Lincoln Jopp MP: speeches

Speeches

• 12 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member makes a pertinent point. As I said, the word “competition” seems to refer to the sort of flyaway league we have discussed; are one-off friendlies competitions under the terms of the Bill?

• 12 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  Does my hon. Friend agree with the analogy that, although we are all very proud of having the Special Air Service as our elite forces, the SAS cannot be created without a very large Army underneath? While the Premier League is the jewel in the crown, it simply cannot exist on its own; it absolutely needs the game beneath it.

• 12 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  I appreciate the desire to legislate for bad owners, but is the hon. Gentleman not concerned about good owners who might find money very tight? They have assets beyond the home ground and team itself that they might have to consider selling, including a training ground, to remain financially viable and therefore be on the right side of the regulator in their business plan. Is he not concerned that, by extending even further the regulator’s purview into all properties, he might overly constrain good owners from doing what they want to save their clubs?

• 12 Jun 2025 · Support for Small Businesses · Hansard source

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  Lky7 Sports is a small cycle and nutrition business in Ashford in my constituency. It has been hammered by the loss of small business rate relief, and wrote to me yesterday saying: “The Government say that they are helping small business, but this is a joke when our business rates have gone from nothing to £1,800. We are seriously considering closing the shop down.” What advice does the Minister have for that boss?

• 11 Jun 2025 · Spending Review 2025 · Hansard source

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  I thank the Chancellor for her statement, but I fear that she may have misunderstood the question that my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer) asked about the River Thames scheme. He asked whether the scheme is included in the £4.2 billion TDEL—total departmental expenditure limit—over three years referenced in paragraph 5.121 of the review. The Chancellor replied that my hon. Friend wants to put up expenditure and will not say where it is coming from, but both he and I are asking this: is the Environment Agency’s half of the River Thames scheme—Surrey county council pays the other half—funded from the £4.2 billion TDEL that she has announced today?

• 10 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am sure that the Minister realises that one of the variants in a club’s business plan is whether its matches are selected for being televised. It is an incredibly haphazard process and difficult to predict, because they are decided within season. What guidance will the Minister give, as the appointer of the regulator, as to reasonable assumptions in the business plan regarding expected television revenue in season?

• 10 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  My understanding of the Bill is that under those circumstances, they would lose their licence to operate.

• 10 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Has the hon. Gentleman considered that, essentially, we are talking about the state seizing someone’s assets and giving them to someone else? If a club falls into administration, the administrator is governed by a very strict set of laws in terms of treating all creditors fairly. Is he not concerned that this power could fly in the face of existing powers for the administration of companies?

• 10 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  The Minister mentioned the two criteria of the business plan and the personnel statement. I thought from our discussions last week that giving the regulator any form of information that the regulator so requested was an additional condition.

• 10 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Does my hon. Friend agree that his amendment is very much in the spirit of football? We have seen many injury time winners, when all the odds are stacked against a club, but in the dying moments they manage to rescue an almost impossible situation. So it is not only in the spirit of fairness, but in the spirit of football.

• 9 Jun 2025 · Chinese Embassy Development · Hansard source

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  Is the planning officer who is considering this case cleared to receive top-secret information?

• 9 Jun 2025 · Winter Fuel Payment · Hansard source

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  I appreciate that the Minister did not get a chance to spend long on the Back Benches—such has been his accelerated rise up the ministerial pole—but would he like to spare a thought for his former Back-Bench colleagues and join me in thanking and congratulating the small band of Labour Back Benchers who went public, broke cover and opposed this dreadful policy?

• 5 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [Lords] (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I struggle to understand what might be contained in the Government policy statements. The Minister is steeped in this legislation, so must have discussed this in the past. Can she give the Committee an indication of what sort of thing might be covered?

• 5 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [Lords] (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is important for the House to understand that once an organisation is in the hands of the regulator, it has no choice. I was a director of a company that was applying for an operating licence from a national regulator. It cost millions of pounds, and we never achieved it—we tried three times, and never got there. As long as the regulator is doing its regulatory work, that is okay as far as it is concerned. There can be circumstances in which regulators, as long as things are being done by the rulebook, do not care about the growth of their industry. The amendment is a reasonable counterbalance to that, and would ensure that the regulator understands the financial burden it is putting on teams.

• 5 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [Lords] (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  The Minister just said something that I am not quite clear about; perhaps, given my hon. Friend’s experience, he could explain it to me. If a club gets promoted to the English Football League—the happiest day of the club’s history—it then has to apply to become regulated, but if it does not have that licence by the beginning of the next season, the Minister just said that it can play. Where should I look in the Bill to understand the latitude that clubs have to play in the English Football League without regulation?

• 5 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [Lords] (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  What makes the Minister think that clubs themselves would not, as a normal matter of course, be noting their compliance costs?

• 5 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [Lords] (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Butler. Subsection (3)(c) of clause 16 is an absolute Trojan horse; it gives carte blanche to the regulator to demand whatever it wants, regardless of whether a club produces such documents or information on a routine basis. Anyone who has worked with a regulator will know that means that clubs will have to employ lawyers, because they would never submit anything to their regulator unless it had been through lawyers first. The shadow Minister used the phrase “blank cheque”, but it is almost a blank invoice to the poor clubs that will simply have to comply. When a regulator says, “Jump”, they do not say, “Why?”; they say, “How high?” However high the bar is set, they have to get over it. It is completely reasonable, at this stage of the regulator’s development, to seek limits so that it can take some very well-defined steps in regulating football, prior to giving it the carte blanche that subsection (3)(c) represents. As the shadow Minister said, I fear that the unintended consequences of subsection (3)(c) will be considerable.

• 5 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [Lords] (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  The Minister said that clubs would still be allowed to play in the absence of a provisional operating licence. How long would they be allowed to play for before being granted such a licence?

• 5 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [Lords] (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight East and I were not here in the last Parliament, so what went on and the provenance of the Bill are not really our concern. We are being asked to contribute to the discussion and the debate on the Bill that has been placed before us. Neither of us saw the last one, so these are genuine points.

• 5 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [Lords] (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Regulation does indeed evolve, but giving this football regulator carte blanche to evolve it without any recourse to Parliament is a key weakness of the Bill’s current drafting, which is why I support amendment 99.

• 5 Jun 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Mr Speaker, “The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP”— so said the controversial Ulster rap band who remain on the bill at Glastonbury. Given that is the case, can the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster reassure the House that no Cabinet Office Ministers will be attending Glastonbury this year?

• 5 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  Mr Turner, you will have seen the declaration of interests that I made on Tuesday. I seek the Committee’s indulgence; this is the only gratuitous intervention that I will make. Can the shadow Minister remind the Committee of the identity of the only team who have won every major European trophy, having recently won the UEFA Conference League?

• 5 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. The shadow Minister is making a pertinent and important point. If the independent football regulator were inadvertently to cross lines into the jurisdictions of UEFA or FIFA, it could be catastrophic for English football. Clearly, that is not the purpose of the regulator. Given the success of many English teams in Europe, that would have serious ramifications. I genuinely think that the shadow Minister’s amendment is meant to be helpful and is incredibly important.

• 5 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I rise as someone who currently has an invitation in my inbox to renew my season ticket for an eye-watering £950. I would love to know where all that money goes, as the shadow spokesman said, and why the price has gone in the direction it has. The amendment should not be seen as counter to the regulator. There was significant pushback from the Government Benches when we tried to amend the regulator in terms of size and pay, and we also discussed the budget. If, in a regulated environment, the ticket price went up from £950 to, say, £980, then this amendment would ensure that fans were made aware that that 30 quid had gone on being part of a regulated industry. That is a perfectly reasonable thing for us to want to communicate with the viewing public. Equally, it would create a relationship between the fan and the regulator that might not otherwise be there, so I support the amendment.

• 5 Jun 2025 · Football Governance Bill [ Lords ] (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  The Liberal Democrat spokesman talks about dodgy owners. My season ticket is for a Premier League club; a season ticket for, say, Ashford Town (Middlesex) FC for the forthcoming season is £130. I think part of the function of this amendment is to make the regulator aware of the costs that it puts on well-run but smaller clubs. Simply making decisions and acting under this legislation without any sense of the financial impact and imposition that it is making on those clubs would be a very worrying way to do business, but the amendment would slightly redress the balance between club and regulator.