Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)

My Lords, that eloquent and passionate explanation of football at the heart of community sums up for me the tension when we are talking about this Bill. Football exists as a positive force in society and in communities. We do not want to kick the life out of it by turning it into a box-ticking exercise that imagines the only way football clubs will help a community is if they have a regulator breathing down their neck, saying, “You must be corporately socially responsible”. Noble Lords must not make me repeat that. I had concerns in general when I read the details of all these amendments. For example, Amendment 165 calls for environmental sustainability requirements and increasing diversity and inclusion requirements. I will not repeat the points that I made earlier and will make more fully when I speak to my Amendment 155, opposing the imposed duties of EDI and so on. I want to look at one aspect of discrimination that I think is hidden. It is focused on in Amendment 247, which says that regulated clubs “must facilitate football training for young women and girls”, and Amendment 90, which says that the independent football regulator “must include facilitation for both sexes and separate development pathways”.