Free-to-air Broadcasting: Cricket Participation

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Tuesday 9th September 2025 Westminster Hall

[Max Wilkinson (Cheltenham) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the impact of free to air broadcasting on cricket participation.

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I don’t like cricket—I love it. How could I not love a sport that has given me the joy of the 2005 Ashes series, an England victory in the 2019 world cup and so many long afternoons in the sunshine, sometimes with whites on, sometimes with a real ale in my hand, and sometimes both at the same time? It is a sport that reminds us of patience, perseverance, heritage and tradition, and—rare in a world now dominated by doom scrolling and a 24/7 news cycle—the virtue of delayed gratification.

The English cricket calendar, however, has undergone a major change in my lifetime, particularly in the last few years. The season is now crowded, in large part due to the introduction of the Hundred: a competition focused on the search for a format that would work for that elusive thing, a new audience. We, of course, all applaud the England and Wales Cricket Board for searching for that audience.

At the outset I should state that I am open-minded about different forms of cricket. I enjoy all of it, but it is very strange that we have so many different formats in this country: five days for a test match, four days for the county championship, a 50-over competition, a 20-over competition, and now the Hundred, a new 100-ball contest run to a completely different pattern of play and contested by new franchises with which few long-standing cricket fans have any affinity. But it has brought new people in to follow the game—younger people.

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. On the T20, will he take a moment to congratulate Somerset county cricket club for reaching the finals—I heard the cheering from my garden at the weekend—and will he recognise that county cricket needs all the support it can get?

[Max Wilkinson]

Yes, I will congratulate Somerset. As a Gloucestershire fan, I can tell the room that I was a member at Somerset as a student. It was an excellent deal, and we used to travel from Weston-super-Mare to sit in the ground at Taunton. I spent many fun days there. It is a pity that Somerset triumphed over Gloucestershire this summer, but we will have to look past that.

Let us start with the good news about the Hundred. Although the debate is sometimes shrill and the suggestion is that it has been a total disaster, there have been some good points to the Hundred. It is pretty much the only high-profile cricket available on traditional free-to-air television, although some of the one-day internationals are on free to air too. The model has undeniably helped to fund the wider sport with new income. It has promoted the women’s game and there is more income for disabled cricket as well. The sale of franchises has brought new investment, which has been shared among the traditional counties. That success is to be welcomed, but it has not come without cost—I know that cost is acknowledged in the sport.

Even as somebody who is open-minded, I feel somewhat alienated by the Hundred. There is no team competing in the Hundred that represents my town, my county, or indeed the entire west region. For those who have suggested that the Welsh Fire is the west’s team, I beg to differ. I suspect Welsh cricket fans will be pleased to hear me say that I am not going to attend Sophia Gardens to support the Welsh Fire any time soon.

The creation of the Hundred means four-day county cricket has been pushed to the peripheries of the season, with August reserved for the short form of the game, although this year the amazing end to the final England-India test did just creep into the start of August, into the summer holiday period. As a knock-on effect, it is argued by many in the game that time and player availability for county championship cricket, which is crucial for test match preparation, has been greatly cut back. It is worrying to see the bedrock of the sport being pushed to the margins in that way. The fans who attend their county grounds and many of those involved in the administration of cricket at all levels could be forgiven for feeling overlooked and ignored. I have heard from many of those people.

What of the impact on the choices forced on test match players who deserve opportunities for time in the middle? What about the impact on the One-Day cup, which will never gather as much attention in August as the Hundred, despite serving up some absolutely brilliant cricket?

Market Towns: Cultural Heritage

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Tuesday 4th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Southend East and Rochford (Mr Alaba) on securing this debate.

Market towns are essential to our national heritage. Taunton and Wellington have been markets since 904—not 9.04 am—and 1215, when they got their respective charters, and a market structure for Colchester has been traced back to the first century. Outside bigger cities, market towns are the basic unit of local community—the natural centre to which every local area looks—and have provided the seats of district councils for hundreds of years. However, the withdrawal of essential services in recent years has had challenging consequences for residents, particularly older people, those without digital access and small businesses.

The Government are currently imposing council reorganisation, which too often exacerbates those problems by taking local decision making from our proud market towns and the jobs and resources that go with it. Ancient cities such as Colchester and Winchester will have their councils cancelled, as district councils are effectively being abolished. The Liberal Democrats reject the taking of power away from our towns. Councils should reflect natural communities, and local communities should sit at the top of decision making, not at the bottom.

It is therefore time for the Government to support market towns better and the markets they provide. Promoting local markets increases footfall in our town centres, creates community spirit in our all-too-often online world and provides an outlet for local produce, which travels fewer food miles to get there.

For the shops, pubs and other venues in market towns, we were disappointed that the Government did not go further to reform business rates in the Non-Domestic Rating (Multipliers and Private Schools) Bill, and we were disappointed with the reduction in discounts available to retail, hospitality and leisure businesses. The Bill will not scrap business rates or deliver the fundamental reform to business rates that the Liberal Democrats have called for to benefit small businesses and those in our cultural sector. Small businesses are the backbone of our economy and the heart of local communities, and they create the jobs that we all rely on.

The Liberal Democrats are fighting for small businesses, starting with a call for more support for their energy costs and a complete overhaul of the unfair business rates system. Business rates are harmful to the economy because they directly tax capital investment in structures and equipment, rather than the profits or the fixed stock of land. To benefit small businesses, we would therefore abolish business rates and replace them with a commercial landowner levy so that investment in shops and buildings is no longer disincentivised, as it is now. That leads to far too many remaining empty on our high streets, as business rates are one of the biggest obstacles to letting commercial premises. As a result, the most deprived areas will see the biggest fall in amounts paid in business rates, whereas some big shops in high-value areas will see increases.

The change to national insurance contributions will be completely counterproductive for businesses in market towns, and particularly small businesses. Businesses in Taunton and Wellington town centres, including our theatres and museums, as elsewhere, face a triple whammy of increasing business rates, increasing wage bills and higher national insurance costs for every person they employ. That comes after years of trying to survive the pandemic and some of the highest rates of inflation and interest that have ever been seen in this country under the previous Conservative Government. It is no wonder, as the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has shown, that this new jobs tax means that firms are planning to reduce their headcount through redundancies or by recruiting fewer workers.

Every market town has its care homes and private care providers. For older people, the cultural heritage of market towns and town centres often make them great places to live. Last week, I was delighted to host Somerset’s Registered Care Providers Association and Linden House here in Parliament. They are struggling with the increased cost of care due to the increase in national insurance contributions. We therefore urge the Government to accept the amendment passed in the House of Lords, proposed by my noble Friend Baroness Barker, to exempt care providers from those increases, because it will be vulnerable people and their loved ones who have to pay.

The Government claim that the national insurance hike will result in additional revenue of £25 billion, but the Office for Budget Responsibility clearly states that after employers in the public sector are compensated and other employers change their employment habits by reducing headcount or pay, the Treasury will be left with revenue closer to only £10 billion a year. The Government could have raised that amount through a number of other fairer tax changes, such as those we put in our manifesto. Reversing the Conservative tax cuts handed to the big banks would generate an extra £4.2 billion every year, and increasing the digital services tax to 6% would generate another £2 billion a year. They could have introduced a fair reform to capital gains tax so that the 0.1% of ultra-wealthy individuals pay their fair share, while keeping things the same or even cutting tax for other capital gains tax payers to generate another £5.2 billion per year.

The OBR makes it clear that, precisely because this tax rise will be passed on to people’s salaries, it will have a negative effect on living conditions. This comes after five years under the Conservative party that saw living standards fall year on year. The last thing people need now is a reduction in their incomes. We recognise the new Government have been left to make difficult choices, but they must not allow the burden of fixing the Conservatives’ mess to fall on working people and small businesses in market towns and elsewhere.

We also need to support market towns with better public transport. The increase in the fare cap to £3 is a bus tax that will hit working people, rural communities and people on low incomes most especially. Delaying station projects such as the new stations proposed to serve the market towns of Wellington in my constituency and Cullompton in that of my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) is also a mistake for the economic growth and new housing the Government want to see. Those decisions will both make congestion worse and travel by public transport more expensive. Of course, for rural communities, it does not matter if the bus fare cap is £2 or £3 if they do not have a bus service in the first place. Market towns need proper rail and bus services if they are to thrive and survive. At the very least, the bus fare hike should be scrapped.

Other initiatives are needed to boost our market towns, to properly fund local councils, especially when it comes to social care, so they can focus on other things to support market towns and businesses, to support more planning and conservation officers, which the hon. Member for Southend East and Rochford spoke eloquently about, to introduce free parking periods to enable town centres to compete with out-of-town and online retailers, to grant permitted development rights under planning controls for outdoor markets, and, with the ending of the rural services delivery grant, to provide rural councils with a funding settlement that properly reflects the impact of rurality and sparsity on the areas they serve through the application of a fair funding formula. But fundamentally our market towns and the businesses that sustain them need three things: an end to business rates that punish our town centres and high streets; good public transport; and an end to loading taxes on small businesses, which we need to provide the seeds of recovery in our great economy. The Liberal Democrats will do all three.