Football Governance Bill (Third sitting)

Shaun Bailey Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 16th May 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Rachel Hopkins]

Q You have talked about culture, and there is a role for transparency in that. Building on some of the things you have said, do you believe it is important for clubs to be transparent about diversity in their own organisations?

Sanjay Bhandari: After the Government’s response in September 2023 to Dame Tracey Crouch’s excellent review, we said that football needed to do three things. One was that EDI requirements should be incorporated into the club licensing system via the code for governance. It kind of appears that they now will be, although the wording is slightly ambiguous and probably could benefit from being clarified in schedule 5.

Secondly, we said that the processes for recruiting the leadership of the IFR should adopt best practice on inclusion. Again, there is some slightly ambiguous wording in relation to the recruitment of the CEO, which could benefit from being clarified.

The third one was that the requirements in the code for football governance should include, along with other requirements, significant mandatory data transparency reporting on representation, recruitment, progression and cases of discrimination. Transparency is the greatest disinfectant. Clubs are often collecting all this data for the Premier League equality standard or the EFL code, but they are not publishing it, so no one can hold them to account on it. We are asking for consistency and transparency.

I will give an example of where it goes very wrong. There are currently between 200 and 300 mechanisms for reporting discrimination incidents in English football. Those are 200 to 300 orphaned databases of information that do not speak to each other. We probably run the biggest reporting app. I have been banging my head against a brick wall for five years asking for insight from that data to be able to say, “What are the root causes? What are the outcomes of those incidents?” Then we can we create data-driven policy interventions, but we have not been able to get the clubs to agree to share the data.

From the clubs’ perspective, and I suppose often very legitimately, they think that data privacy is a worry. I do not share those concerns in the same way; I think there are exemptions that allow it. Fans have done their bit and said what they want. They are not tolerating discrimination. If we do not listen to them, we are doing them a disservice. Football needs to do its bit, and if it cannot volunteer to do that, an independent regulator can certainly cut through and help to create the exemptions to get that data sharing. Then we can start addressing the root causes of some of these incidents.

[Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con)]

Q I want to touch on the senior managers regime that the Bill effectively tries to create. You will know the importance of that from your professional background, particularly in a financial services setting. There are two points to this question. First, how do we ensure that we are not, with this Bill, effectively turning football into something run by a bunch of chaps not necessarily connected in the way we need them to be, because we prohibit people coming through from grassroots who understand the clubs and know what they are doing?

My second point is on D&I, which has obviously been really important, particularly in the financial services space. Do you think there comes a point, which perhaps could be addressed in the Bill, at which there is not just a proactive obligation but maybe even a penalty system? It could be that if your club is not meeting those standards because of incidents like those you have highlighted, you as a senior manager become accountable, just as you would in a professional setting elsewhere.

Sanjay Bhandari: There is an answer in principle and an answer in practice. The answer in principle is that there should always be a sliding scale of sanctions, depending on the degree of the harm being caused. Whenever we are in any kind of regulatory or law enforcement regime and create sanctions frameworks, we reflect not just the offence itself, but the offender, the nature of the offence that has been committed, and whether it is persistent or egregious. You need to have that sliding scale. In reality, it will be relatively rare where you get to that point of actually sanctioning an individual. There might be rare occasions, but I think they will be highly unusual cases.

--- Later in debate ---

[Shaun Bailey]

Q I want to dovetail back to the point about effective consultation. The Bill touches on it, but it varies. We had the example about ticket prices and people basically being told, “This is what your price is going to be.” How do you think that consultation could be strengthened? Do you think that there needs to be a more prescriptive approach whereby clubs are told, “This is what consultation is. If you do this, you’re in breach. You can’t do what you want to do”? Do you think that the delivery channel for that more formally —it does seem to vary—needs to be supporters’ trusts? Do you see fan representation as the conduit for it? And how do you balance that with the corporate identity of a lot of these clubs? I appreciate that there are three prongs to that question, but I am keen to get your insights.

Tim Payton: It is a very good question. I think the regulator must have some means of acting a bit like an Ofsted, or there must be a check and balance whereby supporter trusts and other organisations can go and say they do not feel the consultation is being effective, but of course, you do not want to reach that stage. You want effective consultation, so let us work with the IFR and the clubs to come up with a framework. I think we all know what good consultation looks like. As I set out, you announce your proposals; you talk to the affected parties; and then, at the end of the process, you have to write up and explain where you have got to. But it will be important that the regulator has some real teeth to enforce that on clubs, because it will be about changing a culture that is very much one where clubs say, “We’re going to do what we want to do, and you’re so loyal and committed to us that you will suck it up whatever we do.”

Alistair Jones: We are in a fortunate position at my club, because we have had really good dialogue and communication. My club is an outstanding example of what can be achieved if you sit down at a table in a room and discuss what we both want, given what we share, which is the love of our football club. From our point of view—speaking selfishly—we already have that at West Brom. We have a really good dialogue. The issue is, of course, that every club is different, as we have intimated before, so I think the regulator has to set out some guidelines as to what can be done with regard to ticket pricing, fan entertainment or anything to do with fan engagement.

[Shaun Bailey]

Q I assume that this could be done through leveraging best practice as well. You have just given the example of the Albion and how you guys are doing it—the relationship there.

Alistair Jones: We campaigned and tried to get answers, and credit to them: they did provide that over a certain amount of time. Once we got to the table, they recognised that we are only here to help. The members of every independent supporters’ trust that I have sat down with volunteer because they love the football club; they do not do it for kudos.

Tim Payton: Of course, if you have the independent non-executive director there, you have a different check and balance, because the INED follows the corporate governance code and would be making sure that effective consultation was happening from a different perspective, but over-layering with whatever the IFR does.

Sarah Turner: Formalising how that engagement looks would be a really good idea, because as you say, people look at it in a different way. Anything that goes forward and that listens to fans and gives them that forum to have their opinions heard has to be a good thing.

[The Chair]

There are a few more minutes, if anybody would like to come back in.