Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)

My Lords, I rise in that spirit to move Amendment 19. In doing so, I thank the Committee for indulging my request not to take it at the end of business late in the evening on the previous day in Committee but to start with it today. We began a very important debate on this matter on Monday evening, but it came well past 10 pm and got rather confused, so I thought it would be helpful if we return to this amendment to look at the issue again with cooler heads, particularly in the light of the letter which the Minister undertook to write and which she has very helpfully circulated to those of us who were in Committee on Monday. I thank her very much for doing that and for turning it around since the previous day of our debate. I will not repeat the arguments that I made about the issue at hand in my Amendment 19, which is about including specific competitions in the Bill, but I will briefly remind the Committee—particularly for the benefit of those who were not here on Monday evening—that I was sceptical of the Government’s arguments for why the leagues in scope should not be put in primary legislation. The arguments that the Minister advanced on Monday, and in her letter this morning, related to the need for legislative agility and the requirement for the Government to retain the ability quickly to alter the relevant competitions should they change, or should the names of the leagues change slightly, as she set out on Monday. As I said then, and as the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee of your Lordships’ House has said in its report on this Bill, codifying the leagues in scope in the Bill does not preclude the possibility of making future alterations. The second part of my Amendment 19 would allow the Secretary of State to alter by statutory instrument the leagues in question, if they should change in future. That is the same method of alteration as currently set out in the Bill, so the pace at which those changes could be made, should the Government require them, is unchanged. What would be different is the starting point. My amendment would give competition organisers and football clubs the certainty they need, and surely deserve, to start planning their financial matters and regulatory compliance, since they would know from the outset whether they would be included in the scope of the Bill. The other reason for returning to this matter today is so that we can talk properly about hybridity. This is fundamental to the Bill; it came very late in our debate on Monday, and the questions that it throws up require some answers. I do not think that the Committee was particularly satisfied with where we got to on Monday, so I hope we can make more progress today. I have been advised by the Clerk of Legislation that my Amendment 19 could make this Bill hybrid. I believe the noble Lord, Lord Bassam of Brighton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, have been similarly advised about their Amendment 21. However, this Bill is, to all intents and purposes, already doing hybrid things; it is just not doing them explicitly. The Government are clear about who they want to target with this Bill, and have said so in their Explanatory Notes and in comments outside this Committee. However, they do not want to say so in the Bill because that would afford those clubs and leagues the opportunity to petition Parliament directly about this new law which directly affects their organisations. If putting the leagues that the Government have publicly stated that they wish to see regulated into the text of this Bill makes it hybrid, should we not confront that question and refer it to the Examiners? As I have mentioned before, the Government did not previously use the possibility of hybridity as an argument against placing the leagues in scope in the Bill. That might have been because they were not aware that doing so would make the Bill hybrid. I was certainly not aware of that until I was alerted to it by the clerks after I tabled this amendment. I think that was also the case for the Minister, who said on Monday, “in the explanation of this group of amendments that I received from officials earlier today, they made it clear that following the tabling of Amendments 19 and 21, issues have been raised about hybridity. That was the point at which hybridity was raised with me”.—[Official Report, 2/12/24; col. 1018.] The Minister made it clear on Monday that that was the first time she was aware of the issue. I do not doubt her sincerity, but I was a little surprised when she said it, because the email I received from the Clerk of Legislation alerting me to it was copied to her noble friend the Government Chief Whip. He was certainly aware on 26 November—that is, last Tuesday—that this raised questions of hybridity. I do not know what discussions they had in the light of the email that he received, but it would be helpful to know. That is rather incidental. The fact is that we are all now apprised of this issue and understand that the Bill is seeking, by not putting the leagues on the face of the Bill, to deny private businesses and much-loved organisations the right to petition Parliament about the impact this Bill has on their affairs—as is their right when a Bill is designed in a way that would affect certain groups more than others. On Monday, I drew the Committee’s attention to Clause 91(5), which establishes that secondary legislation made under the Bill once it becomes an Act of Parliament to allow the Secretary of State to specify the leagues in scope is to be treated as if it is not hybrid. It is important to draw noble Lords’ attention to that again. It says: “If a draft of an instrument containing regulations under this Act would … be treated for the purposes of the Standing Orders of either House of Parliament as a hybrid instrument, it is to proceed in that House as if it were not a hybrid instrument”. That appears to demonstrate that the Government were aware, in at least some regard, that there are hybrid implications to this Bill. We have special provisions relating to hybrid legislation for a reason. They are intended to protect private interests from being unjustly affected by the laws that we pass here. It is disagreeable to skirt around these rules by pushing potentially hybrid provisions into secondary legislation, and to tuck away at the end of a Bill measures to do the same in relation to secondary legislation brought by it. On Monday, the noble Lord, Lord Goddard of Stockport, and others reminded us of the report of your Lordships’ Delegated Powers Committee entitled Democracy Denied? I raised concerns on Monday that this would be another instance of the democratic rights of those organisations being restricted, if we were to proceed in this way. I was keen that we return to this matter at the start of today, our third day in Committee, because I want us to ensure that, when the Bill becomes law—as all parties want—it has been scrutinised as thoroughly as it should be. I am conscious that we can do our duty here as legislators to examine the consequences for football. But, with some honourable exceptions—such as my noble friend Lady Brady and the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, on the Benches opposite, to give just two examples from across the Committee—not many of us in your Lordships’ House know as much about the implications of the Bill for football as football organisations themselves would be able to say if they could petition Parliament. I am grateful for the opportunity to return to this question of hybridity. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her letter to us. I hope that she will respond to the concerns raised both today and on Monday, and I look forward to her response. I beg to move.