Baroness Twycross (Lab)

As if I planned this seamlessly, I was just coming on to the FoI request. In my view—this is not what I got from the Box note—this is a lesson on how to get an FoI request rejected, unless rejection was actually the intent. I hope the Benches opposite will bear with me as I explain. The FoI request referred to by the noble Lords, Lord Moynihan and Lord Parkinson, was an extremely broad request for all correspondence ever to the department from UEFA. In the response, the requester was advised to narrow his request to a particular timeframe for the department to be able to respond. In my humble view, that sounds perfectly reasonable. I understand that such a letter has not yet been sent in, but, clearly, the responder may choose to accept the advice from officials. Turning to the specifics of the amendments themselves, much as I do not want to see the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, lose the opportunity for future litigation, I am afraid that, rather than protecting English football, his amendments would have serious unintended consequences. The amendments would see a regulator established by an Act of Parliament in this country take a position of deference to a private international organisation. That would not only undermine the sovereignty of Parliament but leave English football in a very weak position. The noble Baroness, Lady Brady, raised concerns, both today and on the fourth day in Committee, that the Bill compounds the problem of UEFA’s and FIFA’s ongoing leverage over Premier League clubs, creating a regulatory environment that could become fundamentally unstable. While I do not accept that that is currently the case for the Bill, amending current drafting, to fix in statute that the regulator must fall in line with whatever rules those organisations set, would surely create such an issue. The result of these amendments would be a concerning loss of autonomy and independence for the regulator and, in turn, for English football as a whole. For those reasons, I ask the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, to withdraw his amendment.