Football Governance Bill (Fifth sitting)

Tracey Crouch Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st May 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Stuart Andrew]

I welcome the positive comments from the hon. Member for Barnsley East. She is right that we are trying to have a fair and supportive approach here and that clubs should be supported.

I want to reassure the hon. Member for Sheffield South East that we have tried to design the Bill so that it recognises that the level of activity at the top of the Premiership, for example, will be vastly different, and that, as we heard in the evidence sessions, many of the club officers in the National League will be volunteers and we would not want to overburden them.

[Dame Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)]

The Minister will have heard the concerns in the evidence sessions about duplication. Will he be kind enough to remind the Committee that it will be for the leagues, not the statutory regulator, to decide whether there is any duplication?

[Stuart Andrew]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. This will be the statutory regulator, and this will be where the reporting will need to happen. If the leagues add anything, it is for them to make that decision. As this process progresses, I hope they will see that there is no need for the extra layer of reporting and that the regulator’s powers will be sufficient to secure the future of English football.

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[Dame Tracey Crouch]

Will my hon. Friend clarify something? Is he saying is that there is no need to change any part of the Bill? This needs to be reflected in the intent of the corporate governance statement, and some of these things can be included without amendment to the legislation?

[Damian Collins]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. That is exactly correct. I think it is a question of being clear as to what the corporate governance statement should include, either in the Bill or at least in the explanatory notes. The explanatory notes already say that a description of all the operations of all the elements of the club should be included; it would be extraordinary if we thought that that did not include a statement on equality, diversity and inclusion, or on the welfare of the players. This has been requested throughout the passage of the Bill. In particular, we have heard that at present there is no requirement for an EDI statement, nor are players mentioned at all. As my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford says, without changing the structure of the Bill, or maybe even its wording Bill, we could make it really clear that these things are included through these important corporate governance statements.

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[Stuart Andrew]

I expect that clubs would have to work closely with the leagues as well.

On the issue of EDI, I hope that it is clear this is an area that I personally feel very passionate about. We have made sure that the Bill and the regulator are tightly focused on the finances of clubs, the sustainability of the pyramid and fan engagement. We recognise the importance of equality, particularly, as the hon. Member for Barnsley East mentioned, in light of unacceptable abuses. I regularly engage with the Football Association and the leagues to put pressure on them and to work with them to do more to make improvements in this area. We also work with organisations such as Sport England and UK Sport, because it is not just football where this is an issue.

[Dame Tracey Crouch]

On the sports governance code, which I may have had a hand in helping to design and shape many years ago, is the Minister saying that when looking at the issue of corporate governance, he will draw on the experience of the sports governance code, which has specific EDI aspect it, or is it more about looking at the UK corporate governance code, which has elements of that but is certainly not as strong as the sports governance code?

[Stuart Andrew]

My hon. Friend makes a really important point, which I was just about to come on to. I am glad that she did so—it was a perfect introduction. She is absolutely right. The regulator can consider all of those, and I would expect that it would do so. It can draw on established principles such as, as she rightly points out, the code for sports governance and the UK corporate governance code. It can also draw on the Wates principles on corporate governance for large private companies, and it can also draw on the regulator’s own state-of-the-game reports. There is a whole host of information which I hope will address those issues.

I can confirm to the hon. Lady for Luton South that the phrase, “likely to be affected”, includes fans, so I expect that they will be consulted.

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[Dame Tracey Crouch]

I rise to speak briefly about this particular part of the Bill, because although the fan-led review—and indeed the Bill, the explanatory notes and the evidence that we have heard from fans—have of course referred to some poor owners in the Football League over many years, it is really important that we also recognise that there are a large number of very good owners in football. I do not think that they necessarily get the credit they deserve, because we so often focus on those who have not done the game any favours.

Personally, I often think that, despite my love of football, I would not dream of wanting to be an owner, because at the end of the day someone can be a fantastic owner who cares passionately about the long-term financial stability of their club, but if they do not actually buy that left back during the summer transfer window and ultimately the club does not do as well as fans expect it to—I speak as a lifelong Spurs fan—expectations and reality are very different.

Being a club owner can really be very stressful. I do not think that running a football club, wherever that club is in the football pyramid, is a particularly easy thing to do. I also think that most people purchase a football club with the right intention for the club, its fans and the local community, but we have seen some poor examples of ownership in the past and that has really driven the Bill. I just wanted to place on the record my sincere thanks to all those custodians of football clubs who have not driven away their fans, who engage with others regularly, who do their very best to support the local community and who very much have the best intentions of their football club at heart.

[Mr Betts]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right—there are many good owners of clubs in football. I refer immediately to Milan Mandarić, who came into Sheffield Wednesday when we were virtually bust, put the club on a sound financial footing, wrote the debts off, took the club forward and got it promoted, with Paul Aldridge as chief executive. They worked together. Mandarić then sold the club on, because he believed that he could not take it any further at that time.

There are other owners who do not necessarily have bad intentions—I think the Bill exists to stop those who have bad intentions—but just make mistakes. This Bill will not make every club successful and it will not make every owner make the right decisions, and we should always remember that. The Bill is to stop people from deliberately doing things that undermine the future of their club.

[Dame Tracey Crouch]

The hon. Gentleman makes a really important point. During the fan-led review, Mel Morris gave evidence to us. His is an example that illustrates the point that the hon. Gentleman just made. As a panel, we asked Mel Morris whether, if the Bill and the regulator had existed with real-time financial monitoring, he thought the same mistakes would have been made. He said that fundamentally he thought that if these interventions had been in place, Derby would never have got itself into the situation that it did.

[Mr Betts]

That is a really helpful point. The Bill is about stopping people from doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons, as opposed to stopping people from making mistakes because they are trying to do the right thing but get things wrong. We will never be able to stop that completely.

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[Stuart Andrew]

Clearly we have got to the bit that everyone is itching to speak to. Ensuring that new owners and officers of clubs have passed the regulator’s owners and directors tests is a key tenet of the new regime, and is designed to prevent unsuitable custodians from running or owning clubs. The regulator therefore needs to know who a club’s prospective new owners and officers are before they buy or join the club, so that they can be tested for suitability.

Clause 27 will place duties on a person to notify the regulator where there is a reasonable prospect of that person’s becoming a new owner or officer of a regulated club. The clause will ensure that the regulator receives advance notice of an application from a prospective new owner or officer, and will help the regulator to prepare to act quickly when it receives the application. The clause will place the same duty on regulated clubs themselves, as another means of ensuring that the regulator will be notified.

The regulator needs to know a person’s role at the club so that it can prepare to assess whether they are suitable to be an owner or an officer of that club. That is why, where the notification relates to an officer, it must state their proposed job title or job description, as well as any senior management functions that they will carry out. Enforcement measures such as censure statements or financial penalties are also available to the regulator if it determines that this requirement has not been complied with without a reasonable excuse. This will deter those who do not wish to comply with the regime.

Clause 28 will prohibit a person from becoming a new owner of a club unless the regulator has determined beforehand that they are suitable to own that club. It requires prospective new owners to provide an application containing information about how they propose to run the club, the estimated costs, how those costs will be funded and where that funding comes from. This will better ensure that prospective new owners are clear from the outset about their plans for the club and how they will deliver the resources to fund those plans.

Once a complete application has been provided, the regulator can pass the individual owner only if they meet the individual ownership fitness criteria, as defined in clause 26; they have the requisite honesty and integrity and are financially sound; they have sufficient financial resources; and the regulator does not have grounds to suspect that the individual has any source of wealth that is connected to serious criminal conduct, which is defined in the Bill by reference to part 1 of schedule 1 to the Serious Crime Act 2007, which includes crimes such as drug trafficking and fraud. This will mitigate illicit finance in the game.

Registered societies are one vehicle by which fans can collectively own clubs. They must be run in accordance with specific legal requirements regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Registered society owners are not assessed against the fitness criteria or the source of wealth test, but they still need to complete an application, including providing a plan for running and funding the club.

[Dame Tracey Crouch]

The Minister is setting out clearly the purpose of these clauses of the Bill. It is clear that the regulator has been designed to be as agile and as future-proof as possible. If a crime that we have not yet imagined is added to the Serious Crime Act, how will the regulator assess a potential owner who has committed that crime?

[Stuart Andrew]

My understanding is that if the 2007 Act is updated with a new crime, it will still be relevant to the Bill. However, I want to be absolutely sure, so I will write to my hon. Friend, and if I am wrong I will correct my homework.

By requiring new owners to undergo the regulator’s test, clause 28 will better mitigate harm to clubs by stopping unsuitable custodians.