Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Second sitting)

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 3rd June 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Joe Robertson]

The Government Whip is agreeing from a sedentary position. “And therefore it is perfectly open to us to make a political appointment to the football regulator.” That is an extraordinary argument.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)]

I do not think it is a case of saying, “Well, you did it, so we’ll do it too.” It was just highlighting the absolute hypocrisy coming from the Opposition Benches.

[Joe Robertson]

I obviously disagree with the word “hypocrisy.” [Laughter.] There is no point laughing when dealing with the very serious issue of taking politics out of football. Fans do not want to see us trading arguments about hypocrisy and the BBC; they want to see us working together to keep politics out of football, and that is what these amendments seek to do.

On the amendment about political donations, of course the shadow Minister spoke about the Government’s preferred candidate—that is the environment in which the Bill is being considered. We learned about the preferred candidate’s political donations to the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister only in a Select Committee hearing, after the Bill had already been considered on Second Reading.

My colleagues and I looked at the preferred candidate’s donations to Labour MPs and prepared a list of those that had been publicly filed. The list did not include his donations to the Secretary of State or the Prime Minister. I am not saying that there was an improper lack of a declaration of interest, but the donations were not in the public domain. It was only at the very late stage of a Select Committee hearing on his appointment that the donations came out, and they came out because he voluntarily gave that information. I commend him for doing so, but this is the problem we have: we are relying on candidates voluntarily declaring donations they have made to the Government of the day—donations that might not otherwise be publicly declarable. Amendment 117 would force such donations to be publicly declarable in order to keep politics out of football.

[Melanie Onn]

The hon. Gentleman appears to presuppose that such a declaration would result in a person being turned down for the post. In fact, there was a declaration and the Select Committee still decided that the candidate was a fit and proper person. As could happen in future, this person was found to be suitable regardless.

[Joe Robertson]

I am not sure I agree with the hon. Member’s interpretation of why individuals should disclose that they have made political donations. It is not necessarily so that they can be automatically vetoed; it is for transparency, making sure it is in the public domain and making sure the Select Committee has all the information available when it reviews their suitability. This time, the Select Committee relied on a voluntary disclosure. Through amendment 117, my hon. Friend the shadow Minister is trying to make that mandatory. It would then be for the Select Committee, other commentators, MPs and the media to draw their own conclusions and give their own opinions on suitability.

[Melanie Onn]

The hon. Gentleman is being very gracious in giving way again, for which I am incredibly grateful. Could he explain what questions members of the Select Committee are not permitted to ask candidates when they are making these decisions?

[Joe Robertson]

Amendment 117 would mandate that a candidate for chair of an independent regulator must declare all their political donations. It would not be merely a voluntary process. I back that, and in the absence of any good reason not to, I urge Government Members to do the same.

--- Later in debate ---

[Max Wilkinson]

The shadow Minister makes a persuasive point, but I still do not understand why it is right for politicians to say, before a regulator has even been set up, “You may have no more than x employees.” I shall end there.

[Melanie Onn]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. I want to address some of the points about the costs. I fear that as we discuss each amendment we run the risk of disappearing down quite a few rabbit holes and losing sight of the Bill’s principle and purpose.

Everyone will have received the submission from Fair Game, a collaboration among the smaller clubs that are concerned about the football pyramid as a whole. Fair Game’s biggest concern is not the potential for runaway regulator costs, although it is important that the costs are proportionate. Nobody is saying, “Let’s have a cast of thousands,” but the shadow Minister has failed to provide any workings-out for his number in respect of the scope and size of the organisation.

The fundamental issue for clubs is not the costs of the regulator and the economics of the bureaucracy. The issue for them is how little the smaller clubs get from broadcasting and attendance, and the fact that the football pyramid is entirely broken. If we fail to remember that in each debate, we will fail to assess and address the points that are being made up and down the country. The shadow Minister keeps referring to the costs of premiership clubs, but the majority of areas around the country do not have premiership clubs; they have clubs in the Championship and below. Those clubs are struggling to make ends meet and to keep going year by year, and they are seeing extraordinary disparities in the entirety of the financial system.

It is worth referring to the disproportionate spread of the costs. The broadcasting deal controlled by the Premier League is worth £3.2 billion, of which 88% goes to Premier League clubs and 70% goes to clubs in receipt of parachute payments. The remaining 5% is then split between the next 138 clubs. I would say that clubs’ futures and costings rest on issues that relate to that, not on the costs of setting up a regulator. If we continue with the argument of not wanting the associated costs, we will not have a regulator. We cannot have one free. It comes down to the fundamental question of whether we do or do not want one. The Opposition currently seem to be going down the route of saying, “We don’t want one.”

[Mr French]

The hon. Lady is missing the point of what I said. By adding tens of millions of pounds, which I suspect will end up being the cost of the regulator—the Minister will be able to explain the figure—we are not reducing the cost for clubs but adding further costs. We will get on to distribution—

[Melanie Onn]

I thank the shadow Minister for that intervention.

[The Chair]

Order. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman had finished making his intervention.

[Melanie Onn]

Oh, sorry.

[The Chair]

I promise that if he goes on too long, I will stop him.

[Mr French]

We will come to the distribution of media rights and so on, to which the hon. Lady referred, but that is separate from the problem that we are talking about, which is that if the regulator is too big, it will add to the costs and there will not be as much money to go down the pyramid.

[Melanie Onn]

The shadow Minister might be surprised to hear that I understand perfectly well what he said, as I have understood on all the previous occasions on which I have intervened. I am sorry that he does not seem to recognise that I do.

If the clubs had more money in the first place, because the structure of the pyramid and the flow of the finances were right, some additional cost proportionate to the size of a club would not be prohibitive to that club. Therein lies the problem: we fix the issue with the pyramid and then everything else will flow from that, and we can do that only with the existence of a regulator. The regulator cannot exist in isolation. It must have some supportive executive functions to be able to fulfil its roles and responsibilities in this weighty Bill.