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Christmas Adjournment

My hon. Friend—not for the first time—makes the important point that the commission is not accountable, and it is about time it was. My final point is a bit of sour grapes, from my point of view, and concerns the England 2018 world cup bid. My city enthusiastically got behind the campaign and supported it to such an extent that we set up a team and invested close to £250,000. But when it came to the crunch—make-your-mind-up time—the appalling behaviour of FIFA, the Football Association and, to a lesser extent, the Government persuaded the city council not to pursue its bid to be a host city. I was disappointed, yet I too voted to abandon the bid. We would have ended up needing an on-paper potential outlay of £24 million, perhaps more, with little or no evidence that any of the return on it would come back to us. Even before we could be selected, we were asked to sign a contract on 26 November that suggested that we would have to pay another £250,000 to the FA for its marketing bid. Members will have seen some of the FA's expenditure, such as buying expensive luggage and other gifts to bribe people to vote for us. We were also told that we would have to provide the finance for one person to spend 36 days in South Africa as an active part of the campaign team. We were told that if we were successful, we would be expected to do an awful lot of things, including guaranteeing a stadium for the games to be played in. The football club in Portsmouth desperately needs a new stadium, but it could not give a cast-iron assurance. The city council was told that if it wanted to make this bid, it had to guarantee the stadium or it would have to compensate FIFA for another city's having to take on the responsibilities that Portsmouth could not. We were already being told that if we had a new stadium in Portsmouth, built by the club, we would have to put £6 million of council tax payers' money into it to increase its capacity to meet FIFA's standards, with no guarantee that we would get any gain, or even any kudos, from it. We were told that we would have to ban all existing advertising, for the duration of the competition, for 1 km around the stadium and 1 km around the fans area. We would have to pay compensation to everybody who now displays adverts in those areas. No one within that zone would have been allowed to sell food or beverages, either, because FIFA had made its own arrangements for food and beverage deals around the ground. We were originally told that if we signed that contract we could get between 10 and 15 per cent. of the gate receipts of all the 64 games that would be played in England during the world cup competition. Then we were told, "No, we've changed our minds. You'll get between 10 and 15 per cent. of the receipts that your ground gets for games played there." Then that changed too, and we were told, "No, you'll get whatever they choose to pay you after they've taken out all their costs, because in effect, FIFA is hiring the ground." It was a complete and utter fiasco. The FA wrote to the city council on 18 November, giving even more conditions. We were advised by lawyers that it would be helpful if we put money aside for a judicial review of the legality of signing such a one-sided contract. When we sought the Government's assistance and asked them to step in on behalf of all 16 local authorities that were bidding at that stage, they turned their back on us. They said, "It's down to you, but be careful what you sign." I hope that the 2018 World cup bid is a success for the UK, but for local authorities it could be one of the biggest financial disasters ever to befall them. The city of Portsmouth made a wise decision to get out before we were too far committed. It is a sad reflection on FIFA, the FA and the Government that they treat our national game in such a disrespectful way—and FIFA in particular have a lot of questions to answer.