Football Governance Bill [Lords]

Rupert Lowe Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 28th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Rupert Lowe (Great Yarmouth) (Ind)]

I should declare my interests, as on the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, in two football-related businesses as a result of my chairmanship of Southampton football club. We do not have many success stories left, but English domestic football is one of them—so what do politicians want to do? Regulate it, of course. The biggest beneficiary from the success of the Premier League is His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, through tax and national insurance levied on player and staff wages. That is money flowing out of the beautiful game. Salaries have correlated closely with the growth of broadcasting income, particularly from overseas television rights. Lord Sugar referred to it as the prune juice effect. No regulator played any part in laying the foundations of the world’s most successful league. English football works and has worked for many decades. My message to all Members today is to leave it alone.

Football is a risk business, supported in this country by the most passionate fans in the world. It requires a balance between risk taking and business savvy, if the aspirations of the supporters are to be delivered in the form of entertaining, successful football of which they can be proud. Many of the failures in our game, such as Bury under Hugh Eaves and Leeds under Peter Ridsdale, were driven by boards dominated by fans rather than by more logical businessmen. The job of running a smaller club in the premier league is difficult at the best of times—I should know—when competing with clubs that have substantially greater turnover. A regulator will simply make the job of smaller clubs more difficult and limit their ability to take calculated risks to successfully compete for promotion, league position or cup success. It is the larger clubs that will benefit, and the dynamic that has driven the premier league’s success will be undermined.

[Mr Richard Quigley (Isle of Wight West) (Lab)]

Is the hon. Gentleman really saying that fan involvement in clubs is a bad thing?

[Rupert Lowe]

I think the passion of fans can be a dangerous thing if they are on a board, yes. The FA Premier League’s success has been driven by the prescient founding formula for financial distribution, ensuring a competitive league. Under the Bill, fans collectively will suffer, and another more innovative league in another geographic region, probably in Asia, will emerge as a leader. Members might all feel good about themselves, but billions and billions of pounds will be driven out of the country. There is no need for a football regulator or indeed any more wokery in the game, exemplified by the support for a questionable organisation such as Black Lives Matter, when the knee was taken before each game: the world’s best football meets the world’s best virtue signalling.

Just last week, I uncovered two coaching roles offered by Ipswich and Fulham, both specifically excluding white men from applying. Ipswich made the right choice and removed the racist ad; Fulham have not. These roles have been pushed by the Premier League itself. Match-going fans are overwhelmingly male and overwhelmingly white. They would be surprised to hear that clubs are banning them from applying for certain roles based on their skin colour. Racism is racism, even when white people are on the receiving end of it. I hope that all of us in this House call it out for the wickedness that it is.

We must eradicate the poisonous DEI from our beautiful game. Fans attend football to escape all that nonsense. A functional football team is the perfect analogy for any successful society, based on merit and merit alone. Fans do not want ideological lessons from their clubs; they want to watch exciting football, enjoy a beer and have a proper day out. Good for them, I say. All of us here need to leave them alone.

Those responsible for this Bill must also take full responsibility when the premier league inevitably wanes as the woke do-gooders perpetrate the damage that history teaches us is inevitable. The Chancellor speaks oxymoronically about trying to revive our financial markets by regulating for growth, after the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 destroyed London as a centre where capital meets risk. You do not regulate for growth; you deregulate for growth. We do not need this interference by tyre-kicking regulators in our national game. Judging by this debate, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport looks like she is pretty handy on the terraces. I say to her, in football lingo: you don’t know what you’re doing.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call Luke Murphy. Is it your birthday?