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Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 2 December 2024

Debate

Football Governance Bill [HL]

Contribution

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her reply. There were two things that I scribbled down as she said them. The first was that the definition—the extra detail of sustainability—is implicit in the Bill. That really gets to the nub of the debate we have just had. We think leaving it implicit for the regulator causes some problems. If the wording—albeit not to the preference of the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie—is something that the Government are happy to set out in the Explanatory Notes, why can we not make it a bit more explicit in the Bill to give the regulator more clarity? That is what the amendments in this group have sought to do, and the Bill would benefit from being made more explicit rather than left in the implicit way that the Minister set out. The Minister also said that the regulator is being set up to deal with football’s sustainability problem, and that football has no growth problem, at least at present. Our concern is that seeking to address the former problem in the way the regulator goes about its work, particularly if it is left to do it implicitly, risks football’s continuing success in the growth category and in other ways. That is why we have given this such detailed scrutiny. However, I am grateful to her for her response, and I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment 7.

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