Speeches by Jopp.

“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?”

“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…”

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

“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 wi…”

“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.”

“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 a…”

“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 beg…”

“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?”

“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?”

“I did serve in Afghanistan, including with the young major who is now the general that my right hon. and gallant Friend is referring to. He is an outstanding officer with unimpeachable credentials. My right hon. and gallant Friend is making a compelling moral case. I have seen at first hand the risks that those Afghans…”

“The Minister’s civil servants will be proud of him. I think the point my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) was making was that when the computer says no and the Minister knows that the computer is wrong, does he not have an obligation simply to go away and change the …”

“Q8. The Prime Minister told us during the general election that he is a socialist. What has been more surprising is to find out in the last couple of weeks that the leader of the Reform party might be one too. As the Chancellor locks down the spending review, will the Prime Minister please remind her of Mrs Thatcher’s …”

“The hon. Member says that both his club and the fans support the football regulator, but they do not know how much it is going to cost or how big it is going to be. They like the purpose of the regulator, but they do not yet know the cost. Is it unfair to set a boundary on some of those aspects in the Bill, so that it …”

“Thames Waters is a massive stakeholder in my constituency, and the biggest landowner. We have half of London’s drinking water in four raised reservoirs and we have a fair chunk of the Thames, from Staines to Sunbury. For 11 months now, I have been trying to get a meeting with Thames Water. I appreciate that it has had …”

“And Tottenham.”

“I am grateful to the shadow Minister for giving way. The Minister admitted that with Select Committees she was not comparing like with like. Would not a better comparison be another big regulator, the Bank of England, where the Monetary Policy Committee in setting interest rates does indeed allow for minority reports, …”

“Will the Minister give way?”

“Does my hon. Friend share my frustration? The Minister said that some indicative numbers for the costs came from the impact assessment for the previous version of the Bill. I asked her what personnel numbers that was based on, because if such assumptions do not underpin the budget, that is as random a number as any.”

“On that principle, does the Minister agree with the Secretary of State for Defence, who said yesterday that the number of people in the Army would be 73,000?”

“Quoting those figures is very helpful. Can the Minister tell us what personnel assumptions those figures were based on?”