Maccabi Tel Aviv Fan Ban

Nigel Huddleston Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dame Karen Bradley (Staffordshire Moorlands) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for granting this statement.

The banning of away fans at football matches is highly unusual in this country. The imposition of such a ban on fans from another country is almost unprecedented. The fact that the ban was on fans of an Israeli club playing at a venue situated among sizeable Muslim communities added a level of political sensitivity. That is why the Committee took the unusual step of writing to the then chief constable of West Midlands police to seek an explanation. We were surprised by what this simple request eventually exposed.

Our report covers conclusions about three organisations: West Midlands police, which is responsible for providing advice to the safety advisory group of Birmingham city council; the SAG itself, both in Birmingham and more generally; and the Home Office, including its liaison across Government. I will take them in turn.

Our inquiry uncovered serious failings in the way that West Midlands police gathered and presented information and intelligence in advising on this fixture. While the fixture was rightly identified in advance as high risk, and the initial assumption was for away fans to attend, consultation was limited. The police relied to a disproportionate extent on a single conversation between a chief inspector from West Midlands police and the Dutch police about the behaviour of Maccabi fans at a match against Ajax in Amsterdam in November 2024. The Dutch police strongly disputed the WMP version of events, which included claims that 500 to 600 Maccabi fans were involved in disorder that targeted local communities, that they had links to the Israel Defence Forces, and that they threw local fans in the river.

We cannot be sure what was said in that conversation because, unbelievably, the meeting notes were destroyed by West Midlands police. We now know, however, that some of the information relating to the conduct of the Maccabi fans was generated by artificial intelligence—Microsoft Copilot, to be precise. The use of AI by West Midlands police was under consideration at the time, but was not authorised at that stage. What we found extraordinary, though, is that the information used to support such a significant decision—whether from AI or elsewhere—was not cross-checked with other sources.

Not only did WMP fail to do due diligence on the information that it presented to the SAG, which was responsible for taking the decision to ban away fans, but it failed to prepare properly to give accurate information before the Committee. The then chief constable told us explicitly that AI was not used by West Midlands police, and that the reference to a match against West Ham— a completely fictitious game that was cited as one of the reasons for banning the away fans—had resulted from a Google search. He had subsequently to apologise that that was not the case. Precisely how West Midlands police managed to generate inaccurate information using AI to inform the intelligence picture related to this match is the subject of an ongoing inquiry by the Independent Office for Police Conduct, so I am sure we will hear more on that in due course. Although we accept that the former chief constable did not deliberately misinform the Committee, he should have ensured that he came armed with the facts rather than with complacent platitudes followed by humble apologies.

However, it is not the issues relating to competence that are the most damaging to the reputation of WMP; it is those around balance—balance in the information presented to the SAG, which consistently emphasised the unique risk from the Maccabi fans and downplayed the risk emanating from local communities in Birmingham. Intelligence around elements in these communities threatening to “arm themselves” against Maccabi fans was not relayed to the SAG.

There was also imbalance in community engagement. WMP acknowledged that it failed to engage with the Jewish community early enough, in contrast with a full programme of engagement with other communities. It apologised for that and for managing to mislead the Committee on the extent of engagement, and acknowledged the damage done to relations with the Jewish community in the west midlands. We welcome the commitment of the new acting chief constable this week to continue WMP’s efforts to rebuild trust with the Jewish community and, more broadly, to address each of our recommendations. I cannot stress strongly enough how vital it is that the Jewish community in Birmingham and the west midlands are able to feel trust in their police. At the moment, they simply do not.

As I have indicated, responsibility for the decision to exclude the Maccabi fans ultimately rested with Birmingham city council, through the provision of a safety certificate for the event. The role of the SAG was to provide specialist safety advice regarding the event. In reaching its conclusions on advice relating to public order, SAG is heavily reliant on the advice of the police. We reviewed the content of all three SAG meetings that provided advice on the fixture. Having done so, we were not surprised that the chair of the SAG wrote to WMP seeking further clarity on the rationale for the ban on away fans. There were clearly some who were uncomfortable with that decision—not just Aston Villa, who said they were happy to host away fans, and the leader of Birmingham city council, who expressed to us both his discontent with the decision and his respect for the operational independence of the police and the integrity of their advice.

In respect of the role of the SAG in this decision, we concluded that it failed to apply sufficient challenge to the clear recommendation of WMP regarding the banning of away fans, and that it lacked the capability to balance the interests of local communities and those of the police against broader national and international considerations, given the unusual sensitivities surrounding this particular fixture. We welcome the review of guidance to SAGs being undertaken by the Cabinet Office, and we recommended in our report that that should consider whether an escalation process is required to handle such rare but highly consequential circumstances.

As part of its review of the governance of SAGs, the police should review the presence of elected politicians on what are essentially safety-oriented committees. As I have said, it is unusual for there to be a political context to SAG decisions, but that was the case here. Although we did not see evidence of political pressure regarding the decision to ban away fans—we simply do not know what conversations went on behind the scenes —we did note that the Muslim councillors on the SAG, who had publicly stated views on whether the match should take place at all, had “a disproportionate opportunity” to influence the decision of the SAG. We concluded that elected politicians should not sit on SAGs.

Finally, we scrutinised the role of the Home Office in the decision-making process, and that of the Government. Strictly speaking, there should not have been a role for the Government in a decision taken at local authority level on the operational advice of the police, but No. 10 recognised at an early stage the political significance of the match and asked the Home Office to be kept informed of developments. There was also a Department for Culture, Media and Sport interest, as that Department has lead responsibility for the safety of sports grounds.

This was a test of the ability of the Government as a whole to identify whether they should have a role in the decision and, if so, to share information internally to enable any intervention to be made in a timely and effective manner. I am afraid to say that that test was failed. The Government were informed on 6 October—a month before the match—that a ban on away fans was the likely outcome of the SAG process. It was the “working assumption”. If the Government did not find this outcome politically palatable, you might think, Madam Deputy Speaker, that they would take prompt action to avert it—for example, by providing the necessary additional resources to enable the fixture to be policed safely and go ahead. No such attempt was made. The Home Secretary and Ministers were not told definitively that there would be a ban on away fans, but we know that she was briefed that it was a possible option. Home Office officials were aware that a ban was the likely outcome. We still do not know precisely when Ministers in the Home Office, DCMS and No. 10 were informed of this.

It was only on 16 October, when the decision was announced, that the Government intervened—in the form of a post on X by the Prime Minister, saying that it was the wrong decision. Only at this point did officials begin exploring options with the police to enable away fans to attend.

The Home Secretary argued that respect for the operational independence of the police did not allow earlier intervention, but this principle was inconsistently applied. If the Government could intervene publicly after the decision, could they not have intervened privately before the decision? We concluded that they could have done so in a way that respected the operational independence of the police and reduced rather than inflamed tensions.

In the event, Maccabi Tel Aviv did not take up their allocation of tickets and the issue went away, but not without considerable damage being done to the reputation of WMP, to trust in the police by the Jewish and other communities in Birmingham, and to the integrity of decision making around the policing of football and sporting events. We welcome the review of this decision-making process announced by the Government and have urged them to look again at a previous review of the policing of football by Baroness Casey. We look forward to examining the results.

[Nigel Huddleston (Droitwich and Evesham) (Con)]

I thank the Chair of the Select Committee and her team for their work. I agree with all of their conclusions. On her last point, about who knew what when, does she agree that it is now very clear that the Government were not co-ordinating effectively, that they seemed to be asleep at the wheel, and that Ministers and/or officials at the Home Office and DCMS were clearly not co-ordinating with each other on what is transparently a very sensitive issue, because they knew about the possibility of the ban weeks before the decision was made and appear to have done absolutely nothing?

[Dame Karen Bradley]

I thank the shadow Secretary of State for his question, and I agree with what he said. I will give the Minister for Policing and Crime, who was new in her post, credit for coming in front of the Committee and giving us a full account of what happened, but having been a Minister in the Home Office, I cannot believe that somebody did not spot the possibility of this problem and that alarm bells were not ringing. An earlier intervention—privately and behind the scenes, not impacting on operational independence—could have averted this whole problem. It could have been done without anybody knowing that there was a working assumption to ban the away fans, and the match could have gone ahead in the normal way.