Football Governance Act 2025 (Specified Competitions) Regulations 2025

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, I commend the regulations in front of us. I strongly support the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, on the question of the inclusion of the women’s game. It is an argument that I have heard on a number of occasions. The fact that there is willingness and a desire on the part of women’s football to come under the aegis of the regulator is, I hope, something of which the Minister will take account.

I want to mention briefly one aspect of this instrument: its scope. As the Minister correctly said, it covers the Premier League, the three divisions of the Football League and the top level of the National League, which used to be called the Football Conference. It is quite appropriate for the line to be drawn at that, as the clubs below that level are not in need of the regulatory burden that I suspect the introduction of a regulator and its activities would impose, but there is one aspect of the relationship between the National League and the Football League that I would like her to take on board and, perhaps, discuss with the regulator when she next sees him.

Between the Premier League and the Championship, there is a promotion and relegation arrangement: three clubs go up and three clubs go down. Between the Championship and what is now the first division of the Football League, again, it is three up and three down. When you go down from the first division of the Championship to the second division, it is four up and four down. However, when you get to the second division of the Football League and the top level of the National League, it is only two up and two down; indeed, the introduction of a second place was awarded only as recently as 2003.

A very powerful campaign is under way in the non-league game, if one can call it that, to introduce three up and three down. If any of your Lordships attended a match in the National League or its feeder leagues last Saturday, they will have discovered that the kick-off was put back by three minutes in order to draw attention to this campaign. It is strongly supported by the Football Supporters’ Association. If there is to be fairness, as well as an opportunity for clubs below the Football League to thrive, it is very important that “three up” comes into being. I hope that the regulator will take account of that and will be prepared to consider it when it looks at the structure of the game. I would like my noble friend to be prepared to raise this with the regulator at the first opportunity.

I am sorry; I should have declared my interest as the honorary vice-president of the National League.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I first share in the felicitations that my noble friend Lady Evans of Bowes Park and the noble Lord, Lord Addington, sent to the Scottish team on their result last night. I send my best wishes to all the home nations for good results in the next World Cup.

The regulations before the Grand Committee define the statutory scope of the Independent Football Regulator created under the Football Governance Act 2025. The Government have chosen to include the top five professional leagues in English men’s football—116 clubs —on the basis that financial and governance risks are greatest at this level. As the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said, there is no surprise here; this was the policy direction that was set out in the Explanatory Notes that accompanied the Bill that became that Act.

However, he was not quite right when he said that this is more or less what the Act says because, as the Minister alluded to in her remarks, the reason we are here making this law in a rather sparsely attended Grand Committee, rather than through primary legislation on the Floor of the House, is that making that clear in the Bill would have made it a hybrid Bill. As she said, that was much discussed during our debates on the Bill, so here we are.

Nobody disputes the need for clearer oversight of the beautiful game, but the question before the Committee today is whether the Government have brought forward a regime that is proportionate, workable and credible. On each of these tests, some doubts remain, and those doubts were only heightened by the unanswered questions in the exchanges we had yesterday on the leadership of the new regulator.

The Government say that the clubs at the five levels set out in the instrument before us can absorb the new compliance obligations, but the reality, as we heard across your Lordships’ House in our debates on the Bill and from the sector itself, is rather different. Premier League clubs have the structures to cope; many League Two and National League clubs do not. Some operate with only one or two staff; many others rely on volunteers. For them, these regulations are not a technical adjustment but a material burden. In her introductory remarks, the Minister spoke of the regulatory burden that the Government have decided would be too great for clubs in lower leagues, but I hope she will acknowledge that there will be burdens on many of the 116 clubs that we are proposing to designate today.

The Government have produced no clear assessment of this disparity. We think that is an omission. If regulation becomes too onerous, investment will dry up and the base of the pyramid—the foundations of our national game—will be weakened. The very system that this Act is seeking to protect could be undermined by the way that the new law is implemented.

The timing compounds the problem. These regulations come into force in less than a month, half way through the season, giving clubs minimal time to adjust. That is not proportionate regulation; it is regulatory pressure imposed without due preparation.

These concerns become even sharper in light of yesterday’s unanswered questions on the credibility and independence of the regulator’s leadership. These matters are directly relevant to this statutory instrument because the effectiveness of the regulatory regime is inseparable from trust in those enforcing it. As I set out in the House yesterday, this matters not because of what it means for trust in the present Government but because UEFA and others have been very clear that English teams’ continued participation in international tournaments depends on the demonstrable independence of the new football regulator.

In our exchanges yesterday, the Minister said that I asked a number of questions. In fact, I asked just two and she gave full answers to neither. Before we decide whether to allow this statutory instrument to pass, I hope that she will give some clearer answers to them.

When the Urgent Question that we repeated yesterday was taken in another place last week, the Secretary of State said that the appointment of David Kogan as the chairman of the new regulator was

“not a prime ministerial appointment”.—[Official Report, Commons, 12/11/25; col. 170.]

If that is the case, why did the official read-out that the Secretary of State gave to the submission that she was sent by her department on 19 March, quoted at paragraph 27 of the report by the independent Commissioner for Public Appointments, say that her “preferred candidate” was Mr Kogan? I quote from the Secretary of State’s own words given in that report,

“subject to No. 10 giving the green light”.

Why did she send the Prime Minister a note asking for that green light? That is my first question.

Last week, the Prime Minister was forced to write to the Independent Adviser on Ministerial Standards, Sir Laurie Magnus, because of the partial information given in another place during the debate on the Urgent Question. That letter said that in the light of the hospitality that the Prime Minister had received from football clubs and the Football Association, he had agreed with Sir Laurie last autumn that:

“I would recuse myself from decisions relating to the Football Governance Bill”.


Despite that recusal, the Prime Minister was not only sent a note asking for the green light on Mr Kogan’s appointment but responded in writing to confirm that he was supportive of it. The Prime Minister now says:

“This was an unfortunate error for which I express my sincere regret”.


This note was sent in April before it became public knowledge that, like the Secretary of State, the Prime Minister had received political donations from Mr Kogan for his Labour leadership campaign.

In the light of that revelation, the Prime Minister and Sir Laurie Magnus had another meeting in June this year and, as his letter of last week puts it, agreed that he should stay out of the appointment process for the new football regulator. My second question is: given these recusals, originally made in autumn last year and strengthened and repeated in June this year, how can the Prime Minister play a part in exonerating the Secretary of State for her breaches of the appointments code? How can he determine whether she has breached the Ministerial Code in this matter?

These are not peripheral matters. They go to the heart of whether Parliament and international sporting bodies can have confidence in the regime and the regulator, whose scope we are asked to approve today. Independence, transparency and good governance are not optional extras in regulation; they are prerequisites. I hope that we will get clearer answers to those questions today. Until the Government provide full and credible answers to them, this Committee cannot be confident that the framework underpinning this instrument is as robust, independent or transparent as it must be.

I look forward to the Minister’s answers on that, as well as to the question asked by my noble friend Lady Evans about the possible future inclusion of the women’s game.

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments and / or reasons
Tuesday 15th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maude of Horsham (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble and right reverend Lord.

As the new football season approaches, those of us who are season ticket holders at these debates relish the prospect of further discussion on this important issue. I pay tribute to the Minister for the care she has taken with this. All of us will be conscious that she has many other responsibilities, and I know she has listened very attentively, along with her colleagues in the department, to consider genuine concerns that were raised in these debates in your Lordships’ House at earlier stages.

This is a better Bill than it was. I think the fact that, as the Minister said, a commitment to such a Bill appeared in the manifestos of the three major parties is a dire warning of the dangers of consensus, because there are many of us for whom this Bill is definitely in the not proven category. The case for having it is not proven, in that what it is intended to rectify is not obviously a proven defect. The current system has not been perfect, for sure, in allowing wealth created at the top end to cascade down through the pyramid, but it has been pretty effective at doing that.

Sometimes, in these debates, it has been assumed that the bottom of pyramid is the bottom of the EFL and, of course, that is not the case. It is significant that the leadership of the National League, several tiers below the EFL, has been very sceptical about the need for regulation. I speak with a particular interest as Horsham Football Club has just won promotion to National League South. My interests in football are in the Premier League, where I admit that my—our—football club did well in Europe, but not quite so well in the domestic competition. But in the National League, the clubs are much closer to the grass roots—in many cases they are the grass roots—and they are much closer than even League Two in the EFL. There is a scepticism there about whether improving the mechanism —creating a wholly new mechanism for cascading wealth down through the pyramid—is really necessary at all.

We have to remind ourselves, as my noble friend Lady Brady has done, that the Premier League is the most successful sporting league of any kind anywhere in the world. There are competitive winds: side winds and head winds. There is state-sponsored money being put into creating alternatives. Competition is healthy, but we should not assume that the golden goose that the noble Lord, Lord Burns, referred to will continue to lay golden eggs for ever. It is incredibly precious, as various noble Lords have commented. This is a sport that is much more than just a sport or a competition; it is a passion that attracts enormous depths of loyalty. The Premier League attracts a deep commitment, not just from British citizens but from fans right across the world. We should be very chary indeed of taking steps that jeopardise that.

So, while this definitely a better Bill and there are clear improvements to the backstop arrangements which reduce the risk of permanent damage being created, I hope the chair designate of the new regulator—about whom I hear nothing but good things—will bear in mind the need for the regulatory hand to be used with great lightness of touch. There is something very precious here. It looks like it is solid and indestructible, but that success—what the Premier League earns every year, from which the whole of the pyramid of football benefits—is a right and that wealth has to be earned. It has to be earned every week of every month of every football season that there is. So I urge the Government to bear in mind the need to tread lightly on this success, and for the new regulator to bear very much in mind the concerns that have been raised on many occasions in this House. I am grateful to the Minister and her colleagues for listening to some of them and responding, but the concerns remain.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, I have two football interests I should declare: one is historical and the other current. The historical one is that I served as vice-chair of the Football Task Force 25 years ago and in one of the four reports that we produced, the case for a football regulator was argued very carefully. We thought we had won the argument, but we were not able to persuade the Government of the day—not a Conservative Government, but a new Labour one—of the merits of football regulation.

The fact that we now have all-party support for a football regulator is an indication of how far that debate has progressed. I would like to add my congratulations, first, to my noble friend Lady Twycross for the brilliant way she steered the Bill through this House, where it suffered no defeats whatever in any Divisions; and to the Ministers in the House of Commons who, with support and willingness to listen, were able to change the Bill and, I readily accept, improve it.

This takes me to my current interest. I am vice-president of the National Football League, to which the noble Lord, Lord Maude, just referred. Its scepticism was there in the beginning but as far as I understand it, that has now gone, and it is satisfied with the form of regulator in the Bill and looking forward to playing its part. As he said, it is a very important part of the football family and the element closest to fans at local level.

There are two groups of people I want particularly to refer to, and I will be very brief. One is the Football Supporters’ Association, without whose support this Bill would never have come to light. It was, as noble Lords will recall, the product of the fan-based review and the interests of fans have been very strongly taken into account and represented in the outcome. It deserves a great deal of congratulation for the part it played in the debate. The second group are the supporters of Wimbledon Football Club—the club I was proud to support in the 1970s and the 1980s—who found that their club was being taken away from them and moved to another part of the country against the wishes of the fans, the local community and everybody concerned with it. That was the sort of dictatorial decision which will be impossible as a result of this Bill going through, as it will prevent the removal of a club to a new location against the wishes of its supporters. Wimbledon supporters’ ability to start a new club—which has been extraordinarily successful and, indeed, was promoted from the Second Division of the Football League to the First Division at the end of last season—is a testament to their resilience and skill in making the case.

Above all, I congratulate the Minister in this House and the Ministers in the other place on producing a Bill that even the Premier League is now willing to accept and work with, and that is very commendable.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, while I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, on many aspects of sports policy, I have to say that, in character, I am afraid I disagree with him again on what he opened up with this evening. It would be remiss of this House not to seriously congratulate Chelsea on winning the FIFA World Club Cup. To put three goals in the back of PSG’s net in the first half of a final—an often impenetrable net this season—was remarkable. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that it is one of the great football occasions in memory. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Moynihan of Chelsea, an avid supporter of that club, on the extraordinary and magnificent performance of Chelsea only a few days ago. It matched the success of England’s cricketers in the Third Test.