Professional Football (Regulation)

I am grateful to you, Sir Nicholas, and to colleagues for leaving some time for me to say a few words. I want to speak up for small clubs. My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Central (Tony Lloyd) said that Manchester United's turnover in a year is some £280 million, which is enough money to keep York City going for 100 or 200 years. It will probably take us that time to repeat the success of 1995, when York City beat Manchester United 3-0 at Old Trafford, which he was generous enough to acknowledge. That illustrates what has happened to football in the past 10 years. Like the high street, it has split between small businesses at one end and huge multi-million pound enterprises at the other. The Government's policy and the policies of sports' bodies need to show that things have changed. Some interest has been expressed during the debate in the supporters' trust model, which was how York City football club was saved some 10 years ago. I pay tribute to the help that the club got from the Department and from my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Central (Mr. Caborn). There was a disastrous period when one chairman of the club split the club from the ground, so that if it went under, he would have a property development opportunity. The club was then taken over by John Batchelor. He was a motor racing entrepreneur who ran the club for a season and managed to attract sponsorship of £400,000, which matters to a small club such as York, but when it went into administration at the end of his period, the £400,000 was nowhere to be seen. It disappeared into some motor racing enterprise he had. The supporters' trust rescued the club, and four years later, in 2006, they sold a majority of the club to one of their members, Jason McGill, the current chairman, whose family business had put enough money into the club to rescue it. If the smaller clubs are to survive, nurture new talent at the grass roots and make an input to their communities—York City FC has been expanding its community programme over the past two years, providing healthy support and training to around 10,000 children and young people in York—the Government must ensure that supporters have a greater say within clubs, as I have said. The Government must look at the business structure of clubs. Perhaps we should follow a mutual model, more like those of building societies, or a co-operative model, rather than a plc model. If we look at how building societies operate, in comparison with the plc banks, we can see the advantages. Although I understand the reservations of someone who represents a large club that generates much income, we need to look at how revenues from television and other sources for this great game are shared to ensure that small clubs remain beautiful so that the whole game can remain beautiful.