Member

I rise particularly to support Amendments 1, 4 and 4A. My concern with the word “sustainability” is that it means different things to different people. In the Premier League, what is sustainable for Southampton is very different from what is sustainable for Manchester City. In the EFL, what is sustainable for Stoke City is very different from what is sustainable for Carlisle. However, for rules to work, the same rules have to be applied to every club in the same league. Every Premier League club would have to abide by a common set of rules on sustainability, as would the EFL. Sustainability is not defined in this Bill; it is replaced with words such as “financial soundness” and “financial resilience”, as has been said. But both sustainability and resilience have no end state; you can always be a bit more sustainable or a bit more resilient, so it is not helpful that there is no definition.