Contribution
My Lords, to what problem is this Bill a solution? That should be the first question we ask of every piece of legislation but, not for the first time, I find that I am the only person —so far, at least—who has asked it. Here we are, a revising Chamber conceived as a check on the necessary radicalism of the popularly elected Chamber. It is precisely our job to uphold the principles of proportionality, propriety and property. As my noble friend Lord Goodman said, of course people are going to be angry about individual market failures now, but it is our job to foresee that their anger will be all the stronger when there are worse failures, as assuredly there will be once the entire business is taken into state regulation.
I ask again: to what problem is this a solution? Are we facing national bankruptcy as a result of the terrible failure of football? On the contrary: every speaker so far has acknowledged the success of English football. The Minister called it our greatest cultural export. I understand that not only is the Premier League the most watched in the world but the sixth most watched is the English Football League, and they are the first and second in terms of takings at the gate. So to what problem is this a solution?
There are plenty of things that need reform—we have a Civil Service that has stopped bothering to show up at the office since the pandemic and a healthcare system that is delivering fewer and fewer procedures despite getting bigger and bigger budgets—yet we seem to be going after all the things that work, whether it is the City of London, private schools or now, outstandingly, what everyone agrees is the most successful football league in the world.
What are we going to solve by doing this? The Bill talks about the one notional problem of clubs closing and being allowed to close. The one that everyone keeps mentioning is Bury, but I cannot help noticing that Bury is still there. It is a wonderful example of what Joseph Schumpeter would have called spontaneous order. Without any regulation, that was solved. Can we be certain that, with the full force of coercive law, we would have improved that situation and made it more likely that we would have had the investment to come back?
I used to work at the Sunday Telegraph—in fact I still write a column for it, as did my noble friend Lord Goodman for a while. We had a former colleague there who is now, sadly, deceased, Christopher Booker, who had the wonderful phrase, “using a sledgehammer to miss a nut”. I am afraid that is exactly what I can see this legislation doing. It is not going to succeed in its declared notional goal but, my word, it is going to have a lot of unintended and unforeseen secondary consequences.
Who has ever known a regulator to say, “Actually, our job is done, we’re going to dissolve ourselves”, or even, “Do you know what? We’re probably doing a bit too much. Let’s take a step back”? Has there ever been an example of any regulator that has volunteered to relinquish its power? Once this one gets going, who can say for sure that we will not have gender quotas, net-zero policies, ticket price fixing and any manner of things beyond the remit originally foreseen? That is what regulators do. One more time, what is the terrible crisis that is so severe that it justifies bringing in a measure of this magnitude?
I was very impressed last week during Questions by the responses of the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross. Those who were here will remember that there was a debate about boxing and about male-presenting boxers in female boxing rings. Despite a great deal of moralistic fervour in the Chamber, the Minister quite properly stood by the principle that it was not for Governments to tell independent sporting federations what rules they should follow. That has been a pretty good principle in this country.