Lord Bassam of Brighton:

Moved by Lord Bassam of Brighton

11: Clause 1, page 2, line 4, at end insert—“(c) meets environmental sustainability requirements set out in subsection (3A).”

My Lords, Amendments 11 and 15 relate to sustainability—not the notion of sustainability that we have been addressing to date when considering this Bill but environmental sustainability.

We seek here to get something on the record about how we feel the regulator should approach this issue. Every sector, every industry, should consider environmental sustainability and football should not be an exception. The Government, quite rightly, have commitments to achieve net zero on carbon emissions. It is impossible to divorce environmental issues from issues of financial sustainability and there are numerous ways in which one could substantiate that. It would be negligent to exclude environmental sustainability from the regulator’s remit. It is a moot question whether this needs to be in the Bill, but it should certainly be part of the regulator’s thinking. Existing regulation in the world of football has failed to change sufficiently the culture of professional and semi-professional clubs.

With limited financial and staffing resources, nearly every club outside the Premier League has failed to make any notable progress on environmental considerations. There are some clubs, the first among them being Forest Green Rovers, which, notoriously, have a very good reputation in promoting sustainability. Others include Swansea City and Norwich City—which has recently been in the Premier League. It is the Premier League clubs—16 of them—that have, to their great credit, led the way in the football pyramid. We feel that it is necessary to encourage other clubs to do the same.

Obviously, Premier League clubs have more resources than clubs lower down the pyramid, but they should not continue to be an outlier in promoting more sustainable environmental practices. To noble Lords who might question whether football should have a role in this, I simply say that the Financial Conduct Authority has regulatory principles which include minimising environmental impacts. There is an environmental policy statement and an environmental management statement, which complies with ISO 14001. It covers issues such as energy, emissions, water usage, minimising waste, recycling, paper use, methods of business travel, digital services and ICT. Football clubs and how they manage the resources that they have at their disposal have an impact on our nation’s desire to head towards net zero by 2050, and that is what the amendment speaks to.

I hope that clubs adopt environmental good practices as Arsenal and Brighton & Hove Albion do, such as including free travel in their ticket pricing to encourage more people to get on to public transport. Clubs such as Tottenham, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Chelsea have similar strategies. This should be common practice across the football industry. Whether it is in the Bill or part of the regulator’s remit, the environment is simply too important for us to leave to chance. There is a role for football to play in leading the way, as it does in many other fields of social interaction, such as promoting good race relations, tackling misogyny and dealing with other social issues. I beg to move.

My Lords, I rise to speak to my 10 amendments in this group on environmental sustainability. I want to support almost everything that the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, has just said. If you are talking about sustainability, which is what we have been talking about for two days on this Bill, you cannot avoid environmental sustainability, because it will have an impact on the financial well-being of football, and every other business. At the moment, most clubs do not think very hard about this. Forest Green Rovers are fantastic; Liverpool are doing their bit; but, by and large, there are little tweaks that clubs are doing, which makes them feel good—or perhaps they cannot imagine doing anything more, I am not sure.

We know the climate is changing; we know that the weather is changing; we know there are more floods and more droughts; so it is very short-sighted not to include environmental sustainability when you are worried about the future of clubs and their financial sustainability. Football is at risk from climate change, as are many other sports. Flooded pitches lead to cancelled games, lost revenues and disappointed fans, and droughts demand expensive irrigation. As Carlisle United discovered, a flood can lead to the kind of jump in insurance premiums that could put you out of business. So fans need the confidence that these growing risks are being prepared for and that they are not going to have a detrimental impact on clubs’ finances. The Minister kindly gave me a meeting on this, although we did not quite agree, so does she agree that climate change will have direct impacts on the financial sustainability of football and, if so, how is that recognised in the Bill? At the moment, of course, it is not.

My Amendment 103 requires the football regulator to include an assessment of football’s resilience against climate change in its “state of the game report” because, if the report does not consider environmental sustainability, it can give only an incomplete picture of the state of the game. Amendments 127, 131, 154 and 166 introduce climate and environment management plans as a mandatory licence condition for clubs. As the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, said, it should be mandatory across all businesses, and these environment management plans would set out the clubs’ environmental impact and what is being done to mitigate it. Above all, they would also require clubs to identify the impacts that climate change is having and will have on the club and make plans to manage those risks.

Football, of course, also contributes to climate change and environmental damage; hundreds of thousands of single-use plastic cups and utensils are used every single matchday; fertilisers, herbicides and millions of litres of water are used to keep the pitch green; and cities and towns are choked up with traffic on match days. The definition of sustainability in the Bill, as it stands, allows all this to continue unabated. It would even allow clubs to damage the environment even more, as long as they keep on serving fans and making a contribution to the community.

It really is an own goal for the planet, but football clubs actually caring about the planet do not have to cost the earth. Forest Green Rovers, who have been described as the greenest football club in the world, are focused on sustainability across their business. Solar panels provide about 20% of the club’s electricity needs; the club organises coaches to away games, not planes; they have cut out single-use plastics in favour of reusable or refillable options; the pitch is organic and harvests rainwater for irrigation. This is a club that is at the top of their table, fit for the future and a role model that other clubs could aspire to. Liverpool, who are, regrettably, also at the top of their table, have their Red Way initiative, which is about environmental sustainability.

My amendments will lay the groundwork for greener pitches and truly sustainable sport, embedding environmentalism throughout the football regulator’s remit. Amendment 55 adds climate and environment to the football regulator’s objectives. At Second Reading, the Minister suggested that the football regulator must be focused on the financial sustainability of clubs. The Bill already lists safeguarding the heritage of English football as an objective, so why not safeguard the environment as well? Amendments 60 and 66 require the football regulator to act in accordance with the net-zero targets in the Climate Change Act and secure the long-term environmental sustainability of football.

If the football regulator cannot set sport on an environmentally sustainable footing, football’s long-term viability is at risk. Amendment 144 would have clubs consult their fans about climate and environmental issues facing the club. Sustainable football should not just be a luxury enjoyed only by vegans and eco-entrepreneurs. While Forest Green Rovers are showing what is possible, this Bill is an opportunity to embed best practice throughout the sport. I really hope that the Government can move on this issue.

My Lords, I rise to oppose this whole group of amendments.

Noble Lords:

Oh!

It is good to get a laugh before you start. I genuinely worry about the overreach summed up in this particular group that, for example, requires football clubs to operate

“in a way that will achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050”,

or

“materially reduce their negative impact on the natural world and all species that inhabit it”.

That is just from Amendment 15.

We already know the potentially costly and devastating impacts such green policies can have for organisations and individuals, let alone the barriers on development and growth that they can pose. Imposing such regulatory requirements on football clubs seems ill-advised and could be financially draining. I appreciate that, as we may have heard from the response to my initial remark, the noble Lords, Lord Bassam of Brighton and Lord Addington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and many others, will not agree with me politically, but my main reason for speaking is that this group exemplifies what happens once the Government open the floodgates to political interference in football by adding, for example, equality, diversity and inclusion as a mandatory part of what the regulator must inspect in football. If EDI is in the Bill, others will argue “Why not ESG or net zero?” and mission creep will start in a dangerous way. Such politicised interventions threaten to make the game of football secondary to political priorities and jeopardise clubs’ autonomy.

We have already heard from a number of contributors about a kind of league table of worthy green clubs. Do not get me wrong: if football owners, or chairs, or the fans decide they want that to be the priority, that is up to them. But it should be nowhere near the role of a regulator to decide. We have already heard about the case of green multimillionaire Dale Vince, who is the major shareholder and chair of Forest Green Rovers; we have heard him lauded. Certainly, Forest Green Rovers are the world’s first all-vegan football team; they are also the world’s first carbon-neutral football club; but I note that, at the end of the 2023-24 season, they were relegated back into non-league football, coming 24th out of 24. It is not a scientific correlation, I am just noting it.

Also, does having green credentials benefit fans, who we keep being told this Bill is designed for? Note the controversy over Forest Green Rovers’ home strip. The traditional black and white stripes were swapped for a lime green shirt and black shorts, in line with sponsorship from an eco-friendly, EV-supporting, green YouTube channel, despite what the fans wanted. So the Green Army was not necessarily kept happy by the green politics of the chair of the club. I simply raise this because, if a club wants to go green and fans want their club to be more environmentally friendly, that is fine. But the regulator should have absolutely zilch to say on it and certainly no power to impose it.

My Lords, I had no intention of speaking in this debate until I heard that last speech. I will, first of all, remind the Committee of my interest, because the company which I chair helps quite a number of people in football to meet the sustainability needs that we have.

I do have to say, however, that football—like so many sports, but more than any other—sets an example of considerable importance. Sustainability is best defined by what the chairman of Coca Cola once said to me: “I believe that sustainability means that this company is going to be here in 125 years, like it has been here for the past 125 years.” In other words, sustainability is a central issue of the continuance of businesses. The idea that you could see a football club continuing that did not do something about the use of water, that did not concern itself with the damage done by using fertilisers unnecessarily, or that did not think about the wastage from non-recyclable cups and the like, would actually be barmy.

One of the problems now is that some people are politicising our necessary needs, and they are pretending that, somehow or other, it is those of us who are pressing green issues who are the politicisers. Not at all: they are the ones who are denying the truth, denying the facts and not demanding what we need in order that the young people who now watch football will live in a world in which they can live happily. If we do not fight climate change as we need to, we will give to the next generation a world which is intolerable. What the people who politicise this issue—as we have just heard—are really doing is saying to their grandchildren, “We don’t care about the world that you will have: we want to be comfortable now. We don’t want to ask anybody to do anything; we’re not even going to remind people to do the things that are good for them and their business.”

All we are suggesting in this Bill is that it is a good idea to ask the regulator to remind people of the standards which are now accepted and insisted upon by all decent businesses. These are not exceptional; they are not political; they are merely what we, today, expect. That small number of people who do not understand that are betraying not just the present generation but their children and grandchildren. I hope that this House will feel that it is our duty to make sure that we can look our grandchildren in the eye and say, “We did our best to make sure that your world is a world in which it is a pleasure to live.”

I am not aware of any reputable scientific body that makes the claims the noble Lord has just made.

A noble Lord:

What are you talking about?

I absolutely say that the central prediction of all the major bodies is that there will be no major problem faced from climate change by 2050. If, indeed, the noble Lord or any other Peer wishes to controvert me, could they please quote such scientific evidence? By the way, they should also take into account, for example, the recent statement from the winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Physics, that climate change theories are a scam. I am not saying that, and I would not go so far as to say that, but could they address that? If they could please point to a central prediction that contains the sort of apocalyptic predictions just made by the noble Lord, Lord Deben, I would be very interested. I will say no more at this point.

There is no scientific society of any major country that does not say that climate change is the biggest material threat to mankind. All of them say and support the view that by 2050, we need to get to net zero if we are to have any possibility of keeping within a 1.5 degree increase in temperature compared with pre-industrial periods. All of them say that, if we do not do that, the effects upon people will be enormously damaging. You only have to look at what has happened with just a 1 degree increase: the recent floods in Spain, for example, the wildfires and the rest. What my noble friend says is not true and it is very dangerous, because that kind of attitude is what allows people to get off the hook.

I do not want to get into a fight among Tories, but I want to clarify my position. I disagree with both noble Lords, in some ways. My point is that I want football clubs to focus on football and not to have rows like this. This is precisely the thing I am objecting to: the introduction of at least in some ways contentious political or scientific matters. I simply say that this should not have anything to do with the regulation of football. That is all, and that is the reason I oppose it—not because I am taking a particular view on climate change or net zero.

My Lords, I have the last amendment in the group, which seems to be where my amendments are occurring today. I think we should have somebody at each club who addresses this issue. I am with the noble Lord, Lord Deben, on this; it is an undeniable thing. You could probably quote one person who has said, “No, it isn’t”, but you cannot list everyone else who says that climate change is real without being here all week. They will then disagree about its extent, but they will not disagree on the fact that it is real.

There should be somebody at each club doing exactly these things to make sure that the business is sustainable, and to address the various problems. If it is just one person, as was suggested, it is simply a question of saying, “Please pay attention: can we raise the issue and see what is going on?” This could be someone who is managing the flood risk; the fact that grounds are being flooded is unarguable. Someone should be saying things such as, “What is the least damaging type of cup?” All of these issues will be important at different levels to different groups, but they are important. If other regulations are coming up to deal with this, you would be an absolute fool not to bring them into your plan.

The noble Lord, Lord Deben, is probably right on this, and it is nice to see him on the Bill.

My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, I rise to strongly oppose the idea of adding environmental sustainability to the regulator’s remit, as this group of amendments seeks to do. I do so not because this issue is unimportant: of course, it could not be more significant for us all. My objection is both practical and principled, because barely has the ink dried on this revised Bill, and already we are seeing a litany of attempts to extend the regulator’s scope. This, I am afraid, is what many of us who work in football are so worried about. We are the first major country to introduce a government regulator for football, and immediately there is pressure to have it solve every challenge on the spectrum.

Let me remind noble Lords: this Bill already gives enormous power to the regulator. It can decide who can own a football club; how the club can spend its money; how it should organise itself as a business; how it must engage with its supporters; in what circumstances it can move location; the approach it should take to equality, diversity and inclusion; the overall flow of money; and even the continued existence of key competition tools throughout the ecosystem. However, even that does not seem to be enough. Today it is environmental sustainability; tomorrow it will be something else. We already have amendments tabled to mandate specific kinds of corporate social responsibility; to add the women’s game to the IFR’s scope; to meddle with free-to-air listed events; to require regulator consultation on political statements made by clubs; and even to govern football clubs’ relationships with sports betting.

It is a well-known phenomenon that all regulators significantly expand their scope and size over time but, if we start before it has even begun, imagine what this regulator would look like in a decade. Where will it end? I do not expect it to be anywhere positive for our currently world-leading football pyramid.

The Premier League and its clubs, as well as many EFL clubs, are already taking substantial action on environmental issues, as all responsible businesses should do. We already have comprehensive environmental regulations that apply to all businesses, as well as the aggressive targets of a country reaching net zero. In addition to serious and often innovative action to reduce their own carbon footprints, many clubs also campaign and donate substantial resources to environmental campaigns.

Premier League clubs also do a huge amount to help other clubs in this regard. Let me give one example: the Premier League has put in place a brilliant programme to provide grants of up to 70% of the costs associated with installing modern LED floodlights at stadiums across the National League system and women’s football pyramid. This has already helped dozens of community clubs both to lower their running costs and to minimise the impact they have on the environment, but it is fair to point out that Premier League clubs make these sorts of voluntary contributions while facing already unprecedented financial demands. Again, I will give one example.

The Budget increases to employers’ national insurance contributions will cost Premier League clubs an additional £56 million annually. That is an extraordinary new burden—more than £0.25 billion over the rest of this Parliament. This new bill also comes on top of the £1.6 billion in pyramid support that we already provide, as well as our significant investment in youth development and community programmes, and the constant need to maintain expensive infrastructure and build new facilities. The Government want us to spend even more on grass-roots pitches and, through the Bill, they may force us to give even more to the well-funded Football League.

All of this is before Premier League clubs can focus on their most basic and fundamental requirement—of which the Bill takes so little account—to keep their own teams strong and competitive on the pitch. Let us remember that that is what the fans really care about. It is our ability to do that which underpins the overall health and sustainability of English football.

We must not compel this regulator to interfere in areas far beyond its core purpose, adding yet more cost and complexity to what is already a set of implementation challenges. Every additional requirement we add dilutes its focus and risks its effectiveness, so this group of amendments surely cannot adhere to the basic principles of good regulatory design. Effective regulators need clear, focused remits. They need to do specific things very well, not everything poorly. Let us not undermine this regulator’s clarity of purpose before its work even begins.

My noble friend Lady Brady makes some very powerful points. Any business sector would not argue against or disagree with best practice in terms of the sustainable aspects of their business. In football, you need only look at the quality of the hospitality element and the work that goes on there or the maintenance of the grounds and pitches.

Carlisle United has been mentioned several times. The river is in the centre of town and it floods regularly, but that is a matter to do with the location of the club and the river in that city. This comes to my other point about the historic nature of football clubs and their grounds. Many of them were built in the Victorian period in the centre of cities. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, talks about sustainability and transport, but it is very difficult for many clubs—Premier League and other league clubs that are located in the centre of towns—to do the things that the noble Baroness is proposing to insert into the Bill.

I will just give a quick example of sustainability, and that is Old Trafford. It is situated between Manchester docks and a railway line, in Trafford Park. The carbon footprint of Trafford Park has significantly reduced over recent decades, and Manchester United and other clubs throughout the league have reduced their carbon footprint, because that is the right thing to do. It is good business practice and therefore we do not need these amendments, because the football clubs themselves know the benefits of offering good-quality hospitality and good performances on pitches.

Some of your Lordships will remember the summer of 1976. It was a sign of global warming, perhaps, but the quality of football pitches in 1976 was terrible. The grass did not grow and the technology of the day did not enable pitches to survive that drought. The technology is there now and it is sustainable. Football clubs have the power, technology and wherewithal to cope with climate change but, if they are located close to a river in the centre of town, there is really only one solution, which is to move that football club.

My Lords, in the slightly unexpected but spirited exchange between my noble friends Lord Deben and Lord Moynihan of Chelsea, I have to say that I incline more to the view of my noble friend Lord Deben on the merits of the case about around climate change. I am not remotely sceptical about climate change, the threat that it poses or the need to take urgent action to combat it. I am, however, sceptical about its place in this Bill and for it to be a strong consideration in the role of the to-be-established regulator of English football.

The reality, exactly as my noble friend Lord Evans just outlined, is that some football clubs are already more vulnerable to the effects of climate change than others. All football clubs will have to invest in adaptation measures to combat the effects of climate change, because there will be malign effects whatever is done. As my noble friend Lord Deben said, they are already being experienced.

I also take the view, and have done for a long time, that businesses which value their brand and reputation have a commercial interest in ensuring that they get ahead of the curve on issues of this kind, because their customers—who, for these purposes, are the fans and supporters—care about these matters. People identify very strongly with their football clubs and with the values that they embody and represent. They want to see these institutions being successful, as obviously all football clubs intend, but they are very aware of the need for them to be responsible and to move towards their own zero-carbon position. I do not want this regulator to spend time and money—not their money but the football clubs’ and therefore the fans’ money—doing things that are not necessary, because all football clubs want to be successful, so they will be addressing this already.

My Lords this series of amendments raises an issue that will come back again and again during Committee, which is a clash of priorities. I will introduce it by again reading out a section from Tracey Crouch’s original report, in which she refers to

“the fragility of the wider foundations of the game. It is both true that our game is genuinely world leading and that there is a real risk of widespread failures and a potential collapse of the pyramid as we know it”.

In other words, we are being told, on the one hand, that football is so financially troubled that we need a state regulator to guide it and, on the other hand—in this series of amendments and others to come—that we must load the regulator with additional responsibilities.

As my noble friend Lady Brady said, these amendments relate to climate change, but we will have more on fan safety, the regulation of women’s football, the expansion of the regulator to other leagues and others on environmental sustainability. On and on they will come. There is a fundamental tension between loading the regulator with these responsibilities and the state of football as the Crouch report described it and as the Bill attempts to address.

There may be other ways of meeting these environmental objectives. I will avoid being drawn into the adverse exchanges between my noble friends Lord Deben and Lord Moynihan of Chelsea. There may be other ways in which clubs that lead on environmental action can help clubs that do not. As matters stand, the regulator, were these amendments to come into force, would be imposing on clubs that have, for better or worse, not thought about these matters at all, requirements that would affect how fans come to the games, how they treat their pitches and how they deal with litter—all matters for which they are completely unprepared.

If the Government are correct in stressing—as they have done throughout in talking to Peers; the Minister has been generous in doing this before and during the Bill—that they do not want the regulator to have a heavy touch, I look forward to the Minister explaining the other ways there might be to encourage clubs to take responsible environmental action besides accepting these amendments to the Bill, which might have effects we do not expect or want on clubs that are in financial difficulties—the very basis, after all, on which the Bill has been brought forward.

I join in with the sentiments expressed by many other noble Lords. I made the point at Second Reading that, however well intentioned, noble Lords came up with seven new commitments they wanted the regulator to be involved in. This all starts from the premise that we believe it should be a light-touch regulator and the unintended consequence is that each one, however well intentioned, can add another burden, as so ably explained by my noble friend Lady Brady. I, like others, am fearful of adding something new to the Bill.

I would like to explain a slight difference. In her response to the first group, the Minister talked about mission creep regarding how we were trying to expand the sustainability argument to other objectives of the regulator; for example, to some of the income-generating TV advertising. The key difference here is that we were trying to talk about the action the regulator takes—the measures the regulator might take to force clubs to put down a deposit to cover their sustainability requirements, and whether the regulator should have wider criteria beyond financial sustainability regarding the wider benefits of the game. Those sorts of things are appropriate because they look at what the regulator is responsible for and its objectives. Thing that put new burdens on the clubs come into a different category. They come into the mission-creep category, so to speak, which I, like other noble Lords, are reluctant to add in.

So, although I support the points made by other noble Lords, I would make that distinction. When talking about things the regulator might do that might impact clubs we should make sure that the regulator looks at the wider benefits of the game but we should not look to add extra burdens on clubs, however well intentioned.

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Bassam of Brighton and Lord Addington, to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, to all noble Lords who have contributed to the useful discussion on this group of amendments, and to the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, for her Amendment 15, which the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, spoke to on her behalf.

We recognise the importance of environmental sustainability and the target to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. It was, in fact, as noble Lords know, the previous Government who introduced and passed the law to ensure that the United Kingdom reduces its greenhouse gas emissions by 100% from 1990 levels by 2050. In recent scrutiny of and debate on other legislation before your Lordships’ House, we on these Benches have discharged the duty not just of the Official Opposition but, importantly, of sparking several debates on environmental sustainability and protection.

My noble friends Lord Gascoigne and Lord Roborough tabled an amendment to the Water (Special Measures) Bill to make provisions for nature recovery and nature-based solutions. We also supported and helped to pass an amendment to the Crown Estate Bill to require the Crown Estate commissioners to assess the environmental and animal welfare impacts of salmon farms on the Crown Estate.

I am very proud of those demonstrations of our commitment on these Benches to the protection of the environment and I am sorry that the Government did not support the sensible provisions brought by my noble friends Lord Gascoigne and Lord Roborough on the water Bill. But I am not persuaded by the amendments in this group because I am not convinced that they are the proper responsibility of the new independent football regulator. I worry that additional requirements—in this case on environmental sustainability—will place a further burden on football clubs.

Amendment 15 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Bolton, supported by the noble Lord, Lord Bassam of Brighton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, requires clubs to operate

“in a way that will achieve net zero … by 2050 … materially reducing negative impact on the natural world”.

Amendment 55, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, adds an environmental sustainability objective to the list of objectives for the independent football regulator under the Bill.

These are important and noble causes, but they will be, as this debate has highlighted, very costly duties that some of the clubs, particularly in the lower leagues of the football pyramid, might not be able to discharge. This speaks to the tension that the noble Lord, Lord Goddard of Stockport, mentioned in our debate on the previous group about making sure that we are thinking about clubs of all sizes and at both ends of the leagues with which the Bill is interested. There is a great difference between their financial and administrative ability to discharge some of the duties the Bill will place upon them. The clubs in the lower leagues of the pyramid are significantly smaller than those at the top and have far fewer available resources.

Even with the Bill’s efforts to help with the financial flows throughout the football pyramid, we should be mindful of the concern about whether these clubs will be able to cope with these further regulations, particularly, as my noble friend Lady Brady pointed out, in light of the additional burden placed on them by the Government’s new taxes on employment through expanding the scope and rate of national insurance contributions. Given the additional costs to football clubs from measures such as that and the other measures we will look at in the Bill, such as the industry levy, the costs of compliance with the financial regulations and so on, I fear that these amendments mean further regulatory burden on clubs at both ends of the spectrum.

It is important to note, as noble Lords have reminded us, that clubs and leagues have already voluntarily adopted and embraced elements of environmental and sustainability governance rules. In February this year the Premier League clubs met and agreed a Premier League environmental sustainability commitment. That means that each club in that league has agreed to:

“Develop a robust environmental sustainability policy” by the end of the current season,

“designate a senior employee to lead the club’s environmental sustainability activities”,

and

“develop a greenhouse gas … emissions dataset … by the end of the 2025/26 season”.

My noble friend Lady Brady set out some of the other excellent work that has been done on a voluntary basis, but with enthusiasm, by clubs in the Premier League.

Similarly, the English Football League has the EFL Green Clubs initiative which is run in partnership with the environmental accreditation scheme GreenCode. Importantly, GreenCode is run by the same team that helped Forest Green Rovers—which the noble Lord, Lord Bassam of Brighton, mentioned in opening this group and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, mentioned as well—to become recognised as the world’s most environmentally friendly football club, not just by FIFA but by the United Nations.

These are all steps which have been taken voluntarily by clubs in the English league system, not thrust on them by the state, by an Act of Parliament or by a powerful new regulator, so we should take heart that there is apparent action within football to tackle the environmental challenges which we undoubtedly face, supported by private enterprise, such as in the way that my noble friend Lord Deben highlighted. His company and many others are helping football clubs to discharge their intergenerational duty and to do so effectively. So I am not sure that we need to give the regulator further obligations and powers to place further requirements on these clubs.

I am mindful throughout of the point about mission creep, which we are, rightly, returning to throughout our debates. I am being chided occasionally for not agreeing with every jot and tittle of the Bill which was being looked at by the last Parliament. But the Bill which the last Government brought forward, and which was under consideration in another place, did not include measures such as the ones being proposed in this Bill for these reasons that I have set out.

I think this is an important set of issues, and I appreciate the efforts noble Lords have made to look at how they could be discharged without adding unduly to the burden. I was struck by the first part of Amendment 60 from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for instance, which merely suggests that the independent football regulator should just discharge its duties as regulator in a way which

“is compatible with the Climate Change Act”.

At least the first part of Amendment 60 seems sensible to me, so I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reaction to that in particular and to whether she makes that distinction between the first and second parts of what the noble Baroness has put forward in Amendment 60.

Amendment 246 from the noble Lord, Lord Addington, which, as he says, comes at the end of this group, is again constructive and chimes with the action I mentioned by the Premier League, which has agreed to have a named person at each club whom fans, the regulator and others would know is at least thinking about these matters.

Those two amendments seem to be the more attractive in the group, but that is the reason why I have not added my name to any of the amendments here and am not persuaded by the case that has been made.

I thank my noble friends Lord Bassam of Brighton and Lady Taylor of Bolton, the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for raising the very serious issue of environmental sustainability and how it relates to the regulator. These are issues of considerable concern, not least with the shocking storms we have seen recently and the change to weather patterns over the past few years. The impact of the climate emergency on all aspects of our lives is very real.

In response to these amendments, I would like to make clear that the Government are absolutely committed to environmental sustainability. One of the Prime Minister’s five national missions is to accelerate the transition towards clean energy and ensure the UK fulfils its legal obligation to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. As a huge part of our national life, all sports, including football, have an important role to play in this transition. The Government expect authorities across this sport and across all sports to be working together to advance environmental sustainability.

A point made eloquently by the noble Lord, Lord Deben, is that we have to be able to justify the view we take now to future generations. This is true. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, made an interesting point on placing this requirement within the Bill. However, while I entirely support her views, we do not feel it is right to add environmental sustainability to the purpose of the Bill. As the noble Lord, Lord Goodman of Wycombe, highlighted, this Bill is acting only where industry has shown it is not capable of resolving matters itself and statutory regulation is the most effective way of tackling any market failures.

I would, however, be happy to discuss further with the noble Baroness how we can use good examples of football clubs already acting on the climate change emergency and spread best practice. What I would stress, when noble Lords are discussing something so important both nationally and internationally, is that noble Lords are still debating the very purpose of the Bill. The areas specified in the purpose of the Bill are based only on issues that English football has clearly shown itself to be unable to self-regulate and to risk clubs being lost to their fans and local communities.

By contrast, football has already demonstrated the ability to take action on the environment: for example, the Premier League’s new minimum standard of action on environmental issues across both the clubs and the league. I welcomed the examples given by the noble Baroness, Lady Brady. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and my noble friend Lord Bassam described some interesting measures when describing the work of Forest Green Rovers, but this is clearly only a starting point on which future initiatives must build. Football authorities must take more proactive steps to accelerate their own environmental initiatives. However, it is within the gift of leagues, clubs and other authorities across the game to do so without government intervention.

We must also be wary of scope creep and unintended consequences. The addition proposed in Amendments 11 and 15, in the names of my noble friends Lord Bassam of Brighton and Lady Taylor of Bolton, would potentially add burden and cost to the regulator, as well as potentially limiting its ability to carry out its main objectives. Therefore, while I acknowledge the importance of this issue, as I have set out, we do not feel it is right to add environmental sustainability to the purpose of this Bill.

I look forward to further discussions on how we can best promote environmental sustainability within the game. However, for the reasons I have set out, I hope the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.

My Lords, I think it has been of great value to have this discussion and debate on the notion of environmental sustainability in the football industry, which is a very responsible industry actually. I take heart from the examples that the noble Baroness, Lady Brady, gave of the Premier League’s initiatives and those from the noble Lord Parkinson.

It seems to me that this is an important issue for football. All the other regulators seem to have an environmental purpose as well. I have looked at the Financial Conduct Authority, Ofcom and even the Pensions Regulator, which you might think is a million miles away from being a regulator interested in sustainability. They all have environmental statements and purposes as part of their work.

I think the football business is making progress in this space. I want to see it making more progress, perhaps with a more level playing field. It seems unfair that some clubs leap ahead and leave others behind. Forest Green Rovers, although a small club and in the fifth tier of football, has led the way for some years and I think it only right that we encourage other clubs to do the same, whether that is through the regulator or by applying environmental legislation more generally.

I look forward to the invitation to have some more discussion on this point but, for now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 11 withdrawn.

Amendments 12 and 13 not moved.