Football Grounds (Regulation)

Debate between Steve Rotheram and Hugh Robertson

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Hugh Robertson]

I do not believe that the presence of all-standing areas was the contributory factor at Hillsborough; that is self-evidently ridiculous. A basket of factors contributed to that disaster, including crowd control, as my hon. Friend says. He is also right that technology has moved on considerably during that period. That said, there are also new elements of technology that rely on fans being seated—the police, for example, say that crowd control via CCTV is much easier if fans are seated than if they are standing—so the argument cuts both ways.

As the hon. Member for Scunthorpe knows, our coalition partners previously agreed a conference motion asking for the provision of some safe standing areas to be considered. I remember that the hon. Member for Bradford South and I kicked about the issue, if that is not an unfortunate pun, a year or so ago when we were on opposite sides of the House. At the urging of the hon. Member for Bath (Mr Foster), I have reconsidered the issue, as I promised in opposition we would. I have written to all the football authorities, and we are in the process of collating their responses.

I say gently to the hon. Member for Scunthorpe that he was right to quote the letter from the Football League. As he correctly said, they replied:

“Football League clubs, particularly Leagues One and Two, are evidence that standing at football is safe when managed correctly.”

But the next sentence reads:

“However, we cannot support a retrograde step that would lead to clubs seeking to replace seating with terracing. The Football League strongly supports existing legislation.”

There is a balance to be struck. We are in the process of collating football authorities’ responses. I am keeping an open mind, but to be honest, there is no groundswell of opinion from the football authorities in favour of a change. I think that they are just as scarred by the Hillsborough experience as many of us who are or have been in government. That is a powerful backdrop and should always be so. There is considerable nervousness about moving, giving that backdrop.

[Steve Rotheram]

I think that the Minister would agree that this country has had an exemplary record since the Hillsborough tragedy, but that is not necessarily the case for the rest of the footballing world. Because of all-standing stadiums, there are tragedies all too regularly in which people are crushed to death, and it is obvious that that fear is the backdrop against which my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe has put forward his proposals.

[Hugh Robertson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and, once again, for the excellent debate on football that he secured in this Chamber a few months ago. He has put his finger exactly on the issue. The matter is characterised less by people being at either one end of the argument or the other, and more by a balance of risk somewhere in the middle.

I absolutely accept the arguments that the hon. Member for Scunthorpe has put forward, and many people feel that the risk could be safely managed in such a way that retains the traditional feel of football clubs. On the other hand, a considerable body of opinion on the other side of the line would argue that there are a number of reasons why that should not happen. On the balance of opinion, therefore, and given the backdrop of Hillsborough, we must do nothing that could in any way lead to such a tragedy. That, in a nutshell, is the argument about balance that I am trying to sum up.

We have looked at the experience of other countries and will continue to do so. I am aware of the arrangements in Germany, funnily enough, because I attended football matches there when I was serving in the forces in the early 1990s. I am also aware that things have moved on considerably in the 18 or 19 years since then. The hon. Member for Scunthorpe might be interested to know that the Culture, Media and Sport Committee is planning to look at the matter in the new year as part of its wide-ranging inquiry on football governance and intends to visit Germany to look at the experience there, so the matter remains current and is being examined.

With regard to the hon. Gentleman’s football club, to which I once again pay tribute for its achievements, the difficulty is that it has had three years to comply with the requirement. I understand why it does not welcome any sort of financial outlay in the current economic situation, particularly to make a correction that it does not feel is necessary on grounds of safety. However, since Hillsborough there has been a set of basic criteria governing the regulation of football. That has been lifted only once, for Cardiff City, because of a particular set of circumstances.

I can promise the hon. Gentleman today that we will most certainly keep the experience in other countries in the forefront of our minds. It is not a matter that we will review once and then drop. The fact that the hon. Member for Bradford South and I discussed that at considerable length when he was in government and I was in opposition should give the hon. Member for Scunthorpe confidence that it is something that the Government keep permanently under review. There are also pressure groups that ensure that we keep it permanently under review, and we will continue to do so. I will wait until I have received all the responses and then have some proper police advice, so for the moment I am keeping an open mind.

However, it would be dishonest not to tell the hon. Gentleman today that in my view the judgment will very much relate to the balance of opinion, and there is not a groundswell of opinion, from either the football authorities or the police, that would support a change in the legislation. For the moment, I simply congratulate him on securing the debate and on the way in which he has raised the matter. I appreciate the sensible and constructive way in which he has brought the problem forward. Most importantly, I wish his club good luck; it is a fantastic example of what we are looking for in community football. We will keep the issue under review, but I am afraid that I do not think that there is a compelling case at the moment for altering the rules, set against the backdrop of the Hillsborough disaster 20 years ago.

Football Clubs (Governance)

Debate between Steve Rotheram and Hugh Robertson

Wednesday 8th September 2010 Westminster Hall

[Steve Rotheram]

I absolutely join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to those supporters. I think that we ignore football fans at our peril. It is not just about Manchester United or Liverpool, or the other big clubs. Bees United acquired a 60% stake in Brentford football club in 2006, which made Brentford, who are in league one, one of only two Football League clubs to be majority-owned by their supporters. My hon. Friend mentioned Sheffield Wednesday; I think that it was Brentford who enjoyed a resounding victory over Sheffield Wednesday at the weekend.

As I have said, no discussion on this subject would be complete without reference to the Spanish and German models of club ownership, which I suspect are feared and grudgingly admired in equal measure by the corporate football world in the UK. Both Spain and Germany boast thriving, long-established equivalents to our premier league. Clubs in those two leagues exist in a culture of mutual or co-operative club ownership. In both leagues, it is a matter of civic pride that top-flight football clubs should be controlled or owned by their supporters. Spain’s FC Barcelona, which is the “big daddy” in this respect, is routinely held up as a utopian ideal of football club governance and is structured as a co-operative society owned by some 170,000 members, with a democratically elected president—and Barcelona do not do so badly, generally. It is a case of “horses for courses”.

[The Minister for Sport and the Olympics (Hugh Robertson)]

I have been listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman. However, it is only fair to say that Spain has an entirely different model for distributing television revenues from Britain. Spanish clubs negotiate TV rights individually and they go directly to Barcelona and Real Madrid, so the majority of TV rights and therefore the majority of TV money goes directly to those two big clubs, and the smaller clubs underneath them, which constitute the larger Spanish football family, suffer accordingly. By contrast, here there is collective negotiation for those TV rights, putting British clubs on a very different financial basis.

[Steve Rotheram]

I hear what the Minister is saying. I myself do not think that the Barcelona model or any other model is a panacea. I am not suggesting that, all of a sudden, the fans of every single football club will go out and seize control of their clubs in a revolution, but regarding the way in which clubs such as Barcelona are structured, the argument cannot be made that those structures make them less likely to be successful.

As I was saying, it is a case of “horses for courses” and it would be naive to suggest that we should simply adopt the Barcelona model or anything else off the rack. Clubs such as Barcelona are long-established products of their respective cultures, politics and histories, and there is little evidence that their ownership models would prove suitable, or even desirable, here in the UK. It would be equally naive to suggest that supporter ownership or control of major clubs in the UK would prove to be some kind of panacea. Teams will always have lousy seasons, as my team did last year. There will always be controversy surrounding management decisions, many clubs will intermittently struggle financially and there have been failed, or at least unworkable, experiments in supporter ownership before now.

A useful lesson that might be drawn from those experiences, and from the European models that I cited earlier, is that mutuality alone is not enough. Mutuality must be coupled with effective business practice and regulation. Supporters fully appreciate that. Manchester United Supporters Trust has declared that

“we have neither the desire nor the intention to run the day-to-day affairs of the club. A club like United should be run by professionals whose experience and expertise will ensure its success.”

Such a sentiment should allay the fears of those who view supporters as little more than a bunch of amateurs who wish to take over the show, or lunatics taking over the asylum. Supporters are not stupid—they want and recognise what is best for their club. The point is not to establish some type of cure-all for the systemic problems in the game’s governance but to seek ways to make that governance fairer, more robust and more fitting for a global sport in the 21st century.