Unauthorised Entry to Football Matches Bill

Debate between Tom Tugendhat and Mark Tami

2nd reading
Friday 23rd February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat]

I will ignore the contribution from the hon. Member for Cardiff West, who is very disparaging about Bradford City. I am sure Bradford City would offer a fantastic afternoon and I would very much enjoy it. I simply cannot believe that my hon. Friend would not be backing a winner, given his reputation, so I will stay silent on that accusation.

The Bill deliberately does not go into car parking. As my hon. Friend will be well aware, in many areas car parking is very different. Some stadiums have car parking available and some have car parking on the street or in neighbouring car parks which would be covered by local government ordinances and so on. It would add complication and not clarity to the Bill. To his eternal point, Occam’s razor is to get to the heart of the matter; he would rightly be the first critic of any Bill that started to be expansive and to look like it might include supermarket car parks, or indeed any other kind of car park. That is why the Bill is written and drafted as tightly as it is, and why so many of us support it—the Bill has given us the space to focus on that part of the offence that is actually important.

The Bill has been very carefully drafted to set out this new offence of unauthorised entry or attempted unauthorised entry to designated football matches in England and Wales. In practice, “designated football matches” really means elite football matches. For these purposes, that does include Manchester United—[Laughter.] The Bill will also enable a court to impose a football banning order against a person convicted of this offence. Banning orders provide an effective tool to combat football-related disorder by preventing disruptive individuals from attending regulated matches for between three and 10 years.

I would like to pay my own tribute to Baroness Casey and her extraordinary work, not just on this issue, but in reforming and reviewing various other aspects of our national life that have required attention. Her independent review of the appalling disorder that occurred during the Euro 2020 final resulted in a clear recommendation that action needed to be taken to deter the practice of tailgating, which is the phenomenon that we have been covering of a ticketless person following a legitimate entrant into the stadium. Of course, the Bill is drafted in this way because tailgating is not the only problematic behaviour.

There are many other routes to attempted entry into football matches, such as jumping over walls, which we have seen at some stadiums, or hanging down from buildings and jumping through windows—we have occasionally seen videos of that happening abroad. That is extremely concerning, not least because it can lead to enormous personal harm and can encourage people to take extremely unwise risks. It can also lead to a crush within the building that could cause harm not just to fans but to those working in the stadium. As we know, stadiums these days are major businesses, and many employ a large number of people on match days.

Estimates suggest that somewhere in the region of 3,000 to 5,000 England fans without tickets gained entry to the Euro 2020 final, largely through mass forced entry. Witnesses spoke of being terrified by their reckless and aggressive behaviour. Despite my own lack of passion in this regard, I have taken my children to football matches and have enjoyed the days with them. I must admit that my children were much more impressed with the games than I ever was, but I enjoyed the experience very much. The opportunity to see it through their eyes was a great blessing; I found it enormously warming.

[Mark Tami]

A very modern parent.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Thank you very much.

It would be concerning—this is why the Bill is so important—if football were closed off to families because people felt threatened and wished to keep their kids away from such events.