Member

That has been the case for many generations. The regulator now comes into this sport and controls the game. In clause after clause, the game is controlled through government control and guidance—most of which, tragically, is not even in the Bill and is hidden under a cloak of anonymity. This is the most far-reaching, direct political intervention into the running of any sport in the history of this country—the country which once gave the world the rules and regulations for sport to be universal, autonomous and self-regulating. It is a historic irony that ours should now be the first Government in the western world to take control of sport and, by doing so, unleash the potential to do exactly the opposite of what the Government—and all football fans, from both sides of the House—want.