Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)

My Lords, my Amendment 93 would place new requirements on the independent football regulator with regard to football agents. There is nothing new about agents. They have a role to play in the football league, but they have a disproportionate influence now on players, clubs and the league. Premier League clubs spent a combined £409 million on agents and intermediaries in the 12 months to February 2024, according to the Football Association report last week. Most of this money is leaving football. FIFA is trying to implement some clear and fair rules to the transfer system, including regulations on agents, for the sake of transparency, accountability and better redistribution across all levels of the game. FIFA president Gianni Infantino has said that more money should be going to “the clubs that trained and developed the players signed”. He called on Governments and lawmakers to join him and “play an active role in ensuring the funds generated in transfers are kept within football and are shared with clubs from all around the world, as they are absolutely key for current and future generations of footballers”. It appears to be a glaring omission, therefore, that we have this 125-page Bill to regulate football, yet agents are not mentioned once. This cannot be right. There exists a set of Football Association regulations that license agents, which are based on the FIFA Football Agent Regulations. These were approved by the FIFA council on 16 December 2022 and sought to provide a balanced legal instrument to protect the effective functioning and integrity of football transfer systems. The importance of this system cannot be overestimated. Without a properly functioning transfer market, clubs would not be able to obtain the world-class talent they so desperately require; players would not be able to climb the ladder and progress their career, which would instead stagnate; and fans would suffer, too, as they would not be able to enjoy the dynamism and excitement that transfer windows bring to the game or see new faces play in the team that they so love. However, those FIFA regulations have faced legal challenges in the German courts. On 24 May 2023, the district court of Dortmund placed an injunction demanding that FIFA suspend a number of provisions of its football agent regulations for any transfer that was linked with the European Union. The FIFA circular that was sent to the relevant national associations, of which the FA was one, said that the ruling was “inconsistent with … judicial decisions in other European countries”. Consequently, large parts of the FA’s own regulations were suspended in December last year. This amendment seeks to rectify the situation without creating regulatory overlap with the FA by codifying the regulations that had to be suspended. It therefore would not double up on the licensing rules that the FA and FIFA have already set out, but would instead complement those rules. Under this amendment, the regulator would have a duty to ensure that anyone who is licensed by the FA to carry out football agent services abides by Article 16 of the FIFA regulations. That article establishes the rights and obligations of agents. It ensures that agents act in good faith, comply with reporting requirements and uphold the values of the game. Unfortunately, the provision that required agents to comply with Article 16 was one of those that was suspended. This amendment would also require agents to co-operate with the FA and the independent football regulator whenever those bodies should require, and to ensure that they operate with full transparency. I believe it is only right that these rules should be reintroduced, so that is what my amendment seeks to achieve. I would be most grateful if the Minister could commit to reviewing the requirements placed on football agents and inform the Committee of what action the Government plan to take to ensure that agents are held to the same standards by this regulator as clubs and leagues will be.