I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the importance of non-league football and the vital role it plays in communities across the country.
Non-league clubs are often more than football clubs. They are community hubs, employers, charities and a source of deep local pride. Nowhere is that clearer than in Hartlepool. Hartlepool United acts as a veterans hub, supporting those in our borough who have served, and it was the first professional football club in England to sign the armed forces covenant. It was also the first to receive a bronze award from the armed forces covenant employer recognition scheme, an achievement that speaks volumes about the values of our club and our town.
Fans are closer to the players in non-league football than at any other level of the game. In towns such as Hartlepool, football is not just entertainment; it is part of who we are. The fortunes of our club are felt right across the community, well beyond the turnstiles. As a proud season ticket holder, I take my children along to Pools at every possible opportunity. I did so before I was elected, and I will continue to do so long after I leave this place, because Hartlepool United belongs to Hartlepool, and Hartlepool belongs to its football club.
While I deeply appreciate the many colleagues who have come to intervene in support of this debate, and I am sure to plug their local teams, I must say that as this debate is in my name, any suggestion that their team is better than Hartlepool United will be given robustly short shrift.
I bow to my hon. Friend’s preference when it comes to Hartlepool, not least because Rochdale were recently subjected to an awful defeat at the hands of the Pools, and I was there to witness it. Hopefully that will not prevent us from winning the national league. He makes a powerful case for the community links of non-league clubs. Will he join me in praising the Dale Trust—the supporters trust—and Dale 1907, which do so much for our local community? Will he also join me at the end of the season, when we put the up into “Up the Dale”?
Of course I join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to those organisations, which exemplify why non-league clubs are so important to their communities. He pre-empts me, because I was going to remind him of our recent match on 30 December, when we beat you 2-1.
I will focus my primary remarks on the national league’s 3UP campaign and what it would mean for non-league clubs such as Hartlepool United. The campaign is simple: it calls for three promotion places from the national league into league two, bringing it into line with the rest of the professional football pyramid. It is supported by all 72 national league clubs, by the Football Supporters Association, by fans across the country, by more than 50 Members of this House—on a Thursday afternoon, I appreciate why they are not here—and by respected voices across the game, including Hartlepool legend Jeff Stelling. I take this moment to mention my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (Ms Minns), who asked me to make special reference to her support for the campaign. I will not mention the result last time Hartlepool met Carlisle.
This would not be a radical restructuring of football; it would be a straightforward reform to make the system fairer, more competitive and more sustainable. As it would simply mirror the structure of the English football league, it can hardly be regarded as a major upheaval. There are 72 clubs in the national league system, and many clubs currently in the EFL have benefited from time spent in the national league, yet only two clubs are promoted each season. That imbalance limits opportunity, suppresses ambition and places enormous financial pressure on clubs that are striving to succeed. At a time when clubs higher up in the leagues are struggling financially, it does not take much imagination to see how that pressure is felt even more sharply at our end of the spectrum.
I fully recognise that the Government do not directly control promotions and relegations—and probably just as well. Those decisions sit with the EFL, but the Government do have influence, particularly at a time when football governance is under greater scrutiny than ever before. With the introduction of the Independent Football Regulator, there is a clear expectation that fairness, sustainability and the long-term health of the game must sit at the heart of decision making. That is why I was proud to walk through the Lobby in support of the legislation that introduced it.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Brash) on securing this important debate. I hope he is not too intimidated by the size of the crowd in here this afternoon. [Laughter.] He is a passionate advocate for non-league football and his own club. He is a dedicated supported of Hartlepool and is a season ticket holder.
Hartlepool United is a club that has seen the highs and lows of the professional and non-league game over its history. As a Scot, I feel a bit of a fraud responding in this debate, because I do not know much about English non-league football. I do know a lot about Scottish non-league football. My own club, Heart of Midlothian, is at the top of the Scottish premiership this season, four points clear of Rangers and flying high.
Speaking of clubs that are at the top of their league, Rochdale are at the top of the national league right now. Despite that, we do strongly support the 3UP—and three down—campaign, because although we may well benefit this year from going straight up, we know all too often that clubs can sometimes rack up lots of points but still not go up, as York City did last season even though they were 20 points ahead of Oldham.
As a season ticket holder, like my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Brash), it is really important that we reward the loyalty of fans and footballers who play for clubs such Rochdale, Hearts and Hartlepool. I also want to pay tribute to Ian Henderson, who marked his 41st birthday last weekend with a goal and an assist and who plays for Rochdale as our record goal scorer.
With Ian Henderson’s age, maybe there is still time for my hon. Friend to score a hat trick to take the Dale up. He mentioned in his previous intervention the Dale Trust and Dale 1907, and I pay tribute to them. We tend to forget that, right across the country, all our football clubs have strong community spirit and strong charities and trusts attached to them that do so much in the local community—Big Hearts is attached to my football club. Indeed, the reason I mention my club is not just to get it on the record, as we always like to do, but because it is the largest fan-owned club in the UK. That fan ownership was born out of ownership crisis. The club was owned by a Russian-born oligarch from Lithuania, but when it went into administration and liquidation, the fans bought out the club and now it is riding high.
When we see what has been done at Hartlepool— I pay tribute to Landon Smith for taking over the club—hopefully it will have a bright future with that settled ownership. Clubs such as the Pools—or the “monkey hangers”, a nickname which my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool did not mention—are not just sports teams; they are part of the very identity of our towns and the communities within them. They are the institutions that provide pride in place, which is a concept that I know my hon. Friend champions, and they play a vital role in the social and economic fabric of all our communities. Without our football clubs, our communities would be hollowed out, so congratulations to everyone who runs a non-league club.
British and English football is a global success story. Of course, it was invented in Scotland, and Scotland won the world cup in 1967 by beating England at Wembley. [Laughter.] This Government are committed to ensuring that football’s foundations remain strong, sustainable and supported for generations to come, and crucially, that fans are put first. That is really important.
I should probably point out that my father was a Hibs fan as a child—I hope that does not act against me in this debate. The Minister mentioned that the Football Governance Act requires meaningful fan engagement. Given that fans are so unanimously behind the 3UP campaign, would he see it as a failure of engagement if we do not see that change coming forward?
After my hon. Friend’s confession about his father being a Hibs supporter, I do not know whether he has gone from being my hon. Friend to just a hon. Gentleman. He is right, and fan involvement in the game was the key driver in the Football Governance Act. One of the key drivers of fan ownership at my own club was to have fan’s voices heard. Fans are the lifeblood of the game. Whether it is ticket prices, the colour of the football club, the name or where they play, all those issues are key because they make football what it is and are why we support the clubs that we do. I hope the EFL listens to the fans on this and sees the strength of feeling on what needs to be done.
The EFL—of course, my hon. Friend knows this—is a membership organisation, and therefore vested interests take hold on whether a club may be advantaged or disadvantaged by 3UP and, of course, all the connotations around that. The EFL and, I hope, its member clubs have heard this, and the fan voice is strong on this campaign. I say from this Dispatch Box that I hope the EFL hears that strength of feeling at its meetings in March.
My hon. Friend mentioned the regulator, and I am pleased that the Independent Football Regulator recently launched its consultation on the terms of reference for its state of the game report. I appreciate him saying that things need to move quickly, but this comes ahead of the report’s publication in 2027, which will be a huge milestone for the regulator. The report will provide unparallelled insight into the structural issues facing the game and the wider football ecosystem, informing the regulator’s approach and decision making. The debate around restructuring leagues and football has been there since time immemorial, and if we put four football fans in a room to debate football reconstruction, we would get eight different answers for how that should go. These are complex negotiations. There will be financial distribution, organisational and scheduling challenges across multiple leagues, and it is ultimately a matter for the EFL.
4:24 pm
House adjourned.
Too often, our game has been overtaken by vested interests, with as many headlines about ownership and governance as there are about the football itself. Pools fans know that only too well. That is why I want to place on record my thanks and welcome to Hartlepool United’s new owner, Landon Smith. His recent takeover has given us our club back. I was delighted to welcome the journalist Robbie Stelling to Parliament. Disgracefully, he was banned from home games by the previous owner, but he is now, quite rightly, welcome once again at Victoria Park. That moment mattered, because it symbolised something bigger: Hartlepool United returning to its supporters, town and values.
Real fans want to see their teams given every possible opportunity to succeed. Real fans want the hope that exists at every other level of the football pyramid. Real fans want 3UP. This change has been stalled for years. It has now been 23 years since the national league was awarded a second promotion place. In that time, the business of football has changed beyond recognition, yet the basic question of parity remains unresolved. The EFL has argued that 3UP should be considered as part of wider reform, but that may take years. National league clubs cannot wait years, and neither can the communities that stand behind them week in, week out.
The EFL board will meet early next month to set the agenda for its annual general meeting, which takes place in early March. This is a critical moment at which a decision could be taken with all member clubs present. If this opportunity is missed, national league clubs face waiting yet another year to be treated as equal partners within the football pyramid.
I ask the following questions of the Minister. What steps will the Government take to encourage constructive engagement between the EFL and the national league? How will the Government ensure that fairness and opportunity are central to the future governance of the game? How will the new regulator support a pyramid that rewards sporting merit and gives ambitious clubs a genuine route upward?
This is about putting football first. It is about fairness and recognising the enormous contribution that non-league clubs such as Hartlepool United make to our communities. I urge the Minister to use the voice of the Government to support that principle. I will finish by simply saying, “Up the Pools!”
As my hon. Friend has highlighted, the influence of non-league football extends far beyond the pitch. Clubs are frequently the beating heart of our communities, serving as hubs for social cohesion, education and physical activity, and bringing people and our communities together. Department for Culture, Media and Sport research has shown that the sport and physical activity sector contributes £53 billion to our national economy. We must also look at the major social value: the £8 billion of wellbeing value created by grassroots and non-league football and the £43 million saved for our NHS every single year from fans’ involvement in their clubs. Whether it is Hartlepool United’s work with local youth or the thousands of smaller clubs across the country run by volunteers, the Government recognise that every pound invested in non-league football is an investment in the health and happiness of our nation and our communities—and my goodness, don’t we need a bit of that in our communities?
A key pillar of our support for the game is ensuring long-term sustainability through the Football Governance Act 2025, which received Royal Assent in July last year. That historic legislation establishes the Independent Football Regulator, which my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool mentioned. For the first time, we have a statutory body with the powers to ensure that clubs are run sustainably and to protect the heritage that the fans hold dear—the very lifeblood of the game. Importantly for today’s debate, the regulator’s remit includes the top five tiers of the men’s game, of which Hartlepool and Rochdale are part. That means that clubs in the national league benefit from oversight that demands financial resilience and meaningful fan engagement.
We have also given the regulator backstop powers to intervene in financial distributions. If football is unable to reach an agreement, we want to see a fairer share of the game’s wealth flowing down the pyramid system, ensuring that the prosperity at the very top of the game supports the sustainability of those further down. Non-league football provides the stars—the premier league players—of the future.
The sustainability of non-league football was fundamentally challenged during the covid era and, indeed, post covid. The sport survival package, which was worth £13.4 million in loans, supported 35 non-league clubs when their need was most acute in response to unprecedented circumstances—I know that that has been a huge issue for Hartlepool. We understand that for many clubs, the legacy of that turbulent period remains a challenge. That is why the Department continues to work closely with Sport England, and its loan agent, which regularly engages with borrowers to monitor their financial position.
Physical infrastructure is important and is often a substantial overhead for grassroots community clubs. That is why we are continuing our investment through the multi-sport grassroots facilities programme, which is delivering £98 million this year alone for community clubs below step 6 of the national league system. I am pleased that we have recently confirmed that £85 million will be committed for 2026-27 as well, building on the huge success of the grassroots programme. We understand that for the clubs that are climbing the tiers of the national league system, the requirements for stadium infrastructure become more intensive. That is why we work so closely with the Football Foundation, which my hon. Friend mentioned, that also delivers the Premier League Stadium Fund. Although that is the Premier League’s own fund, its delivery through the Football Foundation ensures that it is aligned with our shared goals for a sustainable pyramid.
I will touch on the 3UP campaign, which is the main thrust of the debate—maybe we will only need “one up” this season if the Dale end up at the top of the division. The Government recognise the strengthen of feeling on the 3UP campaign. It was a major debating point in both Houses during the passage of the Football Governance Act. However, decisions about the structure of football competitions, including promotion and relegation arrangements, are rightly a matter for the footballing authorities, as my hon. Friend says. Otherwise, if we had the power to do so, I would be standing here announcing an extra three or six points for Heart of Midlothian football club. It is not in the power of Ministers to deal with the footballing authorities in that way.
I hope I can spend a few minutes talking about the women’s game, which is hugely important in this context. As we strengthen the foundation of the men’s game, we are equally committed to the continued transformation of women and girls’ football. Edinburgh South FC in my constituency has 1,200 young people playing every single weekend, many of them girls. The number of girls who want to play is exploding, and I am incredibly proud of the progress we have seen.
As the major independent review led by Karen Carney rightly noted, we must work to raise the standards across every level of the game, including in non-league and grassroots football. Our investment is already delivering gold-standard provision through the Lionesses futures fund—I think England might have won a tournament somewhere. We provided £30 million to deliver state-of-the-art 3G pitches, dedicated female facilities, proper changing rooms and accessible toilets. We have ensured that this infrastructure is not just built but is accessible to all, with reserved peak-time slots and priority booking for women’s teams. These vital learnings are now hardwired into our main facilities programme.
The Government’s support for non-league football is multifaceted. It is about financial regulation, modern facilities and sustainability, but mostly it is about social opportunity. I want to thank the thousands of volunteers who keep our non-league clubs running, the tens of thousands of fans who go every week for their pie, their Bovril and their entertainment. They are the unsung heroes of our national game. This Government will continue to work with the Football Association, the Premier League, the EFL and the new independent regulator to ensure that our non-league clubs remain at the heart of our communities for years to come. I thank my hon. Friend for bringing this important debate to the House.