Football League chairman Rick Parry has accused Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch of ignoring the views of most clubs after she called the new independent regulator “a waste of money”.
Badenoch last month revealed she would not be supporting the creation of an independent regulator, despite the Conservatives championing and initiating the proposals when still in government.
Parry, who in his EFL role represents 72 of England’s 92 league clubs, also labelled efforts by Conservative peer Lord Moynihan to delay the bill “chilling” and “really, really dangerous”.
square FOOTBALL ExplainedWhat English football's independent regulator means for your club
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Badenoch told The Telegraph: “[The regulator] is going to be a waste of money.
“When I speak to people in the industry, they don’t think it’s going to work. So why are we doing it?
“I’m opposed to it personally and the party is looking at how we can improve the bill because we don’t have the numbers in the Commons or even in the Lords to stop it.”
In response, Parry said he had written to Badenoch to put forward his organisation’s view, but had yet to receive a response.
“[We told her] we were surprised that she’d come out against the bill, having said she’d spoken to people in football who thought it was a waste of time,” Parry said.
“We did point out she hadn’t spoken to anybody at the EFL so she hadn’t taken our views on board and that we’d like a meeting to explain our perspective so that she could take a more balanced view.”
The Premier League has lobbied on behalf of its member clubs against the inception of the regulator.
However, it will reach another milestone on Tuesday when it goes into “report stage”: that means the bill and 99 amendments will be debated on the floor of the House of Lords.
One such amendment, tabled by Lord Moynihan, suggests adding the names of the Premier League, Football League and National League into the legislation.
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Premier League lobbying against independent regulator is nakedly self-serving
Read MoreDoing so would make it a “hybrid bill” requiring a deeper level of consultation with those named in it, slowing down the process by several years. Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy called it an attempt by the opposition to “wreck” the bill.
And Parry also said that other members of Badenoch’s party were, far from trying to improve the bill, actually trying to delay it.
He added: “The one that is a bit chilling and really, really dangerous is the one that pretty much ignores what the Government have said in terms of hybridity.
“Because if it became a hybrid bill that would delay things for potentially years on end. Somebody has deliberately tabled an amendment that would make it a hybrid bill by specifically referring to the need for the leagues to be named on the face of the bill.”
But Conservative opposition to the regulator could end up being a case of self-sabotage, particularly in communities that have traditionally voted Labour but have begun to turn to the Tories in more recent years. And Parry says he has spoken to members from those areas who believe voters will remember the Conservatives opposing the bill.
“There’s quite a few former Tory MPs who were backing the bill their bill last time, Tory MPs from the red wall, Tory MPs from northern towns that recognise the value of the clubs to their communities like Accrington, Carlisle, Grimsby, Middlesbrough etc – and I think they are making the point that they [the Conservatives] have perhaps to be re-elected one day,” Parry said.
“They actually understand why they were backing the bill in the first place. They perhaps think that it’s something the Tories might want to revisit.”
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