Football Governance Bill [HL]

Lord Sentamu Excerpts

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

We now move from process to purpose. The regulator will be tested quickly. The Premier League and its clubs will engage positively and constructively, but it will also defend what makes our competition great. As we enter this critical new phase in the context of all the challenges I have set out, the Government should also consider their approach to our national game. We must move away from layering on new risks, more friction and additional costs. We can no longer treat the Premier League as a bottomless well of money or a political target, because the Premier League is not just a domestic institution; it is a special national asset that belongs to its millions of passionate fans, and its success powers the whole pyramid, the deepest and best funded in the world. Let us regulate it with care, not complacency. Let us preserve its global leadership position. Let us ensure that, in doing so, this new regime does not weaken English football but strengthens it for generations to come.

[Lord Sentamu (CB)]

My Lords, I simply want to thank the Minister for her perseverance, for staying with the task until it is done, for her humour and for appearing truly human. She had quite a lot of stuff coming in her direction but she did not get distracted. For that, I thank her very much.

I am going to limit my comments to the amendments. The Minister moved the Motion on Commons Amendment 1, but I want to go up to Amendment 9 and tell the House why I think these amendments are wonderful. We all learn Americanisms, where nouns and pronouns of all kinds become verbs—which we should not really want. The word “levy” we know, but in our draft we used the word “leviable”—however you might pronounce it. We all know that you can levy but I do not know whether people in the football team will know what we called the leviable function. It is not a perfect English word, but I prefer what the Commons have done. They want us to insert “functions under this Act”. This goes through Clauses 53 and 54 and I think it is more readily understood than the word “leviable”. Sometimes it is better to use quite simple English, so that everybody can understand it. I hope that, when it comes to those nine amendments, we will not quibble but will say that they have put the English in a way that the man and woman on the Clapham omnibus can understand.