Football Governance Bill [HL]

Committee (2nd Day)

My Lords, before we start today’s Committee, I point out to the House that this is day two of five days on the Football Governance Bill. We need to make significant progress on the groups today.

Clause 1: Purpose and Overview

Amendment 7

7: Clause 1, page 2, line 1, leave out subsection (3) and insert— “(3) For the purposes of this Act, English football is sustainable if it—(a) continues to meet the needs of present fans without compromising the ability of future generations of fans to enjoy and benefit from the club, including through the club continuing to operate a team in club competitions, in a way that represents the unique heritage of the club as recognised by its fans, and respects the interests of these fans; (b) continues to contribute to the economic and social welfare of the communities with which regulated clubs are associated, including, but not limited to, direct or indirect positive effects on the income of local businesses, cultural enrichment, or the reputation of the local area.”Member’s explanatory statement This amendment intends to create a more precise definition of the sustainability of English football.

My Lords, Amendment 7 begins this group of amendments on this important Bill. It would expand the definition of,

“the sustainability of English football”.

On day one, we had a useful debate—although it was longer than the Committee Whip might have wished—about the purpose of the Bill and the limits of sustainability. As the Bill is drafted, the only definition of

“the sustainability of English football”

is, as the Minister pointed out to us in our debates on the previous groups, Clause 1(3)(a) and (b). Paragraph (a) states that English football is sustainable if it,

“continues to serve the interests of fans of regulated clubs”,

and paragraph (b) specifies that it must continue,

“to contribute to the economic or social well-being of the local communities with which regulated clubs are associated”.

That is all we have to go on in the Bill. The criteria for the success of this important and novel Bill therefore rest upon these two simple lines.

Our contention is that these brief and rather vague statements of intent are not sufficient to act as the foundations on which the success, or otherwise, of this Bill and this new regulator are to be judged. The actions of this regulator will have significant consequences for the whole football pyramid. It is vital, therefore, that we ensure that it has the necessary legislative tools and the clarity of message from Parliament to set it up for success. To do that, it must have in statute a strong set of conditions against which its actions and its regulatory work can be assessed. This echoes the fruitful discussion we had on our first day in Committee about the underlying purpose of the Bill.

Their amendments add a number of conditions to subsection (3) of Clause 1. They pick up an important point about the global competitiveness of English football and our leagues, and ensure that the regulator must always have regard to the growth of the sport. That is an important point. The current Bill seems to me highly static. The regulator’s remit seems to be more focused on maintaining football as it is today and not looking to the future.

Requiring the regulator to pay attention to match attendance and sporting competitiveness would, I hope, encourage a more growth-minded regulator. That is why my Amendment 7 seeks to expand the definitions in subsection (3). It does so not by concocting some awkward, obstructive or restrictive definition but merely by inserting the expanded definitions that the Government themselves have set out elsewhere. The definitions used in my amendment are to be found on page 20 of the Explanatory Notes published by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

In that document, the department sets out a far more detailed and helpful view than the two short lines that currently make up the conditions for sustainability in the Bill. There is reference, for example, to the “unique heritage” of clubs and the importance of serving the interest of fans. The Explanatory Notes specify that the economic and social well-being of communities includes improving

“the reputation of the local area”,

having positive effects on the “income of local businesses” and contributing to “cultural enrichment”—all important and helpful missions for clubs and for the regulator that seeks to assist them.

The question this raises is: if the Government are content with putting definitions of this much detail in the Explanatory Notes, why should we not put them on the face of the Bill? I hope the Minister will be able to explain that discrepancy and may be minded to take some of the wording that the Government are happy with in the Explanatory Notes to give a clearer message to the regulator on the face of the Bill.

My Amendment 7 is very simple. It does not ask your Lordships fundamentally to alter the Bill or its aims, or, indeed, the purpose of the regulator. All it asks is that the Government demonstrate their confidence in the points that they have made in their Explanatory Notes by placing those definitions on the face of the Bill. When at the end of this group the Minister comes to respond, I hope she will be able to demonstrate that she agrees and might be minded to do this. I beg to move.

I have to inform your Lordships that, if Amendment 7 is agreed, I cannot call Amendments 7A to 15 because of pre-emption.

My Lords, I rise to speak to my Amendment 12 in this group. Before I do so, I think it important to express mild regret at what the noble Lord the Government Chief Whip said before we started our proceedings today. This is an incredibly important Bill, which, for the first time, imports into our much-loved national game a costly system of regulation. It is a very long Bill. There are numerous amendments being tabled, mostly by Members on the government side. We know that the House of Commons these days gives scant scrutiny to important Bills. It is therefore incredibly important that this House in Committee gives the Bill the detailed scrutiny that is required. If the five days that the Government have rather meagrely assigned to this Committee stage are not enough, I hope they will be quick to extend the proceedings so that we can give proper scrutiny. Much hangs on this. The more we have debated the detail of the Bill, the more issues have arisen, giving rise to greater concerns—

I was here last Wednesday, waiting quite a long time for my amendments to come up in group 3, and I sat through an awful lot of what I felt was hypocritical stuff from this side of the Chamber, given that this was a government Bill under the last Government. Not that much in it has changed, yet there was a lot of discussion on this side. Listening to that was agony, so I am quite keen to get through the Bill. Of course we should debate it, but not at the sort of length that is, I would say, rather self-indulgent.

I empathise with the noble Baroness’s pain, but this is what legislative scrutiny is about. It is about looking in detail at what is proposed and ensuring that we do not pass into law measures that will inflict damage on something that is both an incredibly important economic activity but also a source of great pleasure to millions in this country and more than a billion worldwide. So I hope the noble Baroness will suffer less and we will move as quickly as is appropriate in these circumstances.

We debated last time whether the ambition for football to be sustainable was sufficiently ambitious for the state of English football, and I think many of us in different parts of the House concluded that it was not so. However, if the Government insist that sustainability is all that is going to be sought then it is important that we define what is meant by sustainability in a way that does not circumscribe the mindset and the approach of the regulator that is going to be established.

Football is a very successful industry and activity. As we have heard, it remains the case that the Premier League is the most successful league in the world and the Championship is the sixth most successful in Europe, and we need to make sure that we do first do no harm but, secondly, because we know that there is no such thing as steady state any more, if it does not continue to grow and improve then it will be going backwards. So it seems right that, in addition to the addition suggested in my noble friend Lord Parkinson’s amendment, we should look at the four elements that I propose should be added to the definition of “sustainability”.

First, it should continue

“to be globally competitive in relation to audience and quality”.

That is important because you cannot take anything for granted. The success of English football has been earned, but it has been harder over a period so we need to be extremely careful; this is a precious asset and we need to be concerned all the time with competitiveness. The costs that are proposed to be imposed on English football through the creation of this regulator—both the costs to be recovered through the levy and the compliance costs for clubs of accommodating themselves to this regime—will in themselves be a blow to competitiveness, so there needs to be at least an equal and opposite concern to offset that. Competitiveness is going to be incredibly important in relation to audience and quality.

My Lords, I support Amendment 12 in my noble friend’s name and have added my name to it. As he rightly said, this amendment aims to broaden the definition of the sustainability of English football for the purposes of the new regulator, to ensure that it has a duty to consider a much more extensive list of factors that are important for the continued success and growth of the game—obviously, issues that we discussed at length last week—in deciding its approach and exercising its powers. If the Minister will not look at expanding the purpose of the regulator to include growth, for instance, as I set out last week, this is an important amendment to ensure that we expand the definition of sustainability and create a balanced framework within the regulation to provide protections while enabling growth.

A framework that provides sustainability while encouraging investment and maintaining stability will preserve the success of English football and ensure the continuation of innovation and investor confidence. As my noble friend said, we cannot take the success of the English game for granted, so it is important that the Bill ensures that successful elements of the current model are given due prominence—perhaps we are being a bit blasé in thinking they will just continue, no matter what—in the concerns of the regulator going forward.

English football’s depth and current comparative advantages come from achieving the right balance of oversight with competition, aspiration and financial support—a combination of elements that the regulator must be mindful of when considering the sustainability of football over the longer term. I really hope that in the light of our discussions last week, and the concerns we are raising again today, the Minister can see and accept that a narrow set of sustainability metrics could, inadvertently, be very damaging. If she will not look at changing the purpose of the Bill, I very much hope that she will look at expanding the definition of sustainability in this clause, so that we can cover all the elements that we are all, I believe, in support of saying are important in today’s game but simply do not appear in the Bill as it stands.