Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)

My Lords, I support the amendment in the names of my noble friends Lord Maude and Lady Evans of Bowes Park, for the simple reason that it is very helpful to the Government. We had the good fortune to meet the shadow regulator last week; it was a very informative and interesting meeting and, clearly, it is starting from scratch. Given that the Bill has many wide-ranging and permissive powers that are given via statutory instrument to Ministers, it is important that on its face—in primary legislation—there are proper framework guidelines for the regulatory and legislative regimes for the regulator to go forward with. Given that last week the Government were quite firm in setting their face against growth parameters, which are pretty important, given that the Premier League is one of the most successful business outfits in the whole world—in fact, the most successful sports league in the world—I cannot really understand why the Government believe that this is mutually exclusive to supporting fans and putting into the Bill a commitment to fans, even though they are, as we learned previously, not defined.