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10 Mar 2009 : Column 12WH—continued
I think that a GB team would set a precedent. There would at some point be more and more pressure for either a GB or a United Kingdom team to represent all our nations in world and European championships. The danger—this goes back to the concern about the passion that people have for sport—is this: who would support such an entity—a Great Britain football team—and how would it be run? We can all envisage the appalling problems that there would be in trying to be politically correct and ensuring that there were two Northern Ireland players and two Welsh players as an absolute minimum. Particularly if a match was being played at the Millennium stadium, would the best 11 players necessarily be playing? All sorts of politics would play a part.
Mr. Sutcliffe: In the Beijing Olympics, there was a Team GB—a Paralympic team—for a number of different sports, including football. That team was run by the English FA with the support of the other home nations. It can be done.
Mr. Field: I can accept that. The Minister has made a valid point about the Paralympics. We are in the early stages of the Paralympics as a sporting movement and I pay tribute to the Government, who have played a very important role in the past decade in ensuring that sport for the disabled has such a high profile. However, I suspect that in 20 or 30 years’ time there will be much more demand, not only in the footballing world but in other areas, for a breaking down of the team into national teams and that the competition and rivalry that is seen in able-bodied sport will also play its part in sport for the disabled.
I appreciate that other hon. Members want to say a few words. I shall end with a slightly more parochial point.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD): The hon. Gentleman has clearly stated that he does not support the concept of Team GB, but he has not outlined his alternative.
Mr. Field: I shall leave it to the Front Benchers to go into that in detail. It may well be thought that only one nation’s team—perhaps an English, a Scottish or a Welsh team—will emerge from this. I suspect that in an ideal world we would like all the nations to have an opportunity to put teams up.
As I said, I shall end with a slightly more parochial thought, because I am a keen football fan and have been all my life. I remember that there was great revulsion in my home town of Reading at the suggestion in 1983 that that team—Reading were then in the fourth tier of professional football—should merge with Oxford United to form the Thames Valley Royals under the late and not much lamented Robert Maxwell, who owned that club at the time. It is interesting how the two clubs developed over the 20 years after that. Oxford United were promoted into the top flight of football. I remember watching them quite avidly when I was an undergraduate. Then they went into a downward spiral. They had a spanking new out-of-town stadium, which has been a financial millstone around their neck, and they also lost their league status in 2006 and are not likely to regain it any time soon.
By contrast, Reading went from strength to strength. They made it into the premiership in 2006. They now routinely have crowds of 20,000. I remember being one of 3,000 or 4,000 at the rather ramshackle old Elm Park ground. No one would have envisaged that 25 years ago, not least because of the rivalry and competition among the fans in that area. What I am trying to say is that there would be many unintended consequences from any mergers that might take place. We need to think through those complications at the outset, rather than giving wholehearted support to something that might lead us down a path that we would all find undesirable.
Mr. Greg Pope (in the Chair): Order. Two hon. Members still wish to speak. I hope to start the winding-up speeches at about 10.30, so I appeal for the co-operation of hon. Members. I call Adam Price.
10.17 am
Adam Price (Carmarthen, East and Dinefwr) (PC): I thank the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) for the unexpected but nevertheless welcome support for our position from Cities of London and Westminster. I also thank and pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) for his impassioned defence of the independence of Scottish and Welsh football. In answer to the point made by the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen), it was not our parties that decided to make football a political football. It was the Prime Minister who did so in advancing, as the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster said, his Britishness agenda.
Albert Owen: The hon. Gentleman is wrong. This argument goes back four or five years before our Prime Minister came to that office. It is something that the British Olympic Association brought forward as an idea, so that host nations would not have to qualify. That is the origin of the argument, so I am sorry but the hon. Gentleman is wrong when he says that the Prime Minister, with his enthusiasm for a Great Britain team, was the start of the debate; he was not.
Adam Price: The British Olympic Association may have been there at the kick-off, but the Prime Minister ran with the ball. There is a bigger political question here, because in this United Kingdom we have one very large nation and three smaller nations and sensitivity needs to be shown to the interests of the three small nations. When the football associations and the majority of football supporters in those countries say, “Hang on a minute. There’s something very important here that we hold dear and that we feel could be imperilled by this decision,” the Government should listen. The hon. Gentleman is a Unionist; he believes in the United Kingdom. The only way in which this United Kingdom can work is if the interests of the small countries are listened to by the large country. That is all we are asking for.
Greg Mulholland (Leeds, North-West) (LD):
I am slightly concerned to hear that the Prime Minister is running with the ball when we are talking about football
rather than rugby. However, I put it to the hon. Gentleman and the Minister that whatever our views on Team GB—we have different ones here—we should address the absurdity of the Team GB football team singing “God Save the Queen”, which is, wrongly, still the English football national anthem. When will we address that and stop having this identity confusion? When England compete as England, they should have an English national anthem so that when a British team plays, we do not ask its Scottish and Welsh members to stand and sing what they perceive as an English anthem, which is absurd.
Adam Price: The hon. Gentleman makes a strong point, and I certainly support it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire likened being a Scottish football supporter to being on a rollercoaster, but Welsh supporters have also had their fair share of highs and lows. In the 1958 World cup quarter-final, a young Brazilian by the name of Pele came on and scored his first goal in international football to put us out. In the quarter-finals of the 1976 European championships, we lost to the former Yugoslavia. I also have to mention a certain handball in 1978, which introduced an element of disagreement between Scotland and Wales. Scotland also put us out in 1986, but I will pass over that.
Wales now has a crop of young players. The hon. Member for Ynys Môn mentioned Aaron Ramsey, and we also have Joe Ledley, David Edwards and Jack Collison, whose combined ages would be about 80. This crop of young players has a real prospect of getting Wales into a major championship again, and we do not want to put that at risk. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman understands that in his heart of hearts.
The position in FIFA has changed, and there have already been two votes on the membership issue. FIFA vice-president Jack Warner from Trinidad and Tobago is a leading opponent of independence for the four home nations. He has recently said that he has an open mind about the effects of Team GB on our membership of FIFA, and the issue will come back on the agenda if we take up the proposals.
In several cases recently, FIFA has taken a much more conservative line than it has in the past. It has more members than the United Nations because its criteria for membership were much broader in the past, but that has changed. Greenland made an application for membership in 2005, but it was turned down. Catalonia has also made an application. Similarly, UEFA has tightened up its rules, and new members must be members of the United Nations to qualify as members. Things are therefore changing, and if we move down the proposed path, there is a real danger that we will lose our independent membership.
Such a development will have a knock-on effect on Welsh clubs. At the moment, teams from the Welsh premiership can compete in the champions league and the UEFA cup. A few years ago, Barry Town beat Porto, which went on to win the champions league a few years later. Such games are important opportunities for young Welsh players, and we need to defend their ability to play in them.
The hon. Gentleman talked about artificial boundaries. In a sense, identity is artificial because it is a cultural construct—it is something we believe in. We believe passionately in our Welsh identity, partly for reasons of history, but it is real to us. There is a distinction to be made. Originally, the Olympic movement was about not national sides, but individual athletes competing against each other—the national element came in only later. I understand what the hon. Gentleman is saying: in a sense, the Olympian movement is about individuals, and its motto is “Citius, Altius, Fortius”. However, the national dimension of team sport is absolutely central—it is part of the passion of the game to see two national sides pitting the best talent that they have against each other. Surely we would not want to lose that.
I want political independence for my country and I make no apology for that. The hon. Gentleman has every right to disagree with me, but it is a laudable ambition to want one’s country to have self-determination. Historically, the arrangement in these islands has been that we respect the fact that four different nations make up our state and that we allow expressions of national identity within that, and sporting identity is an important element of that.
The Football Association of Wales is the third oldest football association in the world. We were a founding member of UEFA. Along with the other home nations, we are also on the FIFA board, which decides the rules and which has only eight members.
Albert Owen: The hon. Gentleman has made several references to Welshness and identity, but someone who supports Welsh independence is no more Welsh than Welsh patriots who want to be part of the United Kingdom. That is the important point: there is a difference between nationalism and patriotism. However, he also talked about the Olympic ethos, and is not being part of a team also part of that? When Team GB came back from Beijing, members from the individual home countries did not feel any less Scottish or Welsh for being part of it.
Adam Price: I say to the hon. Gentleman in all honesty and sincerity that identity is personal and subjective. I accept that he has a British identity alongside a Welsh one, but that British identity is not one that I share. That is my personal, subjective view. I am prepared to allow him his identity if he will allow me mine. An important part of my identity is the continuation of an independent Welsh national side. I have no problem with the current arrangement, under which we have a UK Olympics team, and we have to accept that the Olympics authorities perhaps take a different view from FIFA or UEFA, although that is a matter of some dispute. If the hon. Gentleman wants his identity, that is fine, but will he please allow me to have mine and to express it in sporting terms by continuing to support a Welsh national football side?
I will wind up now, however, because I am very interested to hear what the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) has to say.
10.26 am
Andrew Mackinlay (Thurrock) (Lab):
One reason why I am interested in this issue is that I am a member of the Celtic diaspora who was born in Wembley. My
earliest memories include being let out of St. Joseph’s school in Wembley early to see an international on a Wednesday afternoon—there were no floodlights for soccer matches at Wembley in those days. I also remember kith and kin coming down from Scotland on the overnight coach to see Scotland beat England. The issue is very interesting. I am a soccer enthusiast and I certainly like the international game.
It is laudable for Ministers to say that it would perhaps be nice to have a United Kingdom team. Indeed, let me say for the record—in case what we say is distorted elsewhere—that I support that objective as a soccer enthusiast. However, my point, which I think is new, is that the Government should back off. There is a point at which these things are no longer Government business, but a matter for the four football associations, and it is dangerous for the Government to try to push the issue.
I note that the Minister intervened to pray in aid the Paralympics. He said that the English FA organised the football team with the support of the other football associations, but that is precisely the point: the initiative had the support of the other associations. However, that support does not exist now. Then, there was acquiescence, full knowledge and full consent, which is fine. It was a grave matter, and the associations decided that they would support the UK Paralympics team. However, they have now decided—they are entitled to do so—that they will not support such a team in the 2012 Olympics. The Government should bear that in mind.
I am desperately angry about the obsession with calling the team Team GB. That shows how stupid—I deliberately use that word—the people who run the Olympics in this country are. This is the United Kingdom, and that is the official short term—that is what is in front of the United Nations. Everyone understands that. The team should be Team UK. That is not a small point or a meaningless difference, because this country is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Even at this late stage, the name should be corrected. Ministers should be particularly sensitive about that, because they are the custodians of the political identity of the United Kingdom. They should correct such things at every stage.
All this comes down to modalities and the statutes of FIFA and the Olympic movement. One reason why the Government should not trespass there is that it would draw the Olympic movement into United Kingdom domestic politics. As I understand the statutes, the team must be a member of FIFA. There is not a United Kingdom football association affiliated to FIFA. It does not exist. If there were acquiescence from the other three associations things would be fine, but there is not, and the matter should be dead in the water. To take up a point that the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) made, where would it end if England’s FA were to claim to be the United Kingdom team, and the Government were to buttress that claim and support it? It would trespass into a political dimension. It is another increment that threatens the Union—the very Union that the Government say they want to maintain. We should not go there. It would put FIFA and the Olympic movement in a difficult position.
I urge the Minister to reflect on the fact that there is a line over which the Government should not trespass. There would be debates about and frustration over the method of selection, anyway. My hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) seemed to assume, because he is a patriot, that there would be a Welsh player. I would hope that there would be Welsh players, but one cannot be sure, because the essence of the Olympic movement is that a person would be selected on merit. Therefore, in conclusion, I counsel the Government to back off and be much more sensible than they have been about the soccer competition. Secondly, because it is a directly related matter, they should start to get their political terms correct, and insist that the team from the United Kingdom should be called Team UK.
10.32 am
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD): It gives me great pleasure to participate in this colourful, heartfelt and passionate debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) on securing it. All that was missing was the Mel Gibson-style face paint I expected the hon. Gentleman to arrive with this morning. He has built from the foundations, brick by brick, and laying the mortar on very thick, ably supported by his colleagues’ urgent and pleading interventions, a huge Aunt Sally to demolish. He did it quite successfully, and for good measure he threw in a conspiracy theory involving the Prime Minister. I understand his reasons for choosing to do that, but with the limited time available to us he might have considered as an alternative a debate on the Olympic legacy in relation to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. There are significant issues to consider in that context, whether on matters of infrastructure or access to contracts for businesses. That would have been an interesting debate.
Of course, this has been a wonderful opportunity for us all to reminisce about our football experiences. I can reminisce about a match I attended in 1976, I think, between Leeds and Bayern Munich. We were living in France, and the match was in Paris. I am afraid that the Leeds fans tore the stadium apart and fought battles in the streets with the French police. I can reminisce too about a surreal football match that I attended when I went on a school trip to Russia. I think it was Odessa versus Kiev, in 1975. The match was played in complete silence. The only thing we could hear in the crowd was the crunching of sunflower seeds, because that is what the spectators ate during the game. When we left the stadium the aisles were littered inches deep with sunflower seed husks.
That is enough reminiscing. We have little time for the debate, so I will focus on the meat of the matter. The British Olympic Association has decided that the UK—both men’s and women’s teams—will take up the free ticket to the football games. It understands, as I think does everyone in the Chamber, the concerns expressed by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire and others about the potential for that to affect the home nation teams. However, the hon. Gentleman did not respond to the point that the potential would exist irrespective of whether we hosted the Olympics in 2012. There is always the potential for FIFA to examine at some point the arrangements for nations, and to come up with a decision that he, others and I would be unhappy with, for example in relation to the World cup.
In support of his arguments, the hon. Gentleman deployed some quotations from Sepp Blatter, although I understand that we have received assurances that they were taken out of context; I considered writing to him but I understand that he has had so many letters on the issue that he would be unhappy to receive a further one from me.
Pete Wishart: I wish that the hon. Gentleman had listened more to his hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-West (Greg Mulholland), who was on steadier ground. Is he speaking for the Scottish Liberals in this matter? Do they support Team GB? Are they in opposition to all other opinion in Scotland in this matter?
Tom Brake: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I confirm that I spoke to my hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) who speaks on Scottish issues. I am also happy to confirm that, as the hon. Gentleman will no doubt be aware, Ross Finnie MSP is on record supporting the need for assurances from FIFA. That is exactly the point that I am making and that other hon. Members have made. We need assurances from FIFA. If the Minister goes away from the debate with one thing, it will be the knowledge that we are collectively asking him to secure a much more solid assurance than we have so far received. Rather than writing to Sepp Blatter individually, the right way forward would be for us all collectively, with the Minister, to sign a letter seeking those assurances.
I regret one thing about the debate, which is that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire and other hon. Members did not focus enough on the potential for increasing participation in women’s football and Paralympic football. I agree with the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay) that if we have a Team UK, that should be its name, not Team GB. Such a team, with players who could be Welsh, Scottish—for all we know it could be a completely Scottish team—or English or from Northern Ireland, and from men’s, women’s and Paralympic football, would kick-start those sports and give players from all those nations an opportunity to play at the highest level. That must be good for sport. I regret that the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire did not pick up that point, because it leaves an impression, as the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) was saying, that the argument is a nationalist one. It should in fact be about how to maximise participation in sport and get the most for our men’s, women’s and Paralympic teams.
The debate has been challenging. The Minister has been given clear guidance by all the hon. Members who have spoken about what he needs to do. Perhaps he can get assurances from FIFA that what happens at the Olympics in 2012 will not create any risk to future World cups.
Mr. MacNeil: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Tom Brake: I am afraid not; I am concluding.
If assurances could be obtained I should be comfortable about supporting a Team UK. I am sure that my Scottish and Welsh colleagues here and in the Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales would also be happy to support it.
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