I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. Now I have four minutes, I can take a bit longer. I have to declare an interest: I was the chairman of Forest Green Rovers. I was then vice chairman until I was re-elected as a Member of Parliament, and standing down from the board was one of the sacrifices that I have had to make. I will make a couple of pertinent points.
I heard what my hon. Friends the Members for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) and for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) said, and I deeply sympathise with all that has happened as a result of Hillsborough, but the big difference is that directors now have direct responsibility for the crowd’s safety. That was never previously as clear as it is today, and it is a responsibility they take seriously. CCTV, active stewarding and the grading of games, for which clubs rely on the police, make a huge difference; those safety measures allow more flexibility with regards to the crowd’s willingness to stand or sit.
We are a very small club—potentially the smallest club ever to enter the Football League—and this issue matters because we are in the process of trying to get a new ground. One of the problems is the lack of clarity from the Football Association and the Football League about what our future progress should be and what that entails for how we should design our ground.
As someone who has stood for decades, I would always prefer to have safe standing, but we need clarity now. If clubs are looking to move, they need to know what their future requirements will be. It is about time the football authorities realised where the demand is coming from. It is important that we realise that that demand can be satisfied with safe standing, but it has to
be designed into the ground. As we all know, it is much more difficult to do so retrospectively, and that is where some problems may arise. For football to flourish, however, we need to allow it.
I say this without a note of irony, but rugby supporters and cricket supporters can drink to their hearts’ content in the ground without anyone thinking that that is in any way alien. Anyone who takes a glass into a football ground is immediately thrown out, so compared with other sports, our standards and requirements in football are much tougher. All we ask for is a degree of flexibility. We have to remember that fans are on CCTV, so the days when they could just get away with it are long gone. They will get a lifetime ban if they misbehave. The clubs are responsible if they fail to organise what happens at their grounds efficiently. That is why things have moved on. It is about time we gave the fans what they want, which is the ability to stand as well as sit, if they so desire.
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