Lord Mann (Lab)

My Lords, when it comes to taking opinion, I would rather not complicate things, but the divides that appear to be there are rather false ones, talking about issues that are not contained in the Bill but are contained on other issues. I currently chair a supporters’ group that has branches all over the world. It has members—some season ticket holders, some not—who attend football. I am quite satisfied that the Bill says that supporters’ groups of different kinds should be consulted on issues that are of relevance to them. I have a slight liking for “current and prospective” in the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, but possibly for different reasons from him, and I am not sure it can be encapsulated in statute, so I do not warm to the wording, even if I do to part of the meaning. There is a danger at the moment that football, especially the Premier League and the higher echelons of the Championship, is full of people who are more like me, rather than young children. Season ticket waiting lists in the Premier League are prodigiously difficult to get up. There are long queues and many children are in them, which is a dilemma. Unless stadiums get bigger and bigger, which I would encourage, how do we get in the next generation of fans? If you do something as absurd as a team in Manchester has done and make it £66 for a child, in the long term you will probably lose competitive advantage. But the family and the children are losing something which is quintessentially British and English: being able to support their local team and occasionally go.