European Football Proposal

Jo Stevens Excerpts
Finance (No. 2) Bill: (Freeports (Stamp Duty Land Tax)) (Ways and Means) & Ways and Means resolution
Monday 19th April 2021

(2 years, 11 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Jo Stevens Portrait Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)
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I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of parts of his statement. This is a watershed moment for our national game, and this statement is welcomed, as is the chair of the review, but it is short on detail and on the urgency that this situation merits; fans will have noted that. The Secretary of State tweeted last night extolling the virtues of the football pyramid, but if anything exposed the Government’s lack of understanding of our broken football system, that tweet summed it up. Tory trickle-down economics does not work, and it especially does not work in football.

Football governance is broken, football finance is broken and football fans, whichever club we support, are ignored. The hedge fund owners and billionaires who treat football clubs like any of their other commodities have no care for the history of our football, for the role it plays in villages, towns and cities up and down our country, and especially for the fans who are the beating heart of it. They should understand their role as custodians, rather than cartel chiefs. The future of our national game and all our clubs depends on it.

Labour has repeatedly called for the reform of the governance and finances of football by the Government. Government intervention is needed to fix this broken system. That is why we pledged in all four of our manifestos going back to 2010 to take action, and it is why I and the shadow Sports Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern), repeatedly urged the Government to get on with their promised fan-led review of football—a promise that they made in 2019. It is nearly a year since our letter to the Sports Minister offering support and help with 16 questions that the review should focus on. We know that Members across the House have supported reform for the past 11 years of Conservative-led Governments, so it is time for the Government to get off the subs bench and show some leadership on the pitch, because we need reform of football.

It is not as if there has been a blockage in Parliament preventing the Government from taking action to sort out the problems. Former Conservative Sports Minister, the hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant), has said:

“no one is speaking for the football world with the independence and authority needed to address the big issues.”—[Official Report, 26 January 2021; Vol. 688, c. 207.]

She is right. The former Conservative Chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins), has said:

“We should have long ago reformed the governance of football”.

He is right as well. The current Conservative Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Solihull (Julian Knight), has said:

“What’s needed is a fan-led review of football with real teeth and here we have more evidence to strengthen the case for it.”

I welcome the review, but why the long delay? Why create the vacuum that has allowed these super-league proposals the space and ability to become a reality? Eleven years have been wasted when a small amount of Government time could have been found to bring primary legislation to the House to sort out the problems. Instead, it has been all punditry and no progress on the pitch, and in that time, clubs and fans have suffered disasters. Fans in Bury know only too well the importance of reforming the way in which football is governed, and supporters in Liverpool, Edinburgh, Manchester, my city of Cardiff, Portsmouth and most football towns and cities have seen the damage done to clubs when profit outstrips the role of supporters in our game.

We are in a global pandemic and the owners of the six clubs behind this proposal think that now is the time to ride roughshod over their fans and endanger the future of football, on the back of a year when fans have been at the heart of supporting communities up and down the country. What a contrast! These proposals have been carved out behind closed doors without consultation with fans or players, and they have at their heart a plan that is anti-football—a super league from which teams can never be relegated and in which they are always guaranteed a place because of their wealth. That represents a fundamental attack on the integrity of sporting competitions.

It is very rare that an issue unites football fans and organisations across the rivalries and divides, but this super league proposal has managed to do just that. From supporters trusts and groups, including the Football Supporters’ Association, to the Professional Footballers’ Association, the Football Association, UEFA, the Premier League, the League Managers Association and the European Clubs Association—I could go on—it has been universally rejected as the greedy, obscene and selfish proposal that it is.

Let us act urgently. It is already too late for some clubs and their supporters, so I ask the Secretary of State when the review will be launched, what the terms of reference will be, who will take part and when it will report. What exactly will the Government do to stop the European super league decimating our national game? They should explore every option, and I hope that they will, whether that is a super-tax on revenue or investigating whether the proposal breaches the clear rules that govern markets and competition in this country.

For football fans up and down the country, our message is clear: Labour stands ready to do whatever it takes to stop this plan, and I hope that the Government will make exactly the same commitment.

Oliver Dowden Portrait Oliver Dowden
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I thank the hon. Lady for her questions and I think hidden in there somewhere was a welcome for the approach the Government are taking and for the fan-led review.

The hon. Lady asks what we have been doing for the past year, and I will tell her a few of things we have been doing. We have been working to get football back behind closed doors, and we were one of the first leagues in Europe to achieve that. We acted to get a third of games free to view with Project Restart, including the first ever premier league games on the BBC. We acted to stop clubs going bust, with hundreds of millions of pounds through covid support schemes, and ensured that the big clubs looked after the smaller ones with the £250 million boost from the Premier League. We acted to keep football going through the pandemic, including through secure protocols to enable travel between the UK and elsewhere. Indeed, that was sometimes in the face of opposition from Labour, saying that we should stop the sport behind closed doors. Now, crucially, we are working to get fans back into stadiums. This weekend, Members will have seen that for the first time, which was very welcome, at the FA cup semi-finals. We are working and making good progress towards a further return of fans at stage 3 of the road map.

Alongside all that, we have continued to engage on the fan-led review. The Minister responsible for sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston), and I have engaged extensively with, to list a few names, Anton Ferdinand, Jordan Henderson, Karen Carney, the FA, the Premier League, the English Football League, the PFA, the national league, the Football Supporters’ Association, Kick It Out, Women in Football, David Bernstein and Gary Neville. The hon. Lady referred to my hon. Friends the Members for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) and for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant), and I have discussed the matter with them and with the Chair of the Select Committee. All this work has been essential in ensuring that we get to the point where we can launch the review today.

As I said in my statement, I would much rather that we had waited until fans were fully back and the game had been stabilised, but because of the actions that took place over this weekend we have launched the review now. The hon. Lady will have seen from my statement that it will be led by my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford. I hope that my hon. Friend will command support from both sides of the House; she was an excellent sports Minister, is a fan and is passionately committed to the game. We will shortly publish the terms of reference for the review and will work at speed. As the hon. Lady will have seen from my statement—I am happy to repeat it from the Dispatch Box—we will do whatever it takes to protect our game and we will examine every single option. We are doing that right now.