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Football Matches (Standing Spectators)

I do not think that this is yesterday's debate—it is about the future and the future of football. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook and Small Heath (Mr. Godsiff) on securing the debate. He has laid out a clear, articulate view of all the reasons why the Football Licensing Authority has got it wrong, so I shall not go over all those points. I agree with my hon. Friend about John de Quidt. Way back, when I was Minister for Sport, I first tried to raise the issue and sent the FLA to Germany to look at the stadiums, but I found that there was a deep-rooted objection to the idea. The FLA and the establishment in football were not interested in listening to the arguments, any of the supporters' views or the safety argument. However, one by one, over the past few years, every single argument against safe standing has been demolished. Now, I am not quite sure what my hon. Friend the Minister will say, because there are no new reasons why safe standing should not be introduced. The new Minister, whom I congratulate, has an opportunity to start the way that he means to go on. He should not automatically accept what officials have said over and over again or listen to people who, for whatever reason, have decided that this is a no-go area. We must continue to point out the hypocrisy and double standards. It cannot be right that the FLA justifies an individual at a football match being ejected for persistently standing in a lower-level tier, when at that same ground on the next Saturday that same individual can not only stand, but jump up and down and dance at a concert in any part of the stadium, including right at the top? That is not logical. The message that it is sending out is that the Government—if they continue to keep this attitude—the FLA, the premier league and the entire football establishment think that somehow football supporters are just a little bit less in the human race and are not to be trusted. Of course, the culture of football was in a particular situation years ago, but it has changed, and it has not changed because of seating. Even today, at any match at the Emirates, most of one end of the ground will be standing most of the time. It happens all the time. To argue that making grounds all-seater has changed the culture is complete nonsense. I urge the Minister to sit down and talk to those supporters in the Football Supporters Federation who have worked passionately on the issue for a number of years, have done huge amounts of intelligence work in other countries at their own expense and have produced reports that give facts and figures that can outdo anything that John de Quidt can put in front of him. I urge him to give football clubs the choice of how they want their supporters to be treated and to allow that to happen. The matter will not go away, and we will have continually to return to it. Let us stop the ridiculous situation in which football supporters are treated as sub-human.