Unauthorised Entry to Football Matches Bill

Carolyn Harris Excerpts

Friday 11th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Christopher Chope]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. This Bill is an improvement on its predecessor, and I give credit to the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Linsey Farnsworth) for that, because it allows the defence to which she referred in her earlier remarks, and that is better. I regret that she would not accept the amendments that would have removed the attempt issues, but I must say I was alarmed when she said that she hoped the provisions in this Bill would be replicated more widely in other Bills. Would that be in relation to Wimbledon or Twickenham? It seems to me that the mischief being addressed in this Bill is peculiar to soccer supporters. I am not sure about the suggestion that we need to go more widely to deal with this type of hooligan behaviour. I declare an interest as a debenture holder at Twickenham, and I have never experienced the sort of problems to which she was referring.

When I was at university, I can remember the first football match I ever went to, which was at Dundee United. I stood on the terraces, and I did not feel any danger inside the ground. The danger in Dundee was outside the ground after the event. Then, when I had the privilege of representing Southampton Itchen, I was a frequent visitor to the Dell. Again, I did not see any problems there. There were problems associated with the need to ensure crowd control, and the football club paid dearly for the costs of policing to enable that to happen. That seemed to me a sensible arrangement, because the burden of policing soccer matches was not borne only by the local constabulary and its taxpayers, but also by the club itself. As Baroness Casey’s report makes clear, the Wembley incident that prompted the Bill was essentially a one-off incident caused by a set of different circumstances, including that we were still during the period of covid, which meant a severe restriction on the number of people who could attend such matches. Other problems were created due to the absence of experienced stewards and so on.

I remember asking the hon. Member for Amber Valley why provisions in this Bill would not be included in the Football Governance Bill, which was discussed earlier in the week. She said that although these provisions could have been included in that Bill, because of her legal experience she particularly wanted to have a Bill in her name on the statue book. I hope that in the end those dreams will be fulfilled, as that is an important matter for her.

I have reservations about how this Bill will work in practice, and I am concerned about unintended consequences for the police. If there is an incident similar to the one that took place at Wembley, how will we be able to arrest all those people? Every time somebody is arrested by the police, a policeman has to take that person away and put them in a black Maria or whatever, which means that they are no longer able to police the ground. I fear that what will happen is that an individual will be picked on every now and again, but when there is a problem of mass trespass, we will not be able to do anything about it because nobody will be able to police it. We will get a situation similar to the one in supermarkets, with blatant shoplifting and a failure of the police or security people to take any action because they choose not to do so.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) said on Report, there is a danger that bringing the criminal law into these areas will result in disappointment and, as a result, bring the law into disrepute; we put all these laws on the statute book, but we cannot actually do anything about them. As I said earlier, the Home Office has responsibility for all this, but every day we find that it is unable to fulfil its existing responsibilities, let alone new ones that will be placed on it as a result of this Bill. Most recently, the Home Office revealed that it is unable even to record the number of people who have entered this country and then left. Obviously, the way to find out whether people who come in on visas are complying with those visas is to check the visa records when people leave. The Home Office cannot even deal with that. We are talking about extending its role in the belief that some magic new Bill will control unauthorised entry to football stadiums, when the Home Office cannot even control our country’s borders.

I am extremely sceptical about this piece of legislation. It is a pity, in a sense, that the private Member’s Bill process is giving rise to this sort of legislation, which is—I return to the word I used earlier—relatively trivial compared with all the other problems with which this country is faced and with which this legislature should be dealing.

[Carolyn Harris (Neath and Swansea East) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman will correct me if I am wrong, but is he saying that the safety of those attending football matches and the likelihood of them being hurt and, in some cases, killed is a trivial matter?

[Sir Christopher Chope]

There are already laws against killing people at football matches. There are already laws against criminal damage. There are already laws against violent behaviour. I do not know whether the hon. Lady has looked at Baroness Casey’s report on the incident at Wembley in 2021, but it says that the issue of tailgating highlighted by the hon. Member for Amber Valley was not the only problem. There was also lots of drunken behaviour—

[Carolyn Harris]

indicated dissent.

[Sir Christopher Chope]

The hon. Lady is shaking her head, but that is in Baroness Casey’s report—she finds that there was a lot of drunken behaviour and evidence of drug taking. Those are criminal offences. The expression on the hon. Lady’s face makes it seem as though either she believes that Baroness Casey’s findings were incorrect or she has some other reason for disagreeing with that.

I think that bringing the criminal law into this narrow and specific field when there are already a host of other criminal offences covering these issues is the wrong way forward, but I am obviously in the minority on that.