Football Governance Bill [Lords] (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Lincoln Jopp and James Naish

Committee stage
Thursday 5th June 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Lincoln Jopp]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Butler. Subsection (3)(c) of clause 16 is an absolute Trojan horse; it gives carte blanche to the regulator to demand whatever it wants, regardless of whether a club produces such documents or information on a routine basis. Anyone who has worked with a regulator will know that means that clubs will have to employ lawyers, because they would never submit anything to their regulator unless it had been through lawyers first.

The shadow Minister used the phrase “blank cheque”, but it is almost a blank invoice to the poor clubs that will simply have to comply. When a regulator says, “Jump”, they do not say, “Why?”; they say, “How high?” However high the bar is set, they have to get over it. It is completely reasonable, at this stage of the regulator’s development, to seek limits so that it can take some very well-defined steps in regulating football, prior to giving it the carte blanche that subsection (3)(c) represents. As the shadow Minister said, I fear that the unintended consequences of subsection (3)(c) will be considerable.

[James Naish]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that regulation evolves anyway? My brother runs a property business, and I can tell the hon. Gentleman that what he was first required to deliver to his regulator in 2012, when he set that business up, versus what he is required to deliver today has changed beyond imagination. Things move all the time, so it is appropriate for the regulator to be able to determine what it needs to perform the relevant functions.

[Lincoln Jopp]

Regulation does indeed evolve, but giving this football regulator carte blanche to evolve it without any recourse to Parliament is a key weakness of the Bill’s current drafting, which is why I support amendment 99.

Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Second sitting)

Debate between Lincoln Jopp and James Naish

Committee stage
Tuesday 3rd June 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Lincoln Jopp]

The hon. Member for Rushcliffe made the very powerful observation that, in identifying a target operating model, form should follow function. The function has been pretty well defined in the Bill, which rather prompts the question why the Government do not have some idea of the form that the regulator should follow. Without any cap whatever, we would simply be inviting untrammelled mission creep and cost growth. Perhaps the hon. Member disagrees with where the cap has been put and with the methodology approaching it, but I would be interested to know whether he agrees with the principle that he and other hon. Members should have an opportunity for scrutiny if there is a proposal to grow the budget, the wages or the number of people in the regulator.

It is interesting to note the varied approach across the regulatory network. Do we think that the football regulator will be like the Drinking Water Inspectorate, which is pretty important—we all drink water—and does its work with 55 people? Coming in next is the Office of Rail and Road, which has up to 370 people. The Information Commissioner’s Office has 500-plus; information is all around us, so that is pretty important. Not quite topping the tree, but coming pretty close, is the Pensions Regulator, with 900 people.

The point is that untrammelled bureaucracies have a tendency simply to grow. There is no limit on the amount of fan consultation that could be done. A member of the football regulator could be sent down to every fan meeting if it really wanted to convince itself that the club was engaging with the fan base. All the amendment seeks is some measure of control, to give Parliament the opportunity once again to stop this thing growing arms and legs and moving way beyond its intended purpose.

[James Naish]

The hon. Gentleman has made the point clearly: he has named a number of organisations that are significantly bigger than the random figure in the amendment. I am not disputing what he says, but the bottom line is that it makes no sense to include an arbitrary figure in formal legislation.

[Lincoln Jopp]

I—