L

Lord Blunkett (Lab)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 9 December 2024

Debate

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Contribution

I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that if you do not have the hat on, you are not wearing it. It is not an individual I am talking about. I would like artificial intelligence or GPT to do a word count of exactly what the Benches opposite have said over and over again over the last three days in Committee. I started to do that again this afternoon. There were the same phrases, the same arguments and the same resentment all over again about the idea that we should regulate. Bear in mind, this whole issue came out of the report of a former Conservative Sport Minister. It was subject to a White Paper by the previous Conservative Government in February 2023, and legislation was then drawn up by the Conservative Government. After all that further scrutiny and debate outside, we are now debating it under a Labour Government—ho, ho, ho. Let us be clear: get this wrong and it will not be the Premier League that loses out; it will be a pyramid, which by its very nature is built from the bottom. Without the rest of the EFL and beyond, we would not have a Premier League. You could ring-fence the 20 clubs, which is what some of them would like; I am sure it would be fantastic for the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, to know that West Ham would never be relegated. I would love Sheffield Wednesday to never be relegated ever again. In fact, I ought to declare a reverse interest: my family and I sponsor a member of the Sheffield Wednesday squad, Callum Paterson. My only resentment is that the manager does not put him on the field often enough. There we are, Saturday after Saturday—and, these days, Sunday after Sunday—seeing competition working and seeing the struggle that is going on.

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