Professional Football Compliance (Hansard, 26 April 1995)

§ Ms Kate Hoey (Vauxhall)

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide for the Secretary of State to establish a compliance unit for professional football in England and Wales with power to create and maintain proper financial controls and to report irregularities; and for connected purposes. The 1994–95 football season will go down as the one that brought the shameful headlines about bungs, corruption, alleged match fixing, drugs, racist abuse, violence on and off the field and greed. The common thread in all this is the inability of the football authorities to tackle the malaise. There is a complete lack of leadership and this has not been helped by the complacency of the Department of National Heritage.

The game staggers from one controversy to another and at times it is difficult not to feel as Michael Herd did when he described football leaders in the Evening Standard as A group of the willing picked from the unfit to do what they see as unnecessary. My call for an independent inquiry into the state of our national game made in January was responded to by the Minister in a way that expressed his complete confidence in the Premier League's own inquiry.

Let me remind the House that it is 19 months since the Premier League commission was set up to inquire into allegations of undercover payments during transfer deals and into the role of agents in an attempt to restore the public's faith in the propriety of football. The commission was set up to examine the evidence given by Alan Sugar in the High Court on the suspicion about the transfer of Teddy Sheringham from Nottingham Forest to Tottenham. Although evidence has been taken from many, including Brian Clough, the commission has still to report its findings.

We still await findings on the many other allegations that leave a taint of suspicion, no matter how unjust, over managers and clubs. The commission also still has to report on the links between Terry Venables when he was manager of Tottenham and Eric Hall, the agent who acted for both the club and the players, in a clear conflict of interest. Not a week goes by without another dodgy deal being exposed by the media.

The Football Association says that the Premier League commission will look into the matter, and then there is silence. Just a few days ago, the Daily Mirror reported that a recent payment of £34,000 had been made to Rune Hauge by Tottenham, when Terry Venables was manager, for the agent's role in the £480,000 transfer of the Norwegian international player Erik Thorstvedt.

Terry Venables clearly broke the FA rules when he was running Spurs, authorising a whole range of payments to agents. Yet now he is running the English national team and the Premier League commission still has to clear him officially. Why the delay?

As the Premier League commission is meant to be inquiring into all those transfer deals involving Rune Hauge, the information has been passed to it. But will we ever hear anything? The only action that the commission has taken is to make one report on the George Graham affair, again a manager who was dealing with the same agent, Rune Hauge. It cost George Graham his job. Is anyone seriously suggesting that, amidst all the many 858 allegations that have gone to the Premier League commission, he is the only guilty man? Is it not time that we had some answers from the commission? There is widespread acceptance within and outside football that a compliance unit is needed.

On 11 January Graham Kelly wrote to me: We are also examining the feasibility of a Compliance Unit aimed at strengthening the regulation of Clubs' finances. But he conceded that:

This too is a difficult area. David Dent of the Football League said on 20 January in a letter to me: I personally support the concept of an Advisory and Compliance Unit being established within football but this has been rejected by the top clubs. The problem is the growing power and influence of the Premier League combined with increasing financial clout resting with a handful of maverick chairmen.

Not all the chairmen of the Premier League opposed the idea when it was put to them recently. Dave Richards, chairman of Sheffield Wednesday, said in an interview with the Daily Mail in February: By the year 2000, I think we'll have an independent team of investigators working inside football. I want it so any independent investigator can visit a club and be shown precise details relating to all transfers. Thank goodness not all the chairmen of our Premier League clubs have their heads in the sand. Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the Professional Footballers Association, made the original call for an independent compliance unit some months ago. He said then:

The problems go very deep and part of it comes from the fact that the very people who need to agree to more effective monitoring of the clubs are the owners who have been involved in abuses in the past. As was said in the debate on rugby league this morning, the public interest in this matter must be recognised. Corruption in football leads to money being syphoned off from clubs, which means that fans are being cheated and must pay higher admission charges. Let us not forget also that the public know that millions of pounds of public money go into football in various ways.

The financial forces are too powerful for some sports bodies to handle by themselves. That is definitely the case in football. A special compliance unit is needed to support the football authorities. It could use information available from the VAT commissioners and the Inland Revenue to examine particular problems, agents and transfer fees. With the power to examine transfers, the whole business could be much more transparent than the present system. Then, together with the Football Association, new and enforceable financial rules could be set to ensure that the public are not ripped off.

Without Parliament taking a firm stand, and without the Minister responsible for sport representing the public interest, backhander deals, bungs, unsolicited gifts, presents and fixes will continue to distort the sport, both on and off the pitch. It is the clear duty of Parliament to protect public interest. The worst excesses of the City are sometimes rampant in sport, but at least the City has some form of regulation. The Bill would give Parliament and the Minister the duty and power to clean up the sport. The public and the fans must have confidence in the national game. The governing bodies of sports rules were made 859 for fair-minded, honest people. They cannot cope with the crooks of today or even the international television moguls. Consequently, the public are not protected.

Too many interlocking interests in football conspire to keep the truth away from the public. Football must be clean to survive and thrive. Good, decent, hard-working people in football, of whom there are many, deserve more. Football is too important a national asset to be left only to Lancaster Gate. They need all the help that they can get, and the Bill offers that help.