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Football Matches (Standing Spectators)

I congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook and Small Heath (Mr. Godsiff) on securing the debate and on the manner in which he presented it. I have two admissions to make. First, I had hoped to come here this morning on the back of a great Colchester United victory at Ipswich last night. Until the 71st minute, that would have been the case, but we lost 3-1. The second admission is that I was a member of a working party of Liberal Democrats who brought forward a wide-embracing sports policy document, one tiny section of which opposed safe standing. I was a minority voice—we had to go with the majority—but I live to fight the battle. I am in my 51st season as a Colchester United supporter standing on the terraces, and I am a season ticket holder. For 11 years, I have managed to turn down the generous offer from the club of a seat in the directors' box. My view is that watching football from the terraces is completely different from going to an all-seater stadium. This will be the last season that Colchester United will play at Layer road, which is the smallest club ground ever to be used in the championship and where the majority of the 6,000-limit crowd stand and watch. It is no coincidence that when the sound people came into every championship club last year, the loudest fans were those at Colchester United, where people stand—there is a totally different atmosphere. When we move to the new ground—the eloquently named Cuckoo Farm—next year, it will be an all-seater ground. Last season, I made a point of going to as many away games as I could—I managed 15, all of which were at all-seater stadiums. The atmosphere at those grounds comes nowhere near to the atmosphere when fans can stand. I have not been to Dagenham and Redbridge, but I appreciate the situation. I shall miss standing at football matches. I also endorse the point that people frequently stand in all-seater stadiums, which I think is unsafe. Another point is that people are built in different sizes, but the seats in a stadium are all the same size. Whereas on the terraces people can do a bit of moving about to be with friends or to go and chat at half time, which is a physical impossibility in an all-seater stadium. The other thing that I found out last year was that the grounds vary in quality, in the size of the seats, in the legroom provided and so on. A situation that could arise—this has not been investigated, but I think that it should be—is deep vein thrombosis. If people are on a coach to an away game for five hours, and then spend two hours in the stadium followed by a five-hour coach trip back, they are crammed in for more hours than they would be on a transatlantic plane, so there are issues about health. Surely we are talking about consumer choice. If clubs think that there is capacity for safe standing areas, perhaps they could have pens, perhaps no more than four or five deep and 20 or 30 yards long. As a consumer who has stood on the terraces for 51 years, I would like to continue to stand on the terraces, because my experience of watching football the length and breadth of the land is that all-seater stadiums are not as good for atmosphere and consumer choice as those where we have the opportunity to stand. I urge the Minister to relax the rigid regulation. When supporters and clubs can come to an arrangement whereby they can have small, secure areas, let them do it. My experience is that that would be a lot safer than some of the all-seater stadiums that I have witnessed.