Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)

My Lords, I will add just a couple of comments to those from my noble friend Lady Taylor. The issue for me is the distortion of competition. In each of the last seven seasons, two of the three clubs promoted from the Championship have been in receipt of parachute payments. This year it could easily be three: Burnley, Sheffield United and Leeds. Its meaning in the longer term is that the Premier League becomes a closed shop. Clearly, parachute payments are having an impact, because this process has been going on for a long time and it has got worse. I am not saying we should get rid of parachute payments —far from it—and neither does the legislation. Nobody on our Benches wants to see that. But, clearly, the “state of the game” report will have things to say about the impact of parachute payments. Any sort of fair and reasonable assessment of where parachute payments have been made in the last decade and more would suggest that competition is being badly distorted. The noble Lord, Lord Goddard, is right: they are affecting the shape of our game, and that means that the Brightons and Bournemouths of this world will find it harder to break through the glass ceiling that is there at the moment. For that reason, we should continue to include parachute payments within the remit of the independent football regulator.