Maccabi Tel Aviv FC: Away Fans Ban

Paula Barker Excerpts

Monday 20th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Lisa Nandy]

Earlier this year, I hosted a roundtable with Lord Mann and the Board of Deputies to discuss the role of Jewish people in the widest range of public life, particularly in relation to arts, film, TV, broadcasting and media. The hon. Lady is absolutely right to say that this specific case is not occurring in a vacuum, and we are working on a strategy to make sure that Jewish people are included and that their contribution to British public life is recognised and celebrated.

[Paula Barker (Liverpool Wavertree) (Lab)]

I would like to preface my comments by saying that everybody in this place was horrified by the attack on the synagogue in Heaton Park, and that my comments today are purely based on safety.

A year before the Hillsborough disaster, safety concerns at Sheffield Wednesday’s stadium were raised by an official, but the ex-council safety officer was told by bosses in 1988 to keep his nose out of such concerns. Nobody in this place needs to be reminded of what happened as a result of ignoring that safety advice: 97 innocent men, women and children lost their lives. We have safety advisory groups for a reason, and it is a slippery slope when safety concerns are ignored. I believe it is unprecedented for a Government to try to overturn such advice, and I respectfully disagree with the Secretary of State that bans do not go on, because we have had a lot of cases, both nationally and internationally, with the most recent one being Napoli versus Eintracht Frankfurt.

Can the Secretary of State be explicitly clear: has she seen the safety advice? If so, does she disagree with the safety advice? If she does disagree, can she tell the House on what grounds she disagrees? It is imperative that this House is clear, because if the Government are successful in having the decision overturned, particularly after the scenes we witnessed last night at the Israeli derby, people are going to ask questions.

[Lisa Nandy]

I thank my hon. Friend. As somebody who represents some of the Hillsborough families, I say to her that we as a Government, and I as an individual member of that Government, take the safety of all fans and the wider community with the utmost seriousness. We would never treat safety as a secondary consideration.

My hon. Friend says that we are trying to overturn the police advice. We are doing absolutely no such thing, and I think I made that completely clear in the response I have just made. We are working with the West Midlands police and local partners to make sure that we take into account the risks they have raised in order to ensure that this game can go ahead safely with both sets of fans present. In the discussions about and the consideration I have given to the risks that the West Midlands police has highlighted, what is completely different about this case is not just that it is the first time in this country since the early 2000s that a decision has been taken to ban away fans entirely from attending a game, but that the risk assessment is based in no small part on the risk posed to fans attending to support Maccabi Tel Aviv because they are Israeli and because they are Jewish. We should be appalled by that, and never allow it to stand.

Champions League Final: Paris

Paula Barker Excerpts

Monday 6th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Huddleston]

I largely agree with the sentiments expressed by the hon. Gentleman, although it is slightly unfair to characterise it as if everybody in football treats fans as the enemy. Many entities and organisations try to bring fans on board to the greatest extent—of course, the fan-led review of football is trying to embed that to an even greater degree—and some clubs engage very carefully and closely with fans.

When any such investigation happens, it is important that we all learn lessons. We saw incidents at Wembley last year, and the Casey review highlighted some areas for improvement. Last week, particularly acute circumstances impacted fans in a really quite dramatic and drastic way, and the French authorities and UEFA have a responsibility to take the lead on that. We then all need to learn lessons, and that goes for individuals, clubs, Governments, the police and so on, internationally. As I said, I cannot pre-empt the conclusions of the review but we will keep a very close eye on it.

[Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)]

I, too, commend my good friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne), for securing this urgent question and for the work he has done, and I commend the impeccable behaviour of the Liverpool fans.

I want to talk about my constituent Liam Griffiths. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden), I have been contacted by many constituents who were in Paris. Liam and his son were there for the champions league final. Liam was struck by a brick thrown by a mob of local Parisian youths as the police lost all control of the situation and started indiscriminately to tear-gas peaceful fans. He recalls a mess of a situation from start to finish as the French police woefully failed to manage the event hours before kick-off and in the immediate aftermath.

As a club and a city, we have been here before, so collectively—I include the UK Government in this—we have a duty to nip smears and lies in the bud before they permeate. Liam and I want to know whether the British Government have already asked for clarity and evidence from our French counterparts on the claims of ticketless fans and ticket fraud. I have seen no evidence to date. Will the UK Government be demanding an apology from the French Government, who have doubled down on their own warped reality? Our fans must not be used as a political scapegoat for failed politicians who seek to save their own skin before French parliamentary elections in just a week’s time.

[Nigel Huddleston]

I thank the hon. Lady for her comments and am sorry that her constituents had such a harrowing experience. Again, I encourage everybody who had such experiences to please feed that information into Liverpool FC so that it will be fed through to the investigation. I shall make the points raised here in the Chamber, and others, to the French Minister when I speak to her. Conversations are ongoing, both through officials and at ministerial level across multiple Departments.

The hon. Lady is right about how disappointing and frustrating this situation is, because sport should be something that brings us together. It should be a joy and something around which we can all unite. It is so disappointing and disheartening that fans have had to experience something so harrowing.