Lord Moynihan (Con)

My Lords, I am very grateful to noble Lords for their contribution to this debate. I will attempt to respond to the comments that have been made. I attended the meeting yesterday, and I was very attentive to what was said. The first question was about UEFA, and the first thing said in response by Joanna Manning-Cooper, who represented the FA at the meeting, was that UEFA has been “happy since the start of the journey”. I wrote that down; that was precisely what she said. I have to say to noble Lords that the correspondence that was sent in September last year to the Secretary of State reflected five pages of unhappiness about the potential of this legislation as far as UEFA was concerned. It is inconceivable, to any noble Lord who has read that letter, that that could possibly be seen as UEFA’s happiness since the start of the journey. I make that point because I would never have started with the strength that I have had on this subject in Committee, and today, unless I had read the letter. I was sent two different copies of the same letter from two different sources; it has been widely distributed. Everything that I said in my opening remarks reflected the content of that letter and the very real concerns that UEFA had. I am surprised that the Government have not published that letter, and I believe that they should have done so, because it is simply not true to say that UEFA has been happy since the start of the journey. It is also disingenuous to say that the request that was made was so wide as to have taken a great deal of time, when everybody knows precisely what correspondence was requested. The Written Question placed by James Wild was: please provide an electronic copy of correspondence from UEFA “on the proposal to introduce a football regulator”. That is specific; it is not wide in its remit. Everybody knows which letter we are talking about. It is disingenuous to say that it would take three and a half days for a civil servant to go through all the letters that UEFA has sent on the subject of the introduction of a football regulator, when this Bill has been only a year in the making, including the time that the Conservative Party spent on it. As I said, I would not have taken the view that I had—including when listening to the meeting yesterday—if I had not also registered very significant surprise at the comment that the Bill will take no powers away from the Football Association.