Draft Statutory Guidance on the Meaning of “Significant Influence or Control”

Debate between Lord Addington and Lord Sentamu

Tuesday 2nd December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, when I saw that we were going to pray against the Bill, I thought, “Oh, this is interesting”, because I know that the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, is good at this. He casts the fly across the water and drags it out to see what will rise and bite. Well, this trout is biting—not at the fly but at the line. The Bill is going through and we will have precedent and case law very quickly on how this is operating. We will have to let the regulator get on with it.

I agree with the noble Lord on one point: the ownership of these national bodies is incredibly complicated. The noble Lord, Lord Watson, has just mentioned it. If you think this is complicated, look down the chain. The origins of many of these institutions go back to the Victorian period, and they have been through many evolutions, changes and traumatic experiences along the way, wrapped around them. There is a great mess about these institutions, which is why they get into so much trouble and why we need the regulator.

You will have to have a series of general terms, which will be defined by experience, case law and the attitude of the regulators. I hope the current regulator is a success. Let us face it, the regulator has not exactly arrived to universal fanfare, but I hope it is a success and we set a precedent for how this should be done, because we need that. It is too complicated to get the definitions and clarity the noble Lord seeks here. I know he opposed the regulation of this sport and is worried about other bits. I happen to disagree with him on this; I may agree with him on something else tomorrow, but on this I disagree with him. We should let the regulator get on with it and observe. We have other things coming in the “state of the game” report, and the Government cannot look away from this. We have to make sure that it happens independently. I hope that we just let the regulator get on with it because, let us face it, we have talked about this enough.

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, I apologise for speaking when the Front Benches have started speaking—I was going to stand up, but the noble Lord, Lord Addington, jumped up far too quickly.

When it comes to football, I want to use a phrase that the late Bishop of Southwark, Roy Williamson, applied to me. We had been working hard to get the Holy Trinity Church restored; it was a very poor congregation and fundraising was really very difficult, but we managed to do it. He came to open this amazing refurbished place, with the organ returned to its great glory. The church was full, and he said, “Your vicar, John Sentamu, can almost be compared to a Yorkshire terrier—never letting go, or only doing so in order to get a firmer grip”. That is how I see the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan: when it comes to football, he is like a Yorkshire terrier. He does it not wanting to control or anything but just because he loves football, and he knows a lot about football. He is doing this with an honest attitude. I do not think he is doing it to prevent regulations and all that is happening. But because he is like a terrier, I think this is the moment he needs to let go.

This stands on a three-legged stool. The first is what we passed here in your Lordships’ House—an Act of Parliament, the primary legislation. If you go there, you discover that the Secretary of State has power to do what he has just done. He is not doing it out of any reason other than that the Act that we passed gave him that power. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said exactly the same thing.

Secondly, there is the regulator, with powers given, again, by an Act of Parliament. The third leg is guidance—but I always look at guidance not as the key driver of things, which is why it cannot be clearly defined on every occasion. As the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said, guidance always has to be understood in context. You cannot simply talk about what happens to my little club, which is not in paradise. York City Football Club is climbing up slowly, but it fell out of League Two a long time ago. You cannot say to the people of York City that paragraph 1.6 should not apply to them, when it says that

“regulated football clubs will be required to submit and publish a personnel statement identifying all owners. The definition of ownership, including the concept of significant influence or control, will ensure this statement publicly identifies the correct persons as owners, providing transparency to fans and the wider public”.

That will also apply to my little York City Football Club. Therefore, I do not see those phrases needing to be more precise.

This three-legged stool of the Act, the regulator and the guidance provided by the Secretary of State will, I am sure, make even my little club of York City feel emboldened that it actually knows who really owns it and who those people are. I think this is a good thing. I beseech the highly admired noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, that this is the time to drop the Motion. He can continue to be keen on football, but this is not the time—otherwise, you are going to play a game that is not going to take you anywhere.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Addington and Lord Sentamu

Report stage
Monday 17th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, I will just add a penny’s worth. In the Bill, there is a backstop. Let us remember the history: the backstop was brought in to sort out the trade agreements after Brexit, and how Brexit would operate in Northern Ireland. Few people understood what a backstop was, and that was part of the trouble. We had to find a better way than what the backstop suggested.

Listening to the wonderful words of the noble Lord, Lord Birt, as well as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and the noble Lords, Lord Pannick and Lord Burns, I hope noble Lords will forgive me for saying that they sounded to me very much like what Saint Paul writes in his letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13. The Corinthians were fighting among themselves. Who was better? Who had more gifts? “I’m for Paul”. “I’m for Apollos”. “No, I’m better than you are”. And Paul says, “Okay, fine. Let me show you a better way”. He talks about love. He talks about faith. He talks about hope. That was the better way.

What is being proposed by these noble Lords is a better way—a better way of resolving disputes that have to do with football. As I said before, football clubs are tribes. They think theirs is the best. Of course, we have to congratulate Newcastle. I live in that part of the world. I shouted a lot, even though I was watching on television, and lost my voice in the process. Football clubs have a tradition and a history; they are tribes. If you give them a backstop, you may be there for I do not know how long. The dispute resolution that has been recommended would be a better way of doing it.

Since we are doing regulation as a new thing, which has not happened in this country before, people need to have confidence that what you have written is not another sham rock on which this ship will find itself broken apart. A backstop sounds good but, in practice, I am afraid it has not worked so far, because everybody abandoned it.

So, I urge the noble Lord the Minister—she may feel “No, I haven’t got the authority to oppose this”—that it would be much better, when you come to respond, to say that you will take this amendment away and bring it back again at Third Reading. She may still reject it then, but it would be worth giving this some thought. It would help the House not to go through a system of rejecting every amendment. I have voted against some amendments because I was not sure they were helping the Bill—but if this one is pressed to a vote, I will definitely vote for it. But I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, that that is not the better way. The better way would be for the Minister to take it away and have a think about it so that, at Third Reading, it will come back.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, we have heard a great deal of eloquence. This is a subject where there has been an almost seductive charm coming at me. There has also been the novelty of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, applying for a pay cut; that is beyond belief.

What has always struck me is that this is a complicated process, where you have a big beast and a smaller one. The Government’s attempt has been to bring this forward. It may not be the most elegant solution but, let us remember, it is supposed to stop you getting there.

We have had years of this. Anybody who has been following this Bill, waiting for it to come forward, has had years of people not agreeing. We have had years of entrenched positions, of people thinking, “Oh, you have to have us as the greatest league in the world, otherwise it doesn’t work”. No—you have to be profitable. You cannot guarantee that the Premier League will be in a dominant position. That is what competition is. You have to have something that works, where people have to come together and talk.

Is the Government’s solution better than the one from the noble Lord, Lord Birt? I think the thump of hard reality is something we need. I will quote the noble Baroness back to her. I said that all sport tends to suffer from people sitting in darkened rooms, talking about themselves to themselves. The Minister said, “No, in this case, it’s people sitting in darkened rooms refusing to talk to each other”.

That is something I have carried through on. We have had people defending entrenched positions and people saying, “It is not fair”. They have changed over the course of this long debate. The first people to really irritate me were those in the EFL, two or so years ago, when they started on this. There has been no compromise here, no movement and no understanding of the family. If it is a family, it is in a soap opera somewhere.

So the Government’s position is the one that I would prefer, although I would not say that I am terribly happy with either. I look forward to what the Minister has to say. At the moment, I am slightly more in favour of what the Government are bringing forward.