Member

We need to understand, before we finish work on the Bill, what “significant influence” means. The purpose of my amendment is to encourage the Government to require the Secretary of State to consult on that, so that there is clarification for all involved in football as to what that means, and then, inevitably, what the consequences are in terms of ownership of some of our leading clubs. That applies also to the highly complex area, which the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, said that we will be returning to at a later stage—we probably will—of multi-club ownership. Where multi-club ownership exists, how will the regulator approach it from a financial point of view, given that the Bill as it stands states that the focus should be on the ownership of the English club, where, in many cases, there are foreign ownerships associated with that club and with the overall owner of that multi-club ownership?