Football Governance Bill

Oliver Heald Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 23rd April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda), as I have been watching Reading since 1965 and the last two years have been as miserable a time as any—even if supporting Reading is often through thick and quite a lot of thin.

Like everyone else in the House, I welcome the eventual arrival of the Bill. I pay tribute to Ministers for finally getting to this point, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Dame Tracey Crouch) for her work on the fan-led review. Much of the Bill is welcome and necessary, but it is worth putting it into a historical context. As I say, I grew up watching football in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, when it was terrible. It was described at the time as a slum game in slum facilities. Grounds were crumbling, the fan experience was terrible and there was a huge amount of violence. Because some football fans behaved like animals, all fans were treated like animals, and it was altogether miserable.

Today, however, the top end of football is regarded around the world as one of the best things about this country. I remember a former tourism Minister telling me that the three things that make people like Britain and want to come here are the royal family, the BBC and premier league football, so it is important to put the various legitimate criticisms of things that happen in football into that context. The premier league has done some great things for English football, but this Bill comes from a fan-led review, and every proposal should be assessed as to whether it serves the interests of fans at all levels of the game. We need an independent regulator because the leagues, and therefore the clubs, cannot be trusted to regulate themselves.

[Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend and I were both there in 2006 when Reading won the championship, putting four past Derby. What a moment that was. I do not know whether he agrees, but I think the current players and manager are doing a cracking job just to keep the club alive.

[Damian Green]

I echo that. The fans, the players and the staff have formed a bond of survival against Dai Yongge, which shows the strength of feeling that all football fans have for their club. That is what we want to enhance.

There have been debacles such as the European super league and the increasing number of clubs whose fans have suffered—it is not just Reading, although Reading has featured a lot in this debate because it is the latest example. We hope that no more fans will have to suffer in the way that we have suffered.

The question is whether the Bill will be effective in practice. One issue at the heart of the Bill is financial distribution. How do we distribute the enormous sums generated by the Premier League without killing that golden goose? It is a difficult balancing act. The regulator cannot be a panacea, and it will have to be both tough and smart.

There are specific questions that need answering. First, are the backstop powers sufficient? In the end, the regulator has to choose between a Premier League offer and an EFL demand, and there is certainly an argument to be had about whether the regulator should have powers to make its own settlement, possibly involving other bodies in deciding on what the settlement should be.

We have debated parachute payments, and I confess that I am still slightly confused as to the Government’s attitude and desire towards parachute payments, which are the key to why the championship is a very skewed league. I have been looking at the figures provided by Fair Game, a very good lobbying group. Currently, for every £1,000 of the broadcasting deal, £882 goes to each premier league club, £73.48 goes to championship clubs in receipt of parachute payments and £32.85 goes to championship clubs not in receipt of parachute payments. More than twice as much goes to the clubs with parachute payments as goes to the clubs without parachute payments. That is how we got a skewed league.

The great disparity between the premier league payment, which people might say is fair enough because it attracts the broadcasting money, and the championship payment does not reflect attendances. For every 1,000 people who attended football matches in the 2022-23 season, 497 attended premier league matches and 234 attended championship matches. Championship crowds were just under half of premiership crowds, but the distribution of money to premier league clubs is more than 10 times as much, so it does not reflect what fans are doing.

The next question is how we solve the problem of people like Reading’s owner. He is a reckless owner who is immune to sanctions because he is not in this country. He spent money, broke rules, incurred penalties, lost interest and went away. The only penalties left, because he is ignoring the financial penalty, are points deductions. I agree with the EFL on parachute payments but, frankly, it has been a bit of a chocolate teapot on protecting Reading’s interest. All the EFL has done is deduct points, which just punishes the fans.

What in the Bill will help that? I think the licensing regime will help, because a competent regulator clearly would not let someone like Dai Yongge own a football club in the first place, even though the EFL did. The question still remains of what happens if an owner’s circumstances change, such as if they lose a huge sum of money and cannot afford to support their club any more, or if they just lose interest. They might die, and their family or business associates who take over might not care about the club. What happens then? I would make one suggestion to Ministers, which would involve only a small tweak to the Bill: clause 52 allows the regulator to levy money from every licensed club, so why should some of that levy money not be used to set up a survival fund? Where a completely reckless owner is walking away and leaving a club to go out of business, as Dai Yongge has done in two other countries, such a fund would allow the regulator, over the few months when a club needs to find a new owner, to pay things such as the national insurance that has not been paid at Reading or the wages that were not paid for a couple of months. I accept that would not be a long-term solution, but having a short-term solution would make a huge difference. As the Bill already sets up the possibility of a levy, I suggest extending its possible uses to set up this survival fund, so that if something like this happens again, the new system of regulation will explicitly be able to cope with it.

The introduction of the Bill marks a big step forward and I hope that it survives largely intact. As I, like others, have said, there are improvements to be made, and I urge Ministers at all times to keep the interests of fans at the front of their consideration, because without the fans, there is no point to professional sport.