It is a pleasure to take part in this debate under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. I congratulate the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) not only on securing the debate but on his continued and tenacious pursuit of FIFA and Mr Blatter in particular. He has been a doughty campaigner and I commend him for it.
I also take the opportunity to welcome the Minister to her post. It is an unfortunate task for me to oppose her, because she is probably one of the most liked people in the House. I feel like a pantomime villain here—I will probably get attacked by my own side if I am horrible to her. I am genuinely pleased to see her in her place, because she will be good news for sport. I am sure she will do a very good job and I wish her every success in trying to convince her colleagues, some of whom have not always had sport in their DNA as she has, that we should give sport a much higher profile.
I congratulate those who have been campaigning for a long time and shining a light on the corruption in FIFA, such as the BBC’s “Panorama” programme and the journalist Andrew Jennings. They are now being proved right. Their work was dismissed by some as conspiracy theories, but for many of those people it is now coming home to roost.
The problem started in 1974 when João Havelange defeated Sir Stanley Rous as FIFA president. Havelange was a visionary who could see the power of football as an international force, but unfortunately he also saw it as an opportunity for corruption and bribery and to make money, rather than as the force for good that we know it is. Across the world it can promote peace, understanding and sporting endeavour, which we all highly value and respect. As the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe pointed out, Havelange created his own Frankenstein’s monster: Sepp Blatter is very much Havelange’s placeman. I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman that we must not allow Blatter to do as Havelange did, and get his own gravedigger in to bury
the bodies and make sure that they stay well and truly buried. We need to shine a light on the corruption in FIFA.
I commend all Members who have taken part in the debate for their contributions: my hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans), the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon), for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart), for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), for High Peak (Andrew Bingham) and for Livingston (Hannah Bardell), and the hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips). We all agree that something needs to be done about FIFA, but although we all agree—and many people across the globe agree with us, as well—what is lacking at the moment is a set of criteria that we can coalesce around to take the situation forward, so I have had a stab at 12-point plan that people should campaign for to really reform FIFA.
We need FIFA to make a statement that it will open up its financial procedures and structures to independent international audit, and publish the pay grades and expenses of all senior staff and members of its executive and congress. It should write strong anti-corruption statements into all its contracts of employment and its terms of engagement for all executive and congress members. It should set out in a mission statement its goals to expand football across the globe, and then set out how it will measure its success against the goals in that mission statement. It should redistribute its resources to increase participation and improve facilities, in partnership with national, regional and local Governments, to develop the game at the grassroots.