Contribution
My Lords, I will correct my noble friend on one point in his introductory speech. He talked about the cost burden falling on the taxpayer. This is a Bill where the burden does not fall on the taxpayer; it falls on the football clubs. At each step, however many there may be, depending on debates on hybridity and the rest, we must remember who will finish up paying for this. It is a group of football clubs, their fans, their staff and their players.
I raised the question in Committee:
“The Government need to be honest before this legislation passes, and to identify the probable burden for each of the small clubs”.—[Official Report, 2/12/24; col. 996.]
The Minister committed to write to me in response, and she has done so. Earlier, I intervened on my noble friend Lord Jackson and cited a particular instance, the head bullet point in the Minister’s response whose heading is:
“Exact cost of the Regulator”.
I did not ask for the exact cost; I asked for a probable cost. With respect to my noble friend Lady Brady, my target throughout this has been the small clubs—the Wycombes, the Wigans and those sorts of clubs. They are not as well resourced as those in the Premier League and do not have international competitions that they may or may not be in. It is crucial that the small clubs have some idea of what they are going to be asked for.
According to the letter, the impact assessment, to which I have referred previously,
“provides a reasonable estimate of these costs”.
If it is “a reasonable estimate”, it will probably be possible to work out reasonably what the costs to the small clubs are. The Minister has used the word “proportionate” on different occasions. The calculation could be done only on revenue, turnover or staff. It is improbable that it will be staff; it will therefore be revenue or turnover. If you have a fixed number of clubs and already know the revenue and turnover of each of them, you can work out what the costs will probably be. I will continue to press throughout Committee and Report until we get an indication of what the costs are. It is not as if they are not available.
I am sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, is not here. On this occasion, I have done not a word count but a page count. The impact assessment is 76 pages long and, on a conservative assessment, 29 pages provide projections of costs and benefits. I could have extended it more substantially than 29 pages, but on a small conservative estimate there are whole pages of graphs with options and alternatives. The noble Lord, Lord Jackson, referred just now to £140 million. That is not the top option but the “reasonable estimate”, to use the words of the Minister. It could be much higher.
If there is an analysis of potential costs on 29 pages of the impact assessment, it is a very short step to do a calculation of the impact on each club. When I say it is a short step, it is in the impact assessment itself, but I am asking for the costs to the clubs. Page 58 starts progress down that route. It says:
“Costs to the National League (organising body)”.
In other words, it has already gone part of the way there. On the next page, we read:
“Costs to National League clubs”,
and there are several paragraphs thereafter. So, the Government have already gone down the route of looking at the potential costs not only to the National League but to National League clubs.
If the previous Government felt that it was possible to ask an opinion poll company, Ipsos MORI, which I cited the other day, to do research on potential regional benefits and contributions that people might perceive from having a regulator, it should be possible for this Government to do research on what people might pay—to come back to my point about the revenue and turnover of these clubs, all they have to do is turn to Deloitte. Is that a company that we have never heard of? No. Deloitte is cited in the impact assessment on different pages. It talks about Deloitte’s research into football clubs on the back page:
“Deloitte analysis of club finances”.
That is all that has to be done.
The Government are so keen to display their research in terms of finances and costs that they have not only produced an impact assessment but “impact assessment key points”. What is the first title? “Cost methodology”. We are talking about something which the Government have gone a long way down already in the necessary assessments.
I will not challenge the figures—I may do so on another occasion. Taking the figures that are available, it is a very short step for the Government to say, “This is what it will cost for clubs of these sizes to operate and pay for the levy”. But I would add one important caveat, and it may be one of the two reasons why the Government do not want to identify the sums involved.