Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)

My Lords, I support Amendment 12 in my noble friend’s name and have added my name to it. As he rightly said, this amendment aims to broaden the definition of the sustainability of English football for the purposes of the new regulator, to ensure that it has a duty to consider a much more extensive list of factors that are important for the continued success and growth of the game—obviously, issues that we discussed at length last week—in deciding its approach and exercising its powers. If the Minister will not look at expanding the purpose of the regulator to include growth, for instance, as I set out last week, this is an important amendment to ensure that we expand the definition of sustainability and create a balanced framework within the regulation to provide protections while enabling growth. A framework that provides sustainability while encouraging investment and maintaining stability will preserve the success of English football and ensure the continuation of innovation and investor confidence. As my noble friend said, we cannot take the success of the English game for granted, so it is important that the Bill ensures that successful elements of the current model are given due prominence—perhaps we are being a bit blasé in thinking they will just continue, no matter what—in the concerns of the regulator going forward. English football’s depth and current comparative advantages come from achieving the right balance of oversight with competition, aspiration and financial support—a combination of elements that the regulator must be mindful of when considering the sustainability of football over the longer term. I really hope that in the light of our discussions last week, and the concerns we are raising again today, the Minister can see and accept that a narrow set of sustainability metrics could, inadvertently, be very damaging. If she will not look at changing the purpose of the Bill, I very much hope that she will look at expanding the definition of sustainability in this clause, so that we can cover all the elements that we are all, I believe, in support of saying are important in today’s game but simply do not appear in the Bill as it stands.