Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)

I am very grateful to the Deputy Chairman of Committees and to the noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, for trying to bring us back to the point. This underlines the importance of the debate we need to have in this group. I was tempted to intervene on the noble Lord, Lord Wood of Anfield, but seeing as it was an intervention on me, I do not think that I could have done. We do not need to focus so much on consulting fans of Liverpool in San Diego. I am interested in the opening clause of the Bill and whether the interests of fans of Liverpool who are based in Weymouth, Whitley Bay or Walthamstow should be taken into account at the moment when we are defining “sustainability”. The Bill currently says: “For the purposes of this section”— referring to Clause 1(3)— “English football is sustainable if it … continues to contribute to the economic or social well-being of the local communities with which regulated clubs are associated”. Liverpool do great work not just on Merseyside but for fans across the country and we need to have a useful debate about the inclusion and the limiting factor of the word “local” there because there is a domestic point to be made. But, as the intervention from my noble friend Lord Moynihan of Chelsea pointed out, I think we should also avoid looking like little Englanders and being too restricted simply to the domestic benefits here. There is a large group of fans in Thailand, Japan or South Korea, where I was over the summer and where people came up to me and asked which team I supported and wanted to talk about football. I am sure noble Lords across the House have had the same experience when travelling overseas—whether we have places such as Anfield in our titles or otherwise, it is one of the first questions we are asked. It is a source of pride for this country that a sport we invented and export is something that 1.5 billion people across the globe enjoy watching and can take some of the social and economic benefits of. Through my Amendment 8, I am simply testing whether “local” really ought to be the limiting factor here. I think there are two stages that would be helpful to consider: across England—and, indeed, perhaps the United Kingdom—and across the globe more broadly. I think it would be helpful at this point if I let the debate continue to move by now moving Amendment 8.