Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Pannick Excerpts

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

[Lord Burns (CB)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for introducing these amendments and for setting out the reasons behind them. On Report in March, the noble Lord, Lord Birt, introduced a series of amendments. These were aimed at addressing what he regarded as some weaknesses in the role of the independent football regulator in the distribution of funds between the various football bodies. I supported the amendments, along with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick.

Unfortunately, neither the noble Lord, Lord Birt, nor the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, can be here this evening, and I have been asked to respond jointly for our little group, in place of the noble Lord, Lord Birt. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, is in his place, I am pleased to say, and I hope that we will hear from him in due course.

Throughout debate on this Bill, we have emphasised the uniqueness of this situation. Under the proposed legislation, a regulator could potentially make decisions to transfer income from one regulated body to another. Moreover, both bodies are part of the same football family and they must coexist. Many clubs could find themselves moving between the Premier League and the English Football League. We argued that the arrangements should take these factors into account, including the objective of the overall success of the football pyramid.

We are very grateful to the Minister for the time that she has spent on this since then. Subsequently, the Government have brought forward their own amendments, which were agreed by the Commons and now come to this House today. I think I can say that as a group we support these amendments. While they are not entirely as we hoped, they address many of the concerns we had with the original Bill and go some way towards meeting the tests that are involved.

The most significant change is the fundamental re-engineering of the backstop process. This removes the Russian roulette binary mechanism, where an expert panel would have chosen between the final offers of the two parties, without the option of finding middle ground. Instead, the regulator now has the driving seat in both the negotiation and the determination process. The amendments strengthen the role of the “state of the game” report and modify the principles and criteria to explicitly refer to the regulator’s duties as well as its objectives. While it does not go as far as we hoped, it is an improvement and it means that, if the regulator is called on to decide, it will consider domestic and international competitiveness, growth and investment in the industry. I think that is a significant step forward.

We are confident that David Kogan, the preferred candidate to be chair of the IFR, will be able to make these arrangements work. He has exceptional football knowledge and expertise. Following the publication of the “state of the game” report, we hope that the regulator will set out its views about the most significant challenges that are faced by the leagues covered by this process. At the same time, we hope that the regulator will set out the criteria that it will apply in determining the appropriate funds flow down the pyramid. Overall, I am satisfied that this leaves us in a much better position than when we last discussed the Bill, and we support the amendments.

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my football interests: I remain a season ticket holder at Arsenal Football Club and counsel to Manchester City Football Club in the continuing disciplinary and regulatory proceedings involving the Premier League. In respect of both those interests, I very much look forward to next season.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Burns, for setting out with such clarity why the team captained by the noble Lord, Lord Birt, of which I am proud to be a member, welcomes the Commons amendments, in particular to remove the binary mechanism which would have fettered the power of the regulator. I welcome these government amendments because they seem to further what I hope that the Minister will confirm are the three key goals of this Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness. It is a pity we are discussing football and not chess, where maybe the clock would have been stopped to give me the time I would need in view of that lengthy interruption. The noble Baroness has made my point. In life, one takes risks. The fact that we have in this country the best football in the world is because enormous risks were taken in setting up the Premier League, and it has been enormously successful.

The noble Baroness was basically saying, “We know best and, to impose our view of how it should be—the non-commercial view—we will have a regulator. By the way, when we have the regulator, we will impose all sorts of little baubles on the Christmas tree”, as we discussed earlier in these debates. One example was EDI. She was basically saying, “We will impose EDI on all football clubs. Just as that pernicious doctrine is fading away, we’re going to impose it”. The Labour Party—God bless—won an election and has the right to impose these Bills. I am merely warning about what will happen.

I wrote to the Minister, who very kindly responded at length. The Labour Government often pray in aid the McKinsey studies on how EDI is a jolly good thing and leads to better organisations. I wrote to her pointing out that the McKinsey work has been completely discredited. She kindly wrote back to me saying, “Yes, I agree that the McKinsey work has been discredited, but many other studies have not been discredited and show that EDI is a jolly good thing”. So I called one of the most senior people at McKinsey and said, “Your studies have all been discredited, haven’t they?”. He said yes. I said, “Well, people are saying that there are many other studies that support the EDI idea”. He said, “There aren’t any. We’ve looked for them. They aren’t there”. The Minister did not give me examples—she may have examples, but she did not give me any in the letter—of anything but the utterly discredited McKinsey idea of EDI. That is just one example of the kind of baubles that have been put on this Christmas tree and that will make things worse in our industry.

It is indeed late, as noble Baroness said, and I will try to wrap up. We do not know best; the market knows best. The market has produced one of the most extraordinarily successful industries that we have in this country. We are going to try to take the market away and impose on it all sorts of rules. I am here just to put down a marker—

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

I point out to the noble Lord, who lauds the market, that an important part of the impetus for the Bill was that a number of Premier League clubs were going to exercise market forces to break away and destroy the Premier League.

[Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)]

The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, is absolutely correct—and what happened? Within a few days, all that went away. They had a look and it went away. As I mentioned, I wrote an article on the very day the idea came out, as did many other people, saying that it would not work. The clubs involved looked at that and said, “Yes, this is true. It’s not going to work”.

The noble Lord talked about Wimbledon. We are now saying, in the Bill, that clubs cannot move and there can be no dynamism. Yet I quoted a study in the debate last night that said that, when we restrict, clamp down and prevent things happening, that is when societies disintegrate. We cannot expect to have success if we say, “We know best and we’re going to stop this, that and the other, and impose this, that and the other”. I am just putting a warning down: one of these days, somebody will be in a position to say that this was an extraordinarily bad idea.