Professional Football (Regulation)

I declare an interest as the honorary vice-president of Hayes and Yeading football club, which was created in a recent merger. We won 4-0 last night, although I was in the House debating alternative votes, but there you are. We all share the passion for football. I come from Liverpool and I am a Liverpool supporter; indeed, my family is obsessive about the club. When my mum and dad got married after the second world war, their honeymoon was a home match and an away match, with a reserve match thrown in, my dad being the romantic that he is. I share the analysis of my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central (Tony Lloyd). What is happening in football mirrors what is happening in the wider economy, with the boom and bust, the speculation, the leveraged buy-outs and the unsustainable debt ratios. None the less, the Government had an excellent record before the credit crunch hit football and the wider economy, and I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Central (Mr. Caborn) for the Football Trust report, the first stages of its implementation and the 5 per cent. that we got from TV levies to support football at the grass roots—all that was excellent. I also support UEFA's plans for financial controls, because we need a Europe-wide approach, despite the criticism from some premier league clubs. In the face of the crisis that has hit the football economy and the wider economy, however, we need to go much further, and I want to make a few brief points. First, on leveraged buy-outs, due diligence needs to be extended from directors to the sustainability of any bid proposal. Controls should be placed on debt ratios, and debt should be limited to reflect the realistic record of income levels, so that the debt and the club can be sustained in the future. Such issues should be assessed independently by a football financing commission, which could go in and prepare an independent and fully open and transparent report so that supporters and the wider public can see whether a buy-out or an investment is sustainable. Secondly, my hon. Friend the Member for City of York (Hugh Bayley) mentioned stability, and I share his view. The best forms of stability are always secured when the supporters are fully involved, and we need look only at Barcelona. Germany has also been mentioned, and 50 per cent. of the clubs there are owned by the supporters, so there is a model. That is why I supported the Government's promotion of supporters' trusts, which is an excellent idea as far as it goes, although even some of the trusts are finding themselves in financial difficulties—Brentford is one example. We need to introduce regulations to reserve 20 per cent. of board membership for supporters' representatives, who would be duly elected from the supporters clubs. In that way, those who actually love and support the club will have a more effective influence over the board. Thirdly, there is the issue of wages, which is raised with me at every match. Players' wages, particularly in the premiership, are obscene. Players earn in one year what many of my constituents fail to earn in their lifetime. I appreciate that a player's footballing career can be short, but such high levels of pay are not sustainable, and I want to suggest an alternative. The Prime Minister has discussed a Tobin tax on banks and speculation, and I would support a Tobin tax—it has been renamed a Robin Hood tax—on players' wages. If a player was earning more than, say, £2,000 a week, they could pay 5 per cent. in tax, and the money could go towards supporting the development of grass-roots football in the developing world. In a way, that will send a message to clubs that have paid so much for players.