L

Lord Markham (Con)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 15 January 2025

Debate

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Contribution

I rise to speak to Amendment 329 in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Parkinson. I will speak very briefly, because Amendment 327, on costs, was spoken to extensively. I think we all accept the need for a regulator. The points about broadcasting made by the noble Lord, Lord Birt, were points I am very familiar with as a former director of ITV and were very well made. On proportionality, we have talked a lot about Premier League clubs, but I would argue that when you have National League clubs who have two, three or four members of staff and an impact assessment that says they will need one member of staff for compliance on this, that tells me that we have the balance wrong. We are saying that a third of their staff need to be in compliance. I would like to answer the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, who said that clubs should already have all this information because they are doing an audit. An audit is backward-looking over the year that has happened. What the regulator is asking clubs to do here is to write a three-year business plan, which is forward-looking.

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