My Lords, a debt of gratitude is owed to my noble friend Lord Faulkner, who has been assiduous in following this issue over the
years. I am grateful to him for ensuring that we had today’s debate. For our part, on the Labour Benches, we very much welcome the regulations and the pilot carried out by Cardiff City, Chelsea, Man City, Man United and Tottenham Hotspur which has provided the evidence base for the wider introduction of safe standing at Welsh and English football stadia.
I am old enough to have been a teenager when some of the worst ravages of football hooliganism took place in the late 1960s and 1970s. It was not a pleasant sight and, like many football fans of that period, I got caught in crushes and found that I started half way up a standing area and ended up somewhere near the front because of a crowd surge. It was not a very pleasant experience, but it was very common. The tragic events at a number of football grounds, including of course Heysel—and Sheffield Wednesday’s ground, where we had the terrible deaths in 1989, are etched strongly in our minds and memories collectively. They were awful things that should never have happened. The quality of football stadia back then left very much to be desired; it had not changed for decades and very little thought was ever given to the safety and security, even less the comfort, of football fans who watched the nation’s great game.
We have come a long way since then. Seated stadiums were introduced, as other colleagues including the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, have said, because there was a desire to make stadia better as an experience, to improve the quality of the spectators’ experience and to ensure that safety was paramount—and quite right too. There has always been some pressure to create the opportunity for safe standing, but it is really only in the last 10 years, I would guess, that the quality of our stadia has reached a point—particularly at Premier League and Championship level—where it is possible for safe standing to be introduced.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, reminded me of the German experience. When I was a Minister in the Home Office and responsible for football hooligans—the Hooligans’ Minister—I, too, went to Germany and looked at the Munich stadium, which had a very good design that enabled safe standing behind the goal areas. I have been to Tottenham in recent seasons to watch my favourite team, Brighton, and stood in the safe standing area there. It is a delight. It is very pleasant and comfortable and you do not feel in any way threatened by the size or nature of the crowd.
Like my noble friend Lord Faulkner and others, I have some questions just to elucidate some of the points that have been made in this discussion. The first few follow the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, I suppose. We have to be confident that the design is right, because design is critical in this. Are we satisfied that there are sufficiently strict design criteria for safe standing areas? Do we think that that case has been fully proven? Will the design be kept under very careful and strict review?
Has the department been able to satisfy the JCSI’s request for further information about the legal basis for only one spectator taking each space in a licensed standing area? If so, has that been made available in the Library or can the Minister tell us anything
about that? It is important that there is a proper legal base for that because it has an impact on safety and security.
We very much welcome the inclusion of a review mechanism in the order, but can the Minister clarify why the date of 7 December 2026 has been chosen? Similarly, why have five-yearly reviews been deemed most appropriate? What happens if the arrangements prove unmanageable? None of us wants that to happen but, if that is the case, is there sufficient flexibility in the five-yearly review process? When the review is published, will it be laid before Parliament formally or simply made available digitally via GOV.UK? Will it be debateable? I certainly think that it should be, because we need to keep a careful eye on these issues.
The move to safe standing was part of several proposals from the DCMS, including the potential relaxation of the ban on consuming alcohol in view of the pitch. I must say, as a spectator this does sometimes seem rather arbitrary. I go to grounds where 15 minutes or half an hour before the game starts, the shutters are brought down in the VIP areas and you cannot even see on to the pitch; it seems slightly ridiculous but nevertheless I can understand some of the thinking that lies behind it. I appreciate that rugby and cricket have a long history of enabling alcohol to be consumed in view of the game when it is in progress; I wonder what lessons we can learn from the experience of event managers and management in those stadia and if there have been some thoughts turning to the relaxing of regulations surrounding football.
Those are my points and questions. It is good that I am in the company of people who are very thoughtful about this, because I think safety and security of football fans is a very high priority in the organisation of that sport. We cannot afford to relax our vigilance, because in the past we have had spectacularly awful things happen to football fans and it has taken many years for families and communities to have a sense that they have justice on their side, so we need to get this right. If we do, there is a prize: that the enthusiasm that fans enjoy for their team will have full expression and we can return to the time when, certainly behind the goals, fans commonly used to stand. I am grateful to colleagues for their comments, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say in response.
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