Lord Moynihan (Con)

My Lords, I support the Bill. I congratulate Linsey Farnsworth in another place on the initiative she has taken and, particularly, the work that the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, has done on the Bill, both in another place and indeed here today. I wish him well—all my comments will be in that context, because I think there may be some areas where we can seek to strengthen the Bill and consider some of its implications. I too will share with the noble Lord, Lord Brennan, a bit of past experience on this. The Football Spectators Act 1989 was a Bill that I piloted through the Commons as Minister for Sport. The subsequent Act that he referred to, the Football (Offences) Act 1991, addresses broader forms of football-related disorder, allowing for the banning orders, which do not make, as has rightly been pointed out, unauthorised entry itself a prosecutable offence. It is important and may be helpful, especially when we get to Committee, to reflect on the conversations that took place at the time of the original Bill, during the Thatcher and the Major Governments. Thirty-five years on, some of those same arguments were raised by Katie Lam in another place and echoed during the Bill’s proceedings. No law can be effective unless you have the resources to bring the perpetrators to justice, and the cost of policing will be substantial. As Katie Lam clearly stated: “It is … right that we give police and organisers the tools that they need, not just to remove people in the moment, but to prevent repeat offences through banning orders”.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/7/25; col. 1253.] When the original legislation was first considered, this proposal came up, and concern was expressed by the police, some of the clubs and politicians about how well the offences could be policed and how much additional policing costs and stewarding would follow. Christopher Chope MP, who is notable for his interventions on Private Members’ Bills who and was also around at the time, back in the early 1990s, stated in Committee on this Bill in another place: “I fear that what will happen is that an individual will be picked on every now and again, but when there is a problem of mass trespass, we will not be able to do anything about it because nobody will be able to police it ... there is a danger that bringing the criminal law into these areas will result in disappointment and, as a result, bring the law into disrepute; we put all these laws on the statute book, but we cannot actually do anything about them”.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/7/25; col. 1251.] This was a real concern when we first addressed the possibility of the proposal in the Bill and it remains a concern now, but one I think we should address in Committee. Today, however, the Government have the opportunity to say that they will ensure that the full costs associated with enforcement will be made available. Sadly, recent precedent in a related area will not be in their favour. It is interesting that, in introducing the Bill, the noble Lord referred to the importance of adjusting it to make sure that somebody who went in with a counterfeit ticket or the wrong ticket would effectively be exempt because this is a very narrow Bill. I hope that that would be included. I promise I am not going to push this to votes in Committee, but I think it is something that we need to look at very closely. It is a classic example of where the CMA has been given powers and those powers have not been used effectively; the resources have not been there to make sure that this problem of modern-day ticket-touting has been addressed. There are literally thousands of people who go to football matches illegally—I will come to the laws that cover that—with tickets that have been acquired through bots or the secondary market. Many are rejected on entry. That unauthorised entry in itself often causes a fracas or problems because the individuals concerned feel that they have been unfairly treated. So if we are going to achieve the praiseworthy goals set out in this Bill, and if this Bill is going to be worth more than the paper it is written on, which I believe it will be, the Government have to commit to ensure that the funding is in place for all the relevant authorities—in particular, for the police to be available on day one, while football clubs will need to invest in training, stewarding ticket systems and support staff. We knew this when considering this offence and drafting the Football (Offences) Bill back in 1991. We should also be concerned about instances where fans are unfairly penalised due to miscommunication or misunderstanding about entry rights leading to unwarranted legal consequences. Above all, the political climate at the time when we bought the first two Bills, now Acts, did not warrant going further than we had with onerous but ultimately successful legislation to tackle football-related disorder. In looking at the Casey review in detail, we must also address the central criticism she made about the loss of experienced stewards, leaving, “Wembley’s stewarding operation vulnerable” and her recommendations for stricter enforcement within the stadium, which can be read across into clubs as a whole. I think this was a clarion call to recognise that there are people who are willing to risk unauthorised entry to football matches—who the noble Baroness, Lady Casey, called the “mindless thugs” at Wembley that day—and a wake-up call for football clubs and venues, such as Wembley, that host national and international matches, to install and modernise their entry systems and ensure that their stewards are well trained and capable of strict enforcement of club, FIFA, UEFA and FA rules at matches. It is important to recognise that a central and growing issue is the existence of some stadium, event and club employees who are, regrettably, bad apples willing to break the rules of the club and assist or facilitate entry with an invalid matchday ticket, which adds to the problem that the Bill seeks to address. There is nothing in the proposed legislation that deals with assisting or facilitating entry with an invalid matchday ticket, yet this is a significant problem that has been on the rise at some leading professional football clubs in recent years through a minority, but a very relevant minority, of corrupt staff associated with turnstile entry. Last season alone, four stewards at one club facilitated entry for people with facsimile tickets, and they benefited financially. That small but relevant number of corrupt stewards, usually working with a tout outside the ground or on social media, provide a facsimile of a digital ticket to a purchaser for payment. On matchday, the purchaser is made aware of which turnstile to go to with the facsimile and which member of staff to speak to. The purchaser feigns a problem with the ticket; the corrupt steward then uses either a master access card or an override button on the turnstile to allow the purchaser entry into the stadium and takes his payoff. In one recent case, a highly respected investigator with extensive knowledge of this growing fraudulent activity saw 30 persons admitted to a stadium in this manner by one steward at one match. This practice is, regrettably, becoming more prevalent. A simple clause making it an offence to facilitate or assist a person to enter a ground with an invalid matchday ticket or a matchday ticket that they were not eligible to use would plug this loophole that can cause problems at turnstiles and entry points to a match, which this Bill seeks to address. I intend to put down an amendment to new Clause 1A(1)(b) which I hope will address this and allow us to debate in Committee an important change meaning that persons could attempt entry with copies of genuine tickets, and if they did there would be no offence committed. Under this legislation, bad actors, particularly under new Clause 1A(3), will simply tell customers that, if they have any problem with a ticket, they should simply say that they purchased it in good faith. Altercations where this is not accepted are rare, but cause many of the problems that the proposers of the Bill are seeking to avoid. A clause such that the person should be able to produce a valid receipt for the purchase of the invalid ticket could be inserted into the defence section as part of the criteria, and discussions could take place with clubs, regulators and, indeed, fans to make sure that this is practical and enforceable. Simply requiring anyone to believe that they had purchased something generally wrecks the good intentions of the proposed legislation. In Committee, I will turn to the expensive and massive problem, which many noble Lords have heard me speak about over the past 10 years, of ticketing fraud perpetrated by corrupt players in the extensive secondary ticket market in the UK. One secondary market tout is known to have more than 1,000 memberships at a Premier League club. It is estimated that that business alone—the unauthorised and illegal use of the secondary market—costs between £100 million and £200 million of illicit business per annum, which is nearly £1 billion during this Parliament. It just shows how important it is to make sure that a genuine football fan can gain access to a football match with a valid ticket and that we tackle that problem. This may not be the right Bill to do that, but it is certainly the right Bill to talk about it, in Committee, particularly since in football, as opposed to other sports, it is already illegal to sell tickets on the secondary market in the UK unless you are authorised by the event, organiser or club. That is what Section 166 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 was for—it made it a criminal offence for any unauthorised person to sell tickets for designated football matches—but it is not policed and the law is flouted. Again, it comes back to the resource of making sure that a well-intentioned law is properly policed and implemented. These are just some of the issues that I hope we will be able to look at in detail. The Bill is exceptionally well-intentioned and has been worked through very hard. In Committee and subsequent stages, I believe we could look at making it even more effective and more valuable so that we protect the interests of true football fans, which is what all this is about, keep thugs out of the game in which they have no place and make sure that true football fans enjoy it, while also addressing the growing and extensive criminal behaviour in the much-abused secondary ticket market, which is one of the principal causes of unauthorised entry to football matches. I wish the noble Lord every success with the passage of the Bill. I congratulate him on a lifetime commitment to sport and on making sure that issues such as this—minor in some ways, not huge legislation, but important to the future of football—find their way on to the statute book and win widespread support among the fans, the clubs and the wider community who want to see a truly legally binding and effective framework for football in this country.