fund, and the fans are excited because of the potential that brings. That is great, but what would this regulator make of the new ownership? Compare and contrast that with the previous owner, Mike Ashley.

Noble Lords will be aware of what Newcastle fans thought about Mike Ashley: in their eyes the team was underperforming and he was not investing in the club and its players. However, he was probably being prudent and working within the constraints of the rules of the game, and the regulator might have judged him to be a perfectly fit and proper person to run and own that club. I ask noble Lords to imagine a situation where the regulator says to a sovereign wealth fund owner, a country such as Saudi Arabia, “I do not believe you are a fit and proper person to take over and own this club”, but the fans think it would be wonderful. The regulator could end up in a situation with literally tens of thousands of protesters going down to Manchester from clubs like Newcastle.

As the noble Lord said, Brighton and Hove Albion supporters are very passionate, and he clearly did a good job there as a council leader. However, we know that fans will travel all around the country to support their team and we could end up with the unintended consequence of the regulator denying the potential of an owner to buy a club based on his set of rules and regulations, but tens of thousands of fans would disagree and we could have a situation where they would go down and protest. That could be one of the unintended consequences, so perhaps the Minister could let the House know whether the Government have thought of that.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 182 to 184 in the names of my noble friends Lady Taylor and Lord Bassam. I do so, as my noble friend Lord Bassam said, specifically in relation to Wimbledon—not AFC Wimbledon, at which I happen to be a season ticket holder, but Wimbledon, the previous club, which has now been moved 60 miles up the M1 to Milton Keynes. I want to focus on the situation prior to that happening, and that is why these amendments are relevant.

Ironically, in one of the debates on the Bill last week I talked about state intervention and mentioned the Taylor report. It was that report, published in, I think, 1991, which said that our grounds at the top level must be all seated. Wimbledon’s ground was too small and too cramped, with houses round about it, for that to be done, so they moved from there to a ground share with Crystal Palace, ostensibly on a short-term basis—it turned out that they would be there for more than 10 years, but that is not really relevant to this. The point is that the owner eventually sold the ground from under the fans to a supermarket chain, and subsequently sold the club to Norwegian owners. The point is that the fans were nowhere consulted in any of this, although they made their views clear. But the point is that the home ground is key to any football club and there has to be the long-term commitment to that.

My noble friend Lord Bassam talked about going up to Milton Keynes. The previous owner of Wimbledon FC wanted to move it to Dublin. That was a serious proposal. Thankfully, it came to nothing, of course. On this issue of whether a club can move, that is why the regulator is important. It is maybe lost in the mists of time that, when Wimbledon FC were about to be moved, the FA and the Football League opposed it, and the FA, totally wrongly, set up a commission, which gave the club permission to move to Milton Keynes. It was famously said that retaining the club in Wimbledon would be

“not in the wider interests of football”.

Well, 25 years later, Wimbledon FC, now in Milton Keynes, gets crowds of about 6,000 and AFC Wimbledon, the new club, gets crowds of about 8,000—so noble Lords can work out what is in the wider interests of football from that.

My concern is about the commitment to the club’s ground. It is important that, unless we can get a long-term commitment for when ownership is going to change, there is no reason why any ground could not be sold off, with a new owner claiming, “Well, I’ve had such and such an offer from a supermarket chain, I can’t possibly turn it down. I’ll build a new ground some time in the future, but I don’t know when”. That is why the word “codified” in Amendment 182 is particularly important. It needs to be nailed down, because the importance of the home ground cannot be overstated in terms of the investment of fans into their football clubs.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I am conscious that the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, has not been able to be with us today to speak to her Amendments 187A and 187B; I know she has a commitment to chairing some Welsh sports bodies, which I know the Committee will understand and support. I just wanted to draw the Committee’s attention to the two amendments that she tabled, which have been grouped together with the others that we have debated here. As her explanatory statement sets out, they aim to provide a route for the regulator

“for other individuals and groups of people, who may have more inside knowledge than the average fan, to act as whistleblowers and raise any concerns they have about the suitability of an owner or officer”.

It is regrettable that the noble Baroness has not been able to be here to set out the case more fully, but I am sure that noble Lords will pay attention to that and consider those amendments as well.