The comments made by Brandon Lewis, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, on 29 May 2021.
As Derry-Londonderry proved in 2013, the UK City of Culture is a prestigious title which served to harness its wonderful heritage and culture to change perceptions of the city, attract investment and create local employment.
I encourage cities in Northern Ireland to enter the 2025 competition to showcase the very best of what Northern Ireland has to offer the UK, as an integral part of the Union.
The statement made by Oliver Dowden, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, on 29 May 2021.
The UK City of Culture is a fantastic showcase of the huge impact culture has in towns and cities across the country. From Derry-Londonderry, to Hull and Coventry, previous winners have shown how the competition can deliver greater cultural participation, drive economic regeneration and boost local pride. I encourage towns and cities across the UK to put forward bids for 2025 and champion their local arts and culture scene. I’m also delighted to confirm the competition will run in future years, as a sign of our commitment to levelling up culture across the whole of the UK.
The comments made by Jo Stevens, the Shadow Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, on 21 May 2021.
Of the ten members of this panel only one is a fan representative so this hasn’t got the look or feel of being fan-led.
There is no information about when, how and in what way fans will be involved in this review and not even a timescale given about when this information will be available.
Fans are still waiting for ministers to explain how their views and ideas will be listened to so that we can all be confident that this review really will live up to the Government’s promise that it will be led by the fans.
The comments made by Oliver Dowden, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, on 12 May 2021.
Today the UK shows global leadership with our groundbreaking laws to usher in a new age of accountability for tech and bring fairness and accountability to the online world.
We will protect children on the internet, crack down on racist abuse on social media and through new measures to safeguard our liberties, create a truly democratic digital age.
The comments made by Jo Stevens, the Shadow Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, on 12 May 2021.
Over two years ago the Conservatives promised ‘world leading’ legislation in their White Paper. Instead we have watered down and incomplete proposals which lag behind the rest of the world. Even the Government’s press release admits that it’s proposals will only tackle some of the worst abuses on social media.
Labour backs criminal sanctions for senior tech executives to bring about a change of culture in these companies who for too long have been given a completely free rein.
As the NSPCC has identified these proposals do very little to ensure children are safe online. There is little to incentivise companies to prevent their platforms from being used for harmful practices.
The Bill, which will have taken the Government more than five years from its first promise to act to be published, is a wasted opportunity to put into place future proofed legislation to provide an effective and all-encompassing regulatory framework to keep people safe online.
The statement made by John Whittingdale, the Minister for Media and Data, in the House of Commons on 20 April 2021.
I am announcing today that DCMS will appoint an independent expert to conduct a review of the regulation of the Football Index gambling product, up to the point where its operator’s licence was suspended in March, and to make recommendations to the Government and the regulators.
Football Index’s operator, BetIndex Ltd, was granted a licence to provide online betting by the Gambling Commission in September 2015. The Commission began a formal review of this licence in May 2020 and suspended it in March 2021. The company is currently in administration. At the time of suspension, the product allowed customers (called traders) to place bets (shares) on the future performance of footballers. These bets lasted for three years, with payments called dividends being made according to a player’s performance. The product evolved to let customers buy and sell bets with prices fluctuating according to demand.
The Government are taking the situation regarding Football Index and the concerns of those affected by it very seriously. It is reported that many thousands of customers are affected by the product’s collapse, with some having lost very large sums. This review will aim to establish both how this situation came about and what lessons we can learn from it.
A principal purpose of the review will be to take an objective look at the decisions and actions of the Gambling Commission and any other relevant regulators, to provide a clear account of how the company’s activities were regulated and identify if there are potential areas for improvement in how complex products are treated.
Its findings will form part of the evidence informing the Government’s review of the Gambling Act 2005, which was announced in December 2020. The review is considering whether changes are needed to the regulatory framework around gambling, including the Commission’s powers and resources and how it uses them. It is also looking at how novel and complex products should be licensed and regulated.
The Commission’s regulatory investigation into BetIndex Ltd is continuing. This independent review is separate to that investigation and will be carried out and report in a way which will not compromise it. It will also be without prejudice to the ongoing administration proceedings, which among other things are looking at assets and liabilities of the company and recompense to customers.
Further details of the independent reviewer and terms of reference will be announced in due course. It is intended that the review will report publicly in the summer and will inform the wider Gambling Act Review. The Government aim to produce a White Paper setting out their findings from the review of the Gambling Act 2005 by the end of the year.
The comments made by Oliver Dowden, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, on 23 April 2021.
The United Kingdom has an independent screen industry to be proud of. World renowned, our film, TV, video game and animation industries create jobs and growth the length and breadth of the UK.
The UK Global Screen Fund will export the extraordinary talent and creativity of the UK to audiences across the globe, supporting our talented filmmakers and screen businesses to compete and grow.
The speech made by Jo Stevens, the Labour MP for Cardiff Central, in the House of Commons on 19 April 2021.
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of parts of his statement. This is a watershed moment for our national game, and this statement is welcomed, as is the chair of the review, but it is short on detail and on the urgency that this situation merits; fans will have noted that. The Secretary of State tweeted last night extolling the virtues of the football pyramid, but if anything exposed the Government’s lack of understanding of our broken football system, that tweet summed it up. Tory trickle-down economics does not work, and it especially does not work in football.
Football governance is broken, football finance is broken and football fans, whichever club we support, are ignored. The hedge fund owners and billionaires who treat football clubs like any of their other commodities have no care for the history of our football, for the role it plays in villages, towns and cities up and down our country, and especially for the fans who are the beating heart of it. They should understand their role as custodians, rather than cartel chiefs. The future of our national game and all our clubs depends on it.
Labour has repeatedly called for the reform of the governance and finances of football by the Government. Government intervention is needed to fix this broken system. That is why we pledged in all four of our manifestos going back to 2010 to take action, and it is why I and the shadow Sports Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern), repeatedly urged the Government to get on with their promised fan-led review of football—a promise that they made in 2019. It is nearly a year since our letter to the Sports Minister offering support and help with 16 questions that the review should focus on. We know that Members across the House have supported reform for the past 11 years of Conservative-led Governments, so it is time for the Government to get off the subs bench and show some leadership on the pitch, because we need reform of football.
It is not as if there has been a blockage in Parliament preventing the Government from taking action to sort out the problems. Former Conservative Sports Minister, the hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant), has said:
“no one is speaking for the football world with the independence and authority needed to address the big issues.”—[Official Report, 26 January 2021; Vol. 688, c. 207.]
She is right. The former Conservative Chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins), has said:
“We should have long ago reformed the governance of football”.
He is right as well. The current Conservative Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Solihull (Julian Knight), has said:
“What’s needed is a fan-led review of football with real teeth and here we have more evidence to strengthen the case for it.”
I welcome the review, but why the long delay? Why create the vacuum that has allowed these super-league proposals the space and ability to become a reality? Eleven years have been wasted when a small amount of Government time could have been found to bring primary legislation to the House to sort out the problems. Instead, it has been all punditry and no progress on the pitch, and in that time, clubs and fans have suffered disasters. Fans in Bury know only too well the importance of reforming the way in which football is governed, and supporters in Liverpool, Edinburgh, Manchester, my city of Cardiff, Portsmouth and most football towns and cities have seen the damage done to clubs when profit outstrips the role of supporters in our game.
We are in a global pandemic and the owners of the six clubs behind this proposal think that now is the time to ride roughshod over their fans and endanger the future of football, on the back of a year when fans have been at the heart of supporting communities up and down the country. What a contrast! These proposals have been carved out behind closed doors without consultation with fans or players, and they have at their heart a plan that is anti-football—a super league from which teams can never be relegated and in which they are always guaranteed a place because of their wealth. That represents a fundamental attack on the integrity of sporting competitions.
It is very rare that an issue unites football fans and organisations across the rivalries and divides, but this super league proposal has managed to do just that. From supporters trusts and groups, including the Football Supporters’ Association, to the Professional Footballers’ Association, the Football Association, UEFA, the Premier League, the League Managers Association and the European Clubs Association—I could go on—it has been universally rejected as the greedy, obscene and selfish proposal that it is.
Let us act urgently. It is already too late for some clubs and their supporters, so I ask the Secretary of State when the review will be launched, what the terms of reference will be, who will take part and when it will report. What exactly will the Government do to stop the European super league decimating our national game? They should explore every option, and I hope that they will, whether that is a super-tax on revenue or investigating whether the proposal breaches the clear rules that govern markets and competition in this country.
For football fans up and down the country, our message is clear: Labour stands ready to do whatever it takes to stop this plan, and I hope that the Government will make exactly the same commitment.
The speech made by Oliver Dowden, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, in the House of Commons on 19 April 2021.
With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I should like to make a statement. Football is in our national DNA. We invented it, we helped to export it around the world, and it has been at the heart of British life for over a century. Football clubs, of course, are not just businesses but define communities across the country, so along with almost every Member of the House, I suspect, I was appalled by the announcement made late last night that a handful of clubs are proposing to form their own breakaway European league.
These six clubs announced that decision without any consultation with football authorities or with Government. Worst of all, they did it without any dialogue whatsoever with their own fans. It was a tone-deaf proposal, but the owners of those clubs will not have been able to ignore the near universal roar of outrage from all parts of the football community over the past 24 hours.
This move goes against the very spirit of the game. This is a sport where a team such as Leicester City can ascend from league one to the premier league title in under a decade, earning the right to go toe to toe against European heavyweights in the champions league. Instead, a small handful of owners want to create a closed shop of elite clubs at the top of the game—a league based on wealth and brand recognition rather than merit. We will not stand by and watch football be cravenly stripped of the things that make millions across the country love it.
As a Conservative, I believe passionately in defending our nation’s institutions and our rich heritage. They are central to our identity and help to build a sense of solidarity between people of every generation and every background. Just as the Government would not hesitate to act when other treasured areas of our national life are under threat, nor will we hesitate to protect one of our greatest national institutions: football.
This is, of course, for football authorities to handle first, and today I have met with the Premier League, the Football Association and the president of UEFA, while the Sports Minister has had another series of meetings with the Football Supporters’ Association. The football authorities have robust rules in place to deal with this, and I know from my conversations with them today that they are rightly considering a wide range of sanctions and measures to stop this move in its tracks. My message to them was clear: they have our full backing. However, be in no doubt that if they cannot act, we will.
We will put everything on the table to prevent this from happening. We are examining every option, from governance reform to competition law and mechanisms that allow football to take place. Put simply, we will review everything that the Government do to support these clubs to play. I have discussed those options with the Prime Minister this morning, and we are working at pace across Government and with the football authorities. I reassure this House of a very robust response. We will do whatever it takes to protect our national game.
However, it is clearer than ever that we need a proper examination of the long-term future of football. To many fans in this country, the game is now almost unrecognisable from a few decades ago. Season after season, year after year, football fans demonstrate unwavering loyalty and passion by sticking by their clubs, but their loyalty is being abused by a small number of individuals who wield an incredible amount of power and influence. If the past year has taught us anything, it is that football is nothing without its fans. These owners should remember that they are only temporary custodians of their clubs, and they forget fans at their peril. That is why, over the past few months, I have been meeting with fans and representative organisations to develop our proposals for a fan-led review. I had always been clear that I did not want to launch this until football had returned to normal following the pandemic. Sadly, these clubs have made it clear that I have no choice. They have decided to put money before fans, so today I have been left with no choice but to formally trigger the launch of our fan-led review of football.
The review will be chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) and will be a root-and-branch examination of football in this country. It will cover the financial sustainability of the men’s and women’s game, governance and regulation and the merits of an independent regulator. Crucially, in the light of this weekend’s proposal, it will also consider how fans can have an even greater say in the oversight of the game and the models that might best achieve that.
We are the people’s Government. We are unequivocally on the side of fans, and their voices have to be heard when it comes to the future of our national game. It starts with fans, and it ends with fans. In the meantime, we have thrown our full weight behind the football authorities and stand ready to do whatever is necessary to represent fans and protect their interests. I commend this statement to the House.
The comments made by Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, on 5 April 2021.
It has been enormously tough for the events sector over the past year, but these pilots are a real beacon of hope as we cautiously emerge from the pandemic. This programme will not only provide valuable scientific evidence, but also offer confidence to the industry so we can make the most of the Great British summer and host large-scale events in a way that’s safe for everybody.