Lord Maude of Horsham (Con)

My Lords, I have some concerns about what the noble Lord advocates in this amendment. He advocates setting up a central fund in one of his other amendments, and the purpose of that is not clear, unless it is to provide a mechanism, in effect, for redistributing the levy funding the operation of the regulator, presumably from bigger and better-off clubs to smaller clubs. That will dilute the incentive that should exist for the regulator to constrain its size, cost and degree of interventionism because of the effect on smaller clubs. This comes back to the sense that the rich, big or better-off clubs are somehow there to be plucked in terms of the redistribution of funds down through the pyramid—already, 16% of the revenues of the Premier League goes down into clubs through the pyramid. My concern throughout the consideration of the Bill has been that, if the regulator is set up in too large a manner and exercises its powers as regulators have an inbuilt tendency to do—they increase their scope and degree of intervention—that will have a cost. A primary aim of the Bill and of setting up the regulator is to “improve” the distribution of money down through the pyramid, but the more the regulator does, the larger it is and the greater the extent of its activity, the less there is to distribute. If it is not strictly controlled, it will become self-defeating. If the purpose of the central fund that the noble Lord advocates is, in effect, to increase that degree of redistribution from bigger clubs to smaller clubs, as it seems to be, the effect would be to exacerbate the concerns that a number of us will have about the direction of travel and the inevitable tendency for a regulator of this kind to increase its scope, size, interventionism and, inevitably, cost. I have given notice of my desire to oppose that Clause 53 stands part of the Bill, on the basis that the power to impose a levy will damage football. If the Government are so concerned to have this regulator, they should raise the money for it themselves and not have the regulator able, in a very uncontrolled way, to impose a levy—potentially very large amounts of money, as the impact assessment makes clear—on the very activity of the sport that we love, inflicting damage on it that would run counter to the intention of the Bill.