Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)

My Lords, I should like to counter some of the nonsense that we have heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, and from the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, who moved the amendment against equality, diversity and inclusion. The EFL, which represents 72 of the clubs affected by the Football Governance Bill simply says this: “Our equality code of practice is already mandatory for member clubs, and this approach is a logical extension of existing arrangements that will ensure high standards are maintained”. That says a lot. If you go to any football ground on most weekends, as I try to do, you will find messages of persuasion and inclusion to ensure that football plays its part in guaranteeing that the game becomes more inclusive and that its workforce is diverse. During the early debates in Committee, I suggested that the business of football, outside the players on the pitch, could do with looking at this issue some more, because the workforce more broadly is not as diverse as it should be, certainly at senior management levels and director level. We need to encourage that better, and in some ways the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Markham, about independent football directors, may play a role in that as well, because that provides some flexibility within the senior echelons of management. Only 4% of managers in the professional game are from non-white backgrounds. Given that some 45% of the workforce—the players on the pitch—are black or from a minority group, something is clearly not working in how the business is developing, and we should do all that we can to address that. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Pannick: this is a non-sensible amendment that we should rigorously oppose.