Coventry City Football Club

Marcus Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Bob Ainsworth (Coventry North East) (Lab)]

I thank you, Mr Caton, for presiding over our debate, and I welcome the Minister to her role. I was greatly helped by her predecessor, the right hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Hugh Robertson), and I can only hope that she is as capable and willing as he was. I pay tribute to him for the job that he did as Minister with responsibility for sport.

Over the past 18 months, the most vicious and destructive battle has been waged at Coventry City football club. Sadly, it has not been about football; it is a fight for land and property. The Ricoh arena was built and paid for by local and national taxpayers and a highly thought of local charity, the Alan Edward Higgs Charity. It was built to create jobs and economic activity in a deprived part of the city, and because the football club was not financially capable of building it itself. The club’s hedge-fund owners and its boss, Joy Seppala, want the stadium, the freehold and the surrounding land, but they do not want to pay more than a pittance for it, and have moved the club out of the city and nearly destroyed it in order to achieve that.

Part of the club was put into administration seven months ago. The owners have repeatedly claimed, through solicitors and direct statements, that the company owed rent to the stadium but had no assets. Documentation has now come to light that shows that to be untrue. Since 1 June 1995, this company, now in liquidation, has owned the club’s rights, title, and assets, all its playing staff, its good will, and the right to play in the league. Why did the administrator, Mr Paul Appleton of David Rubin & Partners, fail to discover that? He claims that he spent thousands of hours conducting his investigation. He possesses the full powers of an officer of the court. He is supposed to have ability. He charges more than £300 an hour. Despite protests from bidders, creditors and me, as MP for the local area, he sold the company that was in his charge without finding out what he was selling, thereby ensuring that the owners were the successful bidders. I ask the Minister why those who put companies into administration are able to avoid scrutiny and loss, at the expense of creditors, by choosing their own administrator. Now the appalling error has come to light—let us call it an error—can we ensure that an independent liquidator is appointed to look at the situation in Coventry?

Let me ask about the role of the Football League in this sorry tale. It told me that it acted to prevent another Milton Keynes Dons by changing its rules. I asked representatives to put that in writing, and they e-mailed me saying that the Football League board would not allow the club to move away from Coventry without demonstrating a clear plan to return within a prescribed time frame. The Football League then allowed the club to move to Northampton. Did the club show the league a plan, as it said it would require it to do, before it agreed to the move?

The Minister’s predecessor asked the league that question for me. My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) and I went to see him in July, and he agreed to write to the Football League on this and other issues. Has the current Minister received a reply to that question?

The Football League has admitted administrative errors in the registration of players, but it has refused to say for how long that error continued, or to give any details of the error. With the new evidence about the structure of the club coming to light, will it look again at that decision? Will it give us the detail of those errors that it admits it made? That would show a little good will to the Sky Blues fans who feel that the league has let them down badly on this issue. Will the league uphold the conditions that it said that it had placed on the club when it returned the golden share to it?

Finally, and most importantly, I want to talk about whether we can get the club back to Coventry. This lunchtime, there was a small demonstration outside Council house. Fans are understandably desperate to see the club back in Coventry. Joy Seppala admits, however, that she is not interested in football and is not a fan. She is interested in her investors and describes herself as the shepherd of other people’s money. She says that she is £60 million down. She claims she was not involved in the catastrophic decision to buy the club in 2007. If I were a Sisu or a Sconset investor, one of her sheep, I would ask questions about that, but she says that she wants a return for her investors.

It is repeatedly claimed that a new stadium will be built near Coventry. It is said that it would cost around £25 million—nothing like the Ricoh arena. As Joy Seppala cannot get the fans to go to Northampton, it is estimated that she and her organisation are losing at least £3 million a year for at least the next three years as a result of playing their home matches in Northampton. If we add the £25 million to the £9 million probable losses from the club’s current course of action, that is £34 million. If she wants, as she has said, the stadium, the surrounding land and the freehold of that land, why does she not make a bid? Why is she incapable of making a bid of around £34 million? If she made a bid of that magnitude, she would be getting a casino and a conference centre thrown in for nothing, but she has not made that bid, and she will not do so. The question is why.

[Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way and commend him for securing this debate. Many of my constituents and I are long-term supporters of the Sky Blues and are absolutely devastated at what has gone on. Does he not agree that, in regard to having a successful football club in Coventry, the club must own a greater stake in the Ricoh arena if it is to make the business viable, wash its face, and give us the sort of success that we are looking for, bearing in mind the council tax payers in Coventry and the money that they have put in? Does he agree that all parties need to get round the table, and that it is imperative that Sisu look to open negotiations with Coventry city council?

[Martin Caton (in the Chair)]

Order. This is a short debate.