Lord Hayward (Con)

My Lords, before I start my comments in relation to my amendment and the others in this group, I want to thank the Minister for her kind comments at the end of Second Reading, when she said she hoped she would not need to call on my refereeing skills too often. I appreciated the thought, but when she made that comment she was probably unaware that, when I qualified as a rugby referee, the laws said that the decision of the referee was correct and final. Given that breadth of my ruling, I am quite willing to use it on any number of occasions. At Second Reading, the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, drew attention to our failures at national level, but, of course, this legislation relates specifically to the league clubs. In proposing amendments to the Bill in a number of places, I am not saying that everything that exists within the leagues is perfect—it is not; what I am asking in my amendments and in my probable support for others is whether this Bill needs substantial change. I have tabled an amendment to insert “success”. I said at Second Reading that I was disappointed that there was no reference to success at any point within the Bill. My noble friend Lord Maude just referred to project creep. Clause 1 says that the purpose of the Bill is to “promote the sustainability of English football”, but the Explanatory Notes refer to “the primary aim of ensuring the long-term sustainability and resilience”. Somebody has immediately written in another element of what the regulator’s responsibility would be. There inevitably will be creep, and it is therefore important that we include some other terminology to which any regulator needs to operate. The world of sport is changing and changing fast. We cannot, as the noble Lord, Lord Maude, said, work on the basis that one is going to have an English Football League and a Premier League, and that is fine, and it will achieve what it achieves now without any change. We see the NFL hosting matches in this country. Why is it doing that? It is because it wants to extend its footprint and income on a worldwide basis; it wants to challenge other sports. Equally, American college football has reorganised recently. If we look at tennis, cycling and every single major sport, we see that they are reorganising because they are trying to extend their footprints to a worldwide base. The IPL is a classic example of how a sport has been changed. I agree completely with what the noble Lord, Lord Maude, said about how, with the way this Bill is phrased, football will be surrounded in aspic, it will carry on, and we will protect everything; there will be no change. What will happen then is that other sports take over on a worldwide basis in terms of viewership, income, finance and therefore attention around the world. My amendment would insert “success” in the first clause and in one or two other places. I looked at the impact assessment—I intend to return on a number of occasions to that, because to be blunt, it is not an impact assessment. As the noble Lord, Lord Maude, suggested, the figures are interesting; I would be generous to say that I think they are interesting. My understanding is that some of the clubs that were asked to give an indication as to the costs that would be involved said they did not know. I would like the Minister to indicate what detailed figures were identified by the clubs that were consulted.