Lord Markham (Con)

I thank the noble Lord. He makes a very strong point, which is that the current system of regulation for Premier League clubs, and the EFL doing it for its clubs, seeks absolutely to set up that competitive environment and those financial fair play rules. My point supports what the noble Lord said: there already is a system of checks and balances, which is working well and making sure that our English Premier League is the first in the world and the Championship is the sixth. Why do we need a regulator coming in between that? I perfectly accept that there are certain things that the regulator is important for, such as the breakaway league, but is it really the best place to start to have financial distribution from one club to another? That is why I brought this amendment forward. We are fundamentally asking a regulator to do something that we have not asked any other regulator to do in the whole of the economic environment. I thank noble Lords for their interventions; they have added to the debate. I look forward to discussing this further. Briefly, my other amendments, Amendments 126 and 130, again try to ensure that we do not get mission creep, that we are quite clear about the information the regulator should be asking for from the clubs, and that we cannot set up a regulator that is allowed to go on a complete fishing trip in a lot of these areas. The amendments would set out what information the regulator can ask for from clubs and what they should provide in their strategic business plans, so that we are all clear about that without an endless list that goes on and on. Again, I speak in the context not just of the large clubs; a lot of these are very small clubs, without a large amount of resource to reply to lots of information requests. We need to be quite clear about what we are asking the regulator to do. I hope this has contributed to the debate. I hope noble Lords will reflect on the fact that we are asking the regulator to do more than we do in any other sector—in our most successful sector too—and whether that is wise.