Lord Maude of Horsham (Con)

My Lords, I find my noble friend’s arguments very persuasive, and I will ask just one question. I do not know what the answer is, so others who know much more about this will correct me if I am wrong. My understanding is that no one made the Premier League make the already unprecedentedly large distribution from it down to the EFL. There was no regulator or Prime Minister threatening legislation that forced that to happen. It was because the Premier League saw it as in its interest to have a strong pyramid. It did not see this as “us against them”; it wanted competition within the pyramid but not between the segments and the different layers. I therefore question the idea that you somehow have to force a better distribution when it is plainly in the Premier League’s interest—and the way it has historically behaved illustrates that it understands that it is—to commit, through a voluntary agreed distribution, to the money trickling and cascading down through the pyramid. That illustrates that this is not necessary. The danger is that the money that is creamed off by the regulator to sustain it—and is drained off from the clubs to comply with its demands—will mean that there is less to distribute. That money is already efficiently and pretty fairly distributed by agreement, so I am persuaded by my noble friend’s arguments that this part of the Bill is not only unnecessary but potentially very harmful.