Football Governance Bill [Lords] (Fourth sitting) - 5th June 2025

Here are the climate-related sections of speeches by MPs during the Commons debate Football Governance Bill [Lords] (Fourth sitting).

Full text: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2025-06-05/debates/B5B50D17-1307-46BC-84C8-D0A3334AE47C/FootballGovernanceBillLordsFourthsitting

15:25 Louie French (Conservative)

More fundamentally, it sets a dangerous precedent. If the regulator is given the power to define its own gatekeeping rules without parliamentary oversight, we create a system where compliance is dictated not by statute but by bureaucracy. Once that door is open, it rarely swings shut, as we have seen with other regulators. We know how these things go. One year it is audited accounts. The next it is fan engagement reports, community impact statements, net zero transition plans perhaps—all well-meaning, but all cumulative, and all irrelevant in practicality to whether a club should be granted a provisional licence to play football.

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16:06 Louie French (Conservative)

We are also concerned about the future interpretation of eligibility and how that may veer into what we believe to be subjective decisions, or where the Government’s regulator will take on new powers as it enters mission creep. As such, I would appreciate it if the Minister will confirm that there will be no demands, for example, on clubs to provide diversity quotas, net zero targets or enforced political campaigns, all of which stray beyond the regulator’s core remit of financial sustainability and good governance. Let us not forget that football clubs are not franchises, as they are in the American sport system. Our clubs are community institutions with long histories and unique identities. They are not all cut from the same cloth.

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