Contribution
My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, I rise to strongly oppose the idea of adding environmental sustainability to the regulator’s remit, as this group of amendments seeks to do. I do so not because this issue is unimportant: of course, it could not be more significant for us all. My objection is both practical and principled, because barely has the ink dried on this revised Bill, and already we are seeing a litany of attempts to extend the regulator’s scope. This, I am afraid, is what many of us who work in football are so worried about. We are the first major country to introduce a government regulator for football, and immediately there is pressure to have it solve every challenge on the spectrum.
Let me remind noble Lords: this Bill already gives enormous power to the regulator. It can decide who can own a football club; how the club can spend its money; how it should organise itself as a business; how it must engage with its supporters; in what circumstances it can move location; the approach it should take to equality, diversity and inclusion; the overall flow of money; and even the continued existence of key competition tools throughout the ecosystem. However, even that does not seem to be enough. Today it is environmental sustainability; tomorrow it will be something else. We already have amendments tabled to mandate specific kinds of corporate social responsibility; to add the women’s game to the IFR’s scope; to meddle with free-to-air listed events; to require regulator consultation on political statements made by clubs; and even to govern football clubs’ relationships with sports betting.
It is a well-known phenomenon that all regulators significantly expand their scope and size over time but, if we start before it has even begun, imagine what this regulator would look like in a decade. Where will it end? I do not expect it to be anywhere positive for our currently world-leading football pyramid.
The Premier League and its clubs, as well as many EFL clubs, are already taking substantial action on environmental issues, as all responsible businesses should do. We already have comprehensive environmental regulations that apply to all businesses, as well as the aggressive targets of a country reaching net zero. In addition to serious and often innovative action to reduce their own carbon footprints, many clubs also campaign and donate substantial resources to environmental campaigns.
Premier League clubs also do a huge amount to help other clubs in this regard. Let me give one example: the Premier League has put in place a brilliant programme to provide grants of up to 70% of the costs associated with installing modern LED floodlights at stadiums across the National League system and women’s football pyramid. This has already helped dozens of community clubs both to lower their running costs and to minimise the impact they have on the environment, but it is fair to point out that Premier League clubs make these sorts of voluntary contributions while facing already unprecedented financial demands. Again, I will give one example.
The Budget increases to employers’ national insurance contributions will cost Premier League clubs an additional £56 million annually. That is an extraordinary new burden—more than £0.25 billion over the rest of this Parliament. This new bill also comes on top of the £1.6 billion in pyramid support that we already provide, as well as our significant investment in youth development and community programmes, and the constant need to maintain expensive infrastructure and build new facilities. The Government want us to spend even more on grass-roots pitches and, through the Bill, they may force us to give even more to the well-funded Football League.
All of this is before Premier League clubs can focus on their most basic and fundamental requirement—of which the Bill takes so little account—to keep their own teams strong and competitive on the pitch. Let us remember that that is what the fans really care about. It is our ability to do that which underpins the overall health and sustainability of English football.
We must not compel this regulator to interfere in areas far beyond its core purpose, adding yet more cost and complexity to what is already a set of implementation challenges. Every additional requirement we add dilutes its focus and risks its effectiveness, so this group of amendments surely cannot adhere to the basic principles of good regulatory design. Effective regulators need clear, focused remits. They need to do specific things very well, not everything poorly. Let us not undermine this regulator’s clarity of purpose before its work even begins.