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Football Matches (Standing Spectators)

As always, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point. It is true that that is exactly what Lord Justice Taylor said. I shall return to that point. Let us examine exactly what Lord Justice Taylor said:"““There is no panacea which will achieve total safety and cure all problems of behaviour and crowd control. But I am satisfied ""that seating does more to achieve those objectives than any other single measure…It is possible that in the early stages of conversion there may be instances of fans standing on the seats or in front of them because they are used to standing or in order to register a protest, but I am satisfied that in England and Wales as in Scotland and abroad spectators will become accustomed and educated to seating.””" Lord Justice Taylor's expectations in respect of seating have definitely not been realised. As a result of the Taylor report, the Government provided more than £100 million of public money in a variety of ways to improve facilities at professional football grounds. In the 1992-93 season, the premiership was formed and vast amounts of money then flowed into football at the highest level—mostly, it has to be said, into the pockets of players, their agents and assorted advisers. The premiership is the richest league in the world. Chief executives, particularly the current one, Richard Scudamore, have been brilliantly successful at maximising its income and turning it into a worldwide brand. Fabulously rich oligarchs, entrepreneurs and business men have acquired ownership of a number of clubs. Whether those trends are good for football or the national team and whether they are welcomed by football fans is a matter of opinion, and it is not necessarily relevant to this debate—with one exception. When the Taylor report was published and the impression was put around that any standing area in top football grounds was unsafe, it suited the owners of many top clubs to replace standing areas, where entry prices were cheap—the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor)—with seated areas, where much higher prices could be charged, particularly as the majority of the money to make the changes was coming from Government sources or the pools companies. The premiership has greatly increased the move towards higher ticket prices, with more corporate areas, and many fans of top clubs find watching premiership football live more and more expensive.