Coventry City Football Club

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Ainsworth]

I will not give way, because I have agreed to give my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South some time to speak, and I need to try to finish up, if I can.

I was asking why, if this is not a land grab, the owners are not prepared to make a reasonable offer. If they did, nobody would be happier than me, the fans and those who were outside Council house today. However, I fear that that will not be the case—that the owners will not make that reasonable offer, and that we will not get our club back until Joy Seppala tires of her losses and sells up. I sincerely hope that I am wrong.

I ask the Minister, what is it that attracts this kind of owner to our national game? Is it time to look at the special insolvency regulations that football enjoys, and to legislate for good governance, as the Football League is proving in this case to be incapable of taking decisions in a consistent way? Or maybe even more radically, but even more productively, we should, in the end, look at the Bundesliga model of fan ownership, instead of the ownership model that applies in this country.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

rose—

[Martin Caton (in the Chair)]

I will call you to speak now, Mr Cunningham, because I understand that both Mr Ainsworth and the Minister have agreed to your making a contribution. Obviously, we want to hear the Minister’s response to the debate, so if you could be as brief as possible, it would be very helpful.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Thank you very much for calling me to speak, Mr Caton. I will try to be as brief as possible, because I understand that this is a short debate. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth) for allowing me to speak in it, and more importantly I congratulate him on securing it.

There have been a number of debates on this issue—what has happened to Coventry City football club? I will not go back over those; I think that my right hon. Friend has made adequate representation and adequate queries over a number of debates. However, I would like to pick up on one or two points.

The first thing that people have got to understand, and the people of Coventry certainly understand it, is that the site of the stadium was derelict for more than 40 years because there was an old gasworks on it, and at the time the conventional wisdom was that there would be a long period before the site could be cleaned of fumes and that sort of stuff. So, it took a long time and if I remember correctly—I am sure my right hon. Friend will put me right if I do not—to clean that site up before it was even built on probably cost about £16 million. I may have got that figure wrong, but I cannot be too far wrong. So the site lay derelict for many, many years.

We had representations over the years from Coventry City football club, because originally there was talk of siting it where Coventry airport is now, at the Baginton site. That never got off the ground, but eventually the present location—the Ricoh arena—was looked at and decisions were made about the location of the arena, but more importantly it was part of a regeneration scheme for the whole area, if I remember correctly. So we have to put these things in context.

I accept that a lot of sharp practices have gone on; there is no doubt in my mind about that and I will not repeat them here again today. However, I have always taken the view that we can deal with those sharp practices separately. The most important thing is to get the club back to Coventry. That is my view, and I have always taken the view that the best way to do that is through conciliation. In fact, I have said on one or two occasions that the only way to deal with the situation is probably to get an independent arbiter.

I am not necessarily impressed by the present liquidator, if people want to call him that, and by the way he has handled things, but that is for another time. It is more important that we get some sort of consultation going. It can be led by an arbiter or anybody, but somebody who can try to resolve the situation.

The second point is that my right hon. Friend and I certainly met the Minister. The Minister certainly wrote to the Football League, but I do not know the outcome. I hope that this Minister will tell us today.

This situation goes a lot broader, because to deal with the situation at Coventry we have to look at the Football League and consider some sort of regulation or some legal framework. It has had a free hand for many years now. We have seen what has happened to other clubs up and down the country. That is not satisfactory. The fans have been taken for a ride by some of these football clubs and some of these football owners, and it is about time that the Government stepped in.

The problem is not just with Coventry. I am aware that almost every football club in the country has its own problems. I believe that what has happened in Coventry has been exceptionally inadequate, but there are a huge number of cases of poor football governance. It is clear that what has happened in Coventry is not an anomaly. The institutions of our domestic football governance are inadequate and out of date, and they need to be seriously reformed.

The Culture, Media and Sport Committee launched its report on domestic football governance in December 2010, publishing it in July 2011. It was very clear that the Football Association was in need of urgent reform; that the leagues, particularly the Premier League, have too great an influence over the decision-making processes of the FA; that the game has seen increasing commercialisation; and that there is a distinct lack of financial regulation, which has led to significant financial risks being taken by football clubs. Indeed, billionaires seem to treat football clubs as investment accounts or assets; they are not, and they should not be treated this way. The Select Committee urged the industry to take the opportunity to reform itself and said that if it did not, there should be legislation. Football authorities made proposals for reform but their proposals simply did not address the key problems.

What needs to be addressed is the fact that the structure of the FA leads to too much responsibility being delegated away from the main board and towards committees, which are dominated by the Premier League and Football League. We need proposals that are far-reaching; we need improved financial stability and reform of the licensing model. We need to ensure that membership of the main board, council and influential committees is fully representative, and balances different interests; and we need to improve the way supporter engagement operates at club level. When will the Government accept that the time has passed for the industry to make its own reforms?

Something must be done now. We have a situation where, in a way, we have practically a civil war in Coventry, between the fans and the owners. That cannot be allowed to continue. We need to get somebody independent to look at that, but more importantly to deal with the situation in Coventry and to prevent it from happening in the future we need to look at the Football League and do something about it.