Clive Betts MP: speeches

Speeches

• 12 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  I do not believe that is the case. I understand the hon. Gentleman’s concern, but I think what we are saying here is that this gives the regulator the power to look at that situation. The worry is that some owners will try to exploit not for good football purposes but because they can see themselves making a profit on the side. That can damage the competitive ability of the clubs that they own. Unfortunately, some owners take that capricious view, and it is for them that we must legislate. I do not believe my amendments would adversely affect good owners, as I do not think the Bill does either.

• 12 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  I beg to move amendment 83, in clause 46, page 39, line 2, at end insert— “(ii) in the case of the home ground and training ground, it is satisfied that there are suitable plans in place to ensure the club’s continued long-term use of the home ground or training ground or to secure an alternative home ground or training ground for the next football season; (iii) in the case of a home ground, it is satisfied that any alternative under sub-paragraph (ii) will have been actively approved by the club’s fans domiciled in England and Wales if any of the following non-exhaustive factors represent a significant upheaval of the connection between the fans of a club and the club: proximity to home ground, proximity to other clubs' grounds, journey time for fans and any other factors that the Regulator deems relevant;” I have a simple question for the Minister. If the regulator decides that a sale can go ahead, is the power there to allow it to be satisfied that there are suitable plans to ensure that the club will have long-term use of a home ground and training ground? That may not be the ground it had before, but there must at least be a replacement. Does the regulator have the power to ensure that?

• 11 Jun 2025 · Theft of Tools of Trade · Hansard source

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  I remind Members that they may speak in this debate only with permission in advance from the mover and the Minister, but they may intervene with the permission of the speaker who has the Floor.

• 11 Jun 2025 · Space Industry · Hansard source

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  Order. Five people want to speak and we have about 40 minutes before the wind-ups, so you can work out between yourselves roughly how long you have to make your contributions.

• 11 Jun 2025 · Space Industry · Hansard source

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  We now move on to the Front-Bench speakers. I call Victoria Collins, for the Liberal Democrats.

• 10 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is helpful of the Minister to have elaborated on that. Would she go a bit further and say whether she anticipates that the regulator will engage with the Football Supporters’ Association when difficulties arise and there needs to be an independent look at fan engagement with a club?

• 10 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I think the Minister and I are getting there. Obviously, the business plan and the source of funds come with a new owner and then continue. However, with an owner already in place, does that still apply? Can the regulator say, “Wait a minute. I need to see a business plan and a source of funds to ensure that you are a fit and proper person”?

• 10 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It would be helpful if the Minister could write to me because this is a big question in football. There are owners who promise the world and then find that they cannot deliver it; indeed, they can deliver very little. I come back to Sheffield Wednesday, but there have been other owners, such as Ken Bates at Oldham, who set up a structure that could not then be financially maintained. It is important to understand whether the regulator has power in that circumstance to intervene.

• 10 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I just want to be clear about the grounds on which the regulator can investigate or intervene. We talked about the source of wealth being criminal, which has been clearly laid out. However, if the source of wealth is one that has diminished substantially, so the owner cannot now show that they can continue to run the club, is that a reason for the regulator to consider intervening?

• 10 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to have you back in the Chair, Mr Turner. The Minister is doing all she can to deal with situations that will apply to most clubs. The problem is those owners that do not want to engage. They will try to avoid this responsibility because they see it as an infringement of their right to run their club in the way they want. I have to come back to Sheffield Wednesday because Mr Chansiri has a track record on this. He set up an engagement panel with fans, but he invited the fan groups he wanted to invite. Worse than that, once someone goes into a meeting with him, they have to sign a statement to say that they will not divulge any of the things that happen in that meeting. It is a closed shop. I sat down with a myriad of different groups including the supporters’ trust, which is the biggest fan group by a long way, and several other groups, including the women’s group and the 1867 group. We formed an umbrella group to try to bring all the fan groups together. The club spoke to the groups and said, “If you get involved in the umbrella group, you will not be allowed on the engagement panel.” It is either/or because that is seen as an attack on the club and the chairman. You could not make it up—well, you can make it up, because we can see how the club is run. That is the problem. How do we get around that situation? I was told the other day, “The chairman engages with fans. He has actually had two meetings of five hours each with fans.” But he does not answer any questions. When I asked one of the officers at the club why he will not answer questions, they said, “Well, they wanted to know what his business plan was.” It is not a bad question to ask, and that is exactly what the regulator is going to have the powers to do. I am still not absolutely certain on what happens when the club tries to control the situation. Does the regulator then arbitrate? Does the regulator come in and say what they think good fan engagement looks like? It would be very helpful if the Football Supporters’ Association were to be given some role in that, because it understands fan engagement and fan involvement better than anyone. It knows what happens on the ground, it knows the tricks that the clubs pull and it knows how genuine fan engagement can be developed and implemented. I am not sure a new regulator will necessarily have all that intrinsic knowledge about what happens at clubs. Some role for the FSA in this would be helpful. In particular, it would help when problems arise of the sort that I have just explained. I am sure Sheffield Wednesday are not the only club where owners do not really want fans around—they just want them to turn up, pay their money and go away. The Chair probably cannot get involved in the debate, but I can see you nodding, Mr Turner, because I am aware that there have been a few problems at Hull in that regard in the past. I ask that the Minister provide a bit more of an explanation and flesh this out further. In particular, sub-paragraph 8(2) reads: “So far as the condition requires consultation with persons within sub-paragraph (1)(a), the condition may require the club to constitute a group of such persons”. I know immediately how some clubs will constitute that group, and it will not be proper fan consultation.

• 10 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I will make just one more point—I think it is important that we understand precisely what this means. Clause 33 talks about an owner or club having a responsibility to notify the regulator. Surely that does not mean that nobody else could notify the regulator, if relevant information came to them. Could they then pass it on for the regulator to look at?

• 10 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I will contribute to the debate.

• 10 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Sixth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way?

• 10 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  This is a serious point, because football is about our communities. It reflects what goes on in our communities and tries to improve it. Football has a very good record of tackling racism in this country, right from the top, with the Football Association and the leagues, through to the clubs. Young kids walk on the pitch and there are “kick racism out of football” banners, and football has done good work on homophobia as well. Is the shadow Minister saying that all those matters should be put to a club’s fans in a referendum, or would we expect a club to do those things as a matter of good practice?

• 10 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am still not quite sure why my amendments would cause so many problems. I understand the difficulty where a club does not actually own the ground but leases it, but the amendment is about security of tenure. There does not have to be ownership; it could be a secure lease, as the English Football League requires, for a 20-year period. That is implied by the amendment. I was not quite sure what the Minister was saying about how the review by the Law Commission and implementation by MHCLG Ministers would secure the position for football clubs, and what else is being looked at in terms of the planning framework. Is she able to say any more on those points to get on the record what further safeguards might be in place?

• 10 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to be back with you in the Chair, Sir Jeremy. This might be termed the Dejphon Chansiri clause—though there are a number of those as we go through the Bill, and they could also apply to other owners of football clubs who have over the years behaved in ways that we might find unacceptable. Within the Bill—and credit to my hon. Friend the Minister for this—there are clear requirements for clubs wanting to move grounds to properly consult and demonstrate that there are good footballing reasons to do so. There will occasionally be good reasons, when clubs should move as it is in their commercial and footballing interests to do so. The problem with the Bill as it stands, however, which I have talked to my hon. Friend about on a number of occasions—she is probably fed up of hearing me on the subject—is where the owner has divested the ground separate from ownership of the club. The ownership of the ground is often therefore in a different place and with a different company. It is often, as in the case of Sheffield Wednesday, owned by the same person as the club, but in a different format, so the club could be sold but could be left with no ground. There probably would not be many people who would want to buy a club in that situation, but we can see the possibilities for owners who do not have the best intentions to do things that are not acceptable. That has been starkly illustrated in the last two weeks, as supporters at Hillsborough have got angrier and angrier with the chairman and he has now gone on record on social media to say, “If you keep on protesting, I can find better things to do with this ground and make more money by building a supermarket or housing”. He has actually put that in writing and said it, so I think we have to cover off those situations. With Sheffield Wednesday, I think the club has a lease on the ground and he would be legally challenged if he tried to do that, but the fact is that owners will try many things to maximise their personal financial interests. Coming back to the content and intention of the Bill, it is right we are going to have a licensing system; we will come on to that in more detail in due course. The intention is that to get a licence, the owner has to show that they are a fit and proper person and demonstrate that they can run the club financially. If it is proper that the owner has to show that they have the financial resources to run the club, surely they need to show that they have a ground to play on. This amendment is almost as simple as that. The English Football League rules as they are partly cover this issue, because the EFL requires clubs to demonstrate they have the 20-year use of a ground as part of their conditions. There is an overlap between what the regulator’s powers are going to be and what the leagues do, but we want to make sure there are no gaps and that we cover off those with bad intentions. I am sure Mr Chansiri has the best of intentions—perhaps for himself and his family, I hasten to add—but nevertheless it is also true of clubs like Derby and Charlton and others, and we have seen in the past the sad case of Wimbledon, having to move halfway across the country because the owners got rid of their ground, Plough Lane. We saw Brighton wandering homeless around the country for many years when the Goldstone Ground, which I remember going to several times, was sold for a supermarket there. Mr Chansiri is obviously following in those footsteps. That left the club in an awful situation. Let us not go there again; let us anticipate what might go wrong and put measures in place to stop it. That is what I am trying to do with my amendments. Even if the Minister cannot accept the precise wording, I hope that she will, at least, understand and recognise the problems that could exist, which need addressing at this stage.

• 10 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for that reply; it is helpful in moving the discussion in the right direction. I appreciate that she cannot commit on behalf of another Department and other Ministers, but she has indicated that work is going on in this area. Again, it would be helpful if she could encourage her colleagues in the MHCLG to come forward with that further information before we get to Report. If they are going to write to us about the other issue, they could write to us about this as well. It would be extremely helpful if that could be done, but I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

• 10 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I beg to move amendment 14, in schedule 4, page 98, line 20, at end insert— “(d) the home ground threshold requirement (see paragraph 4A)” See explanatory statement for Amendment 15.

• 10 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member raises a worthwhile point for consideration. It may be that in the situation of Reading, if it had not changed ownership, the club would have gone into administration, because it would have had no income coming in because it could not play in the competition. That is entirely possible. It is possible that the chairman could just walk away and say, “Right, I am dissolving this organisation—I am off.” That would not be acceptable for fans. That is why I said at the beginning that it is a complicated legal issue, and I am not saying that I have the only solution here. What I am saying is that there is a problem that does not currently appear to have a solution in the Bill. It is a problem. I keep going back to the situation at Sheffield Wednesday. We have a situation where an owner is running out of money. We do not even know where his money comes from. It clearly does not come from his companies, because his companies are loss-making. Is he being supported by his family? Is the Thai Union Group providing the money? Is the family trust providing the money? The regulator will have the power to find the source of funding, which might be quite interesting in some cases. We had a situation at Leeds a few years ago where we did not even know who owned the club. Getting that information on the record and giving the regulator powers to find out who actually owns the club, what the source of funding is and whether the beneficial owner is the same as the owner who claims to be the owner are important issues, but then we get to the point where the owner is found to be not fit and proper. What actually happens? I do not know the answer. I have read the Bill many times and debated it many times, and still do not know the answer. There has to be an answer.

• 10 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I beg to move amendment 16, in schedule 5, page 100, line 19, at end insert— “(e) an Asset of Community Value condition.” This amendment adds the requirement to attach an Asset of Community Value condition to each club operating licence.

• 10 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  On that basis, with the Minister going as far as she can this morning, I am happy not to press the amendment. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

• 10 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  The Minister often completely convinces me—on this occasion, she goes a little way towards being convincing. I want to read what MHCLG is going to say. In the end, it is not how we do it, but what we achieve in terms of the safety and security of grounds for the fans. That is what this is about. If what MHCLG is going to do moves us in that direction, as the Minister indicates it will, I am happy to await that correspondence from it before pushing this further. I hope that we can get a response from MHCLG Ministers before Report—if the Minister could encourage them to write in that time period, it would be helpful.

• 10 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  They would, and therefore the club disappears. No one wants to see that. The whole purpose of the Bill is to stop clubs disappearing, to stop what happened to Bury, and so there is a gap in the legislation, because what happens in that situation? It nearly happened at Reading—the club nearly disappeared, but in the end it was a last-minute sale. If the owner had not sold it at the last minute, however, the EFL has no powers to deal with it, and the regulator will not either. The regulator has the power to say: “You shouldn’t be owning the club. You shouldn’t have a licence to operate the club, because of what you have done, you haven’t got the funds, your source of funds is inappropriate”—all those things—but then what happens? I am saying to the Minister that the whole intention of the Bill is to ensure that the clubs that fans have supported for years, for generations—for communities, it is their club—do not disappear, go out of business or lose their place in the competition they are playing in. Clubs might get relegated, that is fine, but they should not lose their place because they have an owner who is not fit and proper, and does not meet the test. We have to find way of dealing with this, which the Bill does not do as drafted.

• 10 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I beg to move amendment 7, in schedule 5, page 100, line 19, at end insert “(e) an enforcement condition.” See explanatory statement for Amendment 8.

• 10 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  On a general point, when we talk about fans and fan groups, who defines who they are and the relevant ones? That is a really important point. Coming back to our club, Sheffield Wednesday, we have more than 20 different fan groups. That is also true of other clubs. Talk to the EFL, because it often struggles to engage or know who actually represents fans, as opposed to two or three people who have got together to name themselves as a group. How are we going to deal with that? As fans become an integral part of the process, who decides who the relevant groups are?