Indictment against FIFA Officials

Damian Collins Excerpts

Thursday 28th May 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Whittingdale]

I thank the hon. Gentleman very much for his kind words. I am not sure that he will have endeared himself to the Father of the House, who was my distinguished predecessor as Chairman of the Select Committee, but I am grateful to him for his remarks.

I cannot promise that we will always be in complete agreement when we debate matters on the Floor of the House. However, on this occasion I share a lot of the concerns that the hon. Gentleman expressed. In particular, I agree with him that a change in leadership of FIFA is very badly needed. I want to pay tribute to the FA, particularly David Bernstein, Greg Dyke’s predecessor, who first called for that change and indeed supported alternative candidates. As I mentioned earlier, all four home nations are supporting the candidacy of Prince Ali.

The investigation in this country is a matter for the Serious Fraud Office, as I have said, but I have no doubt that it heard the calls made in the last Parliament for an investigation and that it will look closely to see whether any laws have been broken in this country. I share the hon. Gentleman’s concern about the £15 million put up for the England bid for 2018. It is too soon to say that the competition should be rerun, but we will wait to see what the outcomes of the criminal investigations are and whether there has been serious malpractice. A lot of very serious allegations have been made, and we now need a proper investigation into them.

On the specific points that the hon. Gentleman made about Qatar, I welcome the fact that the Qatari Government have now brought in a workers charter. I hope that it will lead to an improvement in the condition of migrant workers, but we are obviously concerned about the reports of exploitation. I was also very concerned about the detainment of the BBC journalists, which appeared to be an infringement of freedom of the press. As I said, this is an area where the freedom of the press has played a vital part in exposing wrongdoing within FIFA, which just reinforces why the principle of the freedom of the press matters so much.

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman that these very serious matters need to be investigated quickly, and we will give every support we can to the US and Swiss authorities in doing so.

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

I, too, welcome the Secretary of State to his new post. Following on from his lead, will he confirm that the Government stand ready to support the Swiss and US authorities in their investigation? Will the Government accede to a request to share information they hold relative to the England World cup bid in 2010—information gathered on other bidding nations as part of the tournament process? Should the Football Association share with the authorities the information in its secret dossier, which was revealed to the Select Committee, because it may contain relevant information for the prosecutions by the US Attorney General and the Swiss authorities?

[Mr Whittingdale]

I once again pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work that he has done in this area, particularly for his efforts to assemble a coalition in Europe to press for fundamental change in FIFA. On the help that we can give the authorities, I am very happy to confirm that we will make available any information we have that may be helpful in the investigations. Allegations were certainly made, particularly by Lord Triesman as chairman of the team for the 2018 bid. They were dismissed by FIFA at the time, but I have no doubt that the authorities will be willing to take them a lot more seriously than FIFA appeared to do. I want to thank Lord Triesman for coming forward at that time and The Sunday Times for producing evidence. I would also like to pay tribute to you, Mr Speaker, for your efforts in ensuring that those allegations were properly heard and that the right of Parliament was defended.