Public Petitions Committee

Meeting date: Thursday, June 15, 2017

Official Report 599KB pdf

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Continued Petition

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Youth Football (PE1319)

The final item is consideration of PE1319, on improving youth football in Scotland. We are joined this morning by Neil Doncaster, Scottish Professional Football League; and by Andrew McKinlay and Stewart Regan, Scottish Football Association. We are also joined by James Dornan MSP. Welcome to the committee and thank you for attending.

As I am keen to make the most of our time, we will go straight to questions. We have, of course, copies of written submissions from the witnesses and others to inform our questions. At the outset, I say that I am keen to use this morning’s session to assist our progress on the petition, and I remind members that we will debate the petition in the chamber at a future date.

I must also apologise and tell everyone that we are right up against time. We are not able to sit later than 20 to 12, so no matter where we are by then, we will have to stop. A power beyond me has made that determination, but I am sure that we will be able to use this morning’s time productively.

First of all, you have indicated the changes that you will make to remind clubs of their obligation to pay the minimum wage. What sanctions could clubs face if they fail to do so?

Sanctions are very much a matter for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. There is a body of football rules that we and the Scottish FA are responsible for administering and ensuring that clubs adhere to. However, there is also a body of law that applies to all businesses in Scotland and the UK. There are various agencies that are responsible for ensuring compliance with that law, and compliance with the national minimum wage is an issue that HMRC has primacy over and will deal with. Therefore, any sanctions would be very much at HMRC’s behest.

But there is nothing in your rules that makes clear your expectation that the clubs in your organisation must comply with the law.

No—on the contrary, we expect that all our clubs will comply with the law, but it is a matter for the various Government agencies that have primacy in ensuring compliance with the law to investigate and sanction clubs for any apparent breaches.

So it would be acceptable to you to have in your organisation clubs that do not comply with the law, as it is for somebody else to deal with that. From your point of view, there would be no sanction on a club for not complying with the law.

I do not know why you would suggest that. There may well be a sanction, but it would be imposed by HMRC.

I am trying to establish whether, if a club was identified as not paying the minimum wage, you would do anything to deal with the matter. You would not say to the club, “This is unacceptable.”

That is not the case at all. We have a role in adjudicating on all our player contracts where we are asked to adjudicate, and we do that. Where there is a dispute between a club and a player over that player’s contract, we have a role in adjudicating and, if appropriate, ensuring that there is proper payment by the club. Our role is to ensure that players get what they are entitled to under their contract, not to punish under the law, which is clearly, if appropriate, the responsibility of HMRC.

I understand that people pursue individual cases. We will explore the matter further. I suspect that, by the very nature of your business, young people are less likely to complain—

We get requests for adjudication, and we deal with those.

I do not dispute that. I am simply saying that, in a culture in which—as was accepted earlier—it is less likely that people will complain and in which young people may be willing to be exploited, there is a job for professional bodies to do to ensure that those young people are not exploited, even when they might collude in their own exploitation.

I understand that you would support somebody where they made a complaint. However, I wonder whether you recognise that you have a role in addressing the issue of clubs routinely not paying the minimum wage, even where nobody complains about it, and in finding a way to encourage good behaviour.

We encourage good behaviour—that is absolutely the SPFL’s role in this area. We recently invited all professional clubs in Scotland to attend a seminar in which we walked them through the law and discussed how they could ensure compliance. Clubs are keen to comply with the law, as you would expect. There are isolated instances in which that does not happen. Where such instances are brought to our attention, we investigate. Where we are asked to adjudicate on a contract, we do so.

Recently, we received allegations about three of our clubs—Queens Park FC, Dundee FC and Stirling Albion FC—that involved a failure to pay the national minimum wage. We investigated in each of those cases. In the case of Stirling Albion, we understand that full payment has been made, with the help of the Professional Footballers Association Scotland, to the one player for whom there was not compliance. In the case of Dundee, we understand that the club itself instigated a review of its player contracts and has rectified all the instances of default.

Queens Park FC is in a somewhat different position. It is the only amateur club in the 42-club SPFL, and it is fair to say that the standard player contracts that we use give it some issues as an amateur club. We are working with the club to ensure that, where it has been using the contracts incorrectly, it will be fully compliant from this summer. We are also working on a new player contract that is designed specifically for part-time players, which will make it easier for clubs to ensure that they comply with the law in this area. We are currently consulting on the content of that contract.

If it was established that a club routinely, or on more than one occasion, had not been paying the minimum wage, would you see the SPFL as having any role in applying sanctions to that club?

As I have mentioned on numerous occasions, the Government body that is responsible for sanctioning in response to breaches of national minimum wage legislation where they may occur in any business throughout the land is HMRC. We absolutely have a role to play. We have a role in adjudicating disputes between players and clubs, encouraging best practice, encouraging clubs to understand how the law applies and investigating allegations of deficiencies.

10:30  

So, where there is a pattern of poor behaviour, it is not your job to encourage people toward good behaviour, as that is a matter for HMRC and others.

I am not suggesting that there is any pattern or evidence of bad behaviour.

I did not ask you whether you thought that there was evidence of bad behaviour; I am asking whether you would have a role if there were a pattern of bad behaviour. I think that you said that you encourage good behaviour but that you are not in the business of dealing with established patterns of poor behaviour.

Perhaps I can come in here. At no stage has anybody identified a pattern of persistent behaviour in that area. If a club regularly paid below the minimum wage, and it had been challenged for not doing so and the matter had been discussed, yet there were still persistent and knowing breaches of minimum wage legislation, there might well be a disrepute issue. That is a different test but, if there was a disrepute issue, the football authorities would consider it. However, at no stage has there been a pattern of regular breaches by individual clubs. If anybody had any evidence to suggest that any clubs are regularly breaking minimum wage legislation, that would be considered.

The issue of disrepute is a helpful notion to have. As I said earlier—I will bring other people in, too—just because young people and their families allow themselves to be exploited does not mean that they should be.

Changing regulations is one aspect, but there have been concerns about the efforts to change the culture around that issue and about your willingness to consider the issue across the board instead of on a case-by-case basis. Your written submission referred to an adjudication mechanism and confirmed that the focus is on individual cases and on ensuring that payments that are due to players are made. What are you doing to promote that mechanism and to create an environment in which players feel that they are being supported?

It is a governing body’s responsibility to look after the wellbeing of its members—especially, in the current climate, that of its youth members—for the long-term good of the sport. As has already been mentioned, it is hugely unlikely that a young player would make a complaint against the club that they play for, so the clubs trade on their dreams. How do you feel that you support players and look after their wellbeing?

You said that it is hugely unlikely that a player would bring a request for adjudication, but that is not the case. Players bring requests for adjudication, and we have adjudicated on a number of contractual disputes between clubs and players that have been brought by players with the support of PFA Scotland. Where there is a dispute about a contract, we adjudicate; that does not happen very frequently, but it does occur, although not in this area. We do not know why individual players of the likes of Kieran Doran, who we have seen reports of in the press, have chosen to go down the route of talking openly in the press and engaging lawyers, rather than simply coming to us and asking us to adjudicate on their contract. That would be a straightforward thing to do and we encourage any player who feels that they have an issue with their contract to come forward.

I believe that young players in the care of clubs are supported on their journey to what is hopefully a professional career. I encourage all members of the committee to attend academies to see for themselves the work that is done and to ask the young people who are in the care of clubs what they feel about the experience of being in the academy system. I hope that you will find evidence that there is a very positive culture in place. If you have not already visited academies, I urge you to do that.

If you are unaware of why that particular player went to the press instead of you, why have you not just asked him? Is that because—

The player approached lawyers—

Sorry, but—

I am answering your question.

I have not finished my question yet. You seem to say that the players have brought that forward. I am very interested to know which age group that applies to. If I had been involved in the governing body and there had been such an issue, the first thing that I would have done would have been to go to the player and ask him why he went on that route and whether there was anything that I could do to help him.

The player in question approached his own solicitor, who chose to approach us. Clearly, we have a role in adjudicating on any dispute that may arise. What we do not want to do is to prejudge that dispute. If a player chooses to engage external lawyers to pursue a case on his behalf, that is absolutely a matter for him, but it would not then be appropriate to subvert that process and go other than through his lawyer. When we get legal correspondence in, our lawyers respond in kind.

We need to be careful about talking about individual cases where people cannot defend themselves. We have been looking at patterns of concern in youth football, which is perhaps the point that Brian Whittle was getting at.

Good morning. Your submission says that a total of 18,000 registrations are processed in a year and it details a number of types of registration that take place. So that we are clear on numbers, will you tell us how many of those registrations involve any financial aspect with regard to payment of players?

I do not have a breakdown like that. I have here a list of the 18,000 transactions. I am well aware that, in December, I said that there were 18,000 transactions and a question was put as to what they were. If I were to go through the list, a good number of them would have financial matters in them.

When you say a good number, what percentage would you put on that?

Honestly, I would have to get a breakdown.

Is it the majority or the minority?

I genuinely—

What kind of financial matters are you referring to? Are you talking about salaries?

Yes.

So you are talking specifically about player contracts, as opposed to all the other aspects.

Any part of the registration process that involves finance, whether that is salary or contract.

Anything that says that it is around transfer, contract, international clearances or cancellation of temporary transfer—anything that does not say “amateur” on it—could have a financial matter related to it.

But that is not standard. The fact that it could have does not mean that it does.

No—there could be, because some of those points are not related to any financial matter. Some may have finance in them while others do not.

At the earlier meeting, the point was made that you had 18,000 registrations and that it was impossible to place all the details of contracts. Whereas we might think that a wage of £1 a week would be a big red flag, the point that was made was about the volume of transactions involved. I am interested in what proportion of those transactions would have the bit at the end that said what the contract was.

To be fair, if you are trying to identify how many of those contracts have finance in them, to then identify whether we could look at that smaller number of transactions, that is a very difficult point. Even if a player earns £1 a week on his contract, that may not breach the minimum wage legislation, because he may be being paid an appearance fee. He may turn up to play a match and simply have that on his contract, supplemented by an appearance fee. It is very difficult to say that what is on that contract bears any relation to the number of hours that are being played.

With respect, turning up will take more than 10 minutes. Would it have to be less than 10 minutes to apply the £1 per week?

But, in total, fees from an appearance would be greater than the minimum wage for the hours for which that player is involved with the club. So it is very difficult to say—

We really need to make progress. The fundamental point is that it is simply not possible to be employed on a contract for even an hour and to be paid only £1 per week. The arithmetic does not allow it.

What we are saying is that the only way that we will know whether a contract complies with the national minimum wage requirements is to look at how many hours that player has worked over the pay reference period and what their pay is over that period. That pay may be made up of a weekly wage and appearance money, so looking simply at the weekly wage will not tell us the information that we need in order to ascertain whether the national minimum wage legislation is being complied with.

We have to make progress and, as I cannot imagine in what set of circumstances you could be employed and working so little that you still only get £1 a week, regardless of all the other payments that are available—

A player who lives down south and does not train with the club but who simply turns up for a match, and gets an appearance fee if selected, could get total earnings well ahead of the minimum wage, even if it says £1 a week on his contract. That is why it is difficult to draw conclusions. When you say that we should look at the information and deal with things, it is not that simple. We have several thousand transactions and we simply cannot draw the conclusions that you are saying we can draw by following the route that you are suggesting.

We may need to get further information on what appearance money is and what you would get paid for turning up. I find it almost impossible to conceive that you could turn up and get away in time to justify getting paid only £1 a week, but we can explore that further.

With appearance money coming in, that would not be the case. If you were paid, let us say, a £200 appearance fee, and £1 a week, and you play a game, you will be fine with the national minimum wage.

In that case, you would not have any national minimum wage, because a national minimum wage of £1 a week is utterly impossible arithmetically, but if anyone—

You have to know how many hours they are working and what the overall pay was.

They could not work an hour for £1.

We are not talking about simply getting £1. We are talking about getting appearance money and the weekly wage.

It is the total earnings. That is what the minimum wage will look at. It is the total earnings divided by the number of hours that have been worked, so you cannot draw the conclusions that you are drawing simply by looking at that contract figure. We have tried to stress that on several occasions, and you seem to be fixated on the fact that clubs are somehow in breach of the legislation. They may not be. Where they are, and it is brought to our attention, clearly it will be dealt with. HMRC has already followed through on the cases that have been brought to our attention.

It is not that we are fixated. It is that we are trying to understand how the national minimum wage applies uniquely to football so that you can end up with a contract that would not exist in any other form of employment.

I would be interested to know how many contracts you have where somebody is on £1 a week and appearance money.That sounds like a kind of “Roy of the Rovers” scenario where somebody travels up from England and then gets £2,000 for playing for 20 minutes or something. I was disappointed by the very first response, because it seemed to be a continuation of what we heard in December, which was, “This has nothing to do with us. This is HMRC’s business.”

You are responsible for a number of things, and one of them is the reputation of Scottish football. It is wrong for you to have a club paying somebody £1 a week or £10 a week, or anything similar to that, and for you not to be able to hold your hands up and accept that or to say that the first thing you would do is get in there and ensure that, if that club repeated that, there would be sanctions to pay, and that you would want to know why they did it in the first place.

Mr Regan, you said that if there was a culture of such contracts, or a number of such incidents, that would be a matter of disrepute, but surely a £1 a week contract from any club trying to con some young boy into signing a contract is bringing football into disrepute.

No, it is not.

It is not?

You are assuming that the club has done it deliberately. The club may well be ignorant about the type of contract that it has to use, and the training and education that have been put in place through the seminars are designed to address that.

There is a contract and somebody has written it—lawyers or whoever—and in that contract it says £1 a week. The club has a responsibility to know what it is paying that child for, because at the end of the day we are talking about a child. You are saying that that is not the responsibility of the club either. What is its responsibility?

What we have said is that you cannot draw the conclusions that you are drawing simply by looking at the £1 a week figure.

We certainly can in this case.

Well, you have quoted one figure, and that has been dealt with by HMRC. That is one incident.

No, there has been more than one.

We would not assume that because of one incident, which may well have happened as a result of human error, we suddenly leap to disrepute. That is not how it works.

I will ask one question that I think may offer a solution. It leads on from the point that the convener made. Surely the solution is that you have a system where people go through the registers and check to make sure that everything is signed in the appropriate places, that everything is dated and that the names are correct—all that sort of stuff. Surely there is a box there that says “contract”, and they check the contract and if there is anything at all—even taking into account the “Roy of the Rovers” scenario—that does not look as if it is abiding by the law, it is red flagged and you look into it further. That cannot be a difficult thing to do. Why does the SPFL pass on that responsibility to the SFA?

10:45  

I will answer that first off; Neil Doncaster may have additional comments after that. The book that I have with me sets out the Scottish FA rules and articles. Those are the best part of 270 pages. In addition to that book is the law of the land. We have the working time directive and laws on age discrimination, sex discrimination, health and safety and protecting vulnerable groups. If the Scottish FA or the SPFL were to check for compliance with every single rule and law, we would not be able to promote, foster and develop the game of football, which is our primary responsibility. We operate through exception. If matters are brought to our attention we have processes for dealing with them. We deal with exceptions; we do not micromanage. We are not in a position to micromanage every single part of the game.

A contract is a crucial part of the relationship between a club and a player.

You are absolutely right—it is.

You are suggesting that it is just another one of those things that the Government brings in to burden you with.

Not at all. I have never said that. I fully accept that the contract is a key part of the relationship between the employer and the individual. However, on the question of being responsible for checking compliance, as we have already identified to you, it is not simple to draw conclusions from the point that you make.

No, it is not, but issues should be red-flagged and looked at.

Mr Dornan has asked why we have a single registration system that is administered by the Scottish FA rather than a separate system that is also administered by the SPFL. That is simply for efficiency. Why would two separate registration systems be needed? Eligibility to play in our SPFL competitions arises by merit of Scottish FA registration. Surely having one registration system seems more efficient and sensible all round.

Except that you do not know what contracts players are getting.

We do know, when we need to know. When there is an adjudication request, we get hold of a copy of the contract from the Scottish FA and we adjudicate on the dispute. That is what happens.

Good morning, gentlemen. You have indicated that you have provided clubs with guidance on compliance with minimum wage requirements. Does that guidance contain anything about what activities undertaken by a player should be included in any calculation of hours worked? For example, if a player is travelling to an away game, should the time that they spend travelling be included in that calculation?

That matter is dealt with specifically under the new form of part-time contract that we are consulting on.

It is intended that there will be two schedules within that contract that set out what activities are obligatory and what the player has to be paid for as part of their working hours; and what activities may be voluntary, that cannot be demanded of the player and do not have to be paid for. We, and clubs, need to understand what are working hours. On a club-by-club, player-by-player basis that may vary but, ultimately, what is work needs to be well understood and the minimum wage needs to be applied.

Good morning, gentlemen. A commitment that you have made previously was the introduction of a game-time rule, under which a player can leave their club if they have not played in a sufficient number of matches. That rule has been set at 25 per cent. How was that figure reached? Who was involved in discussions in setting that level?

We consulted at the time of the commissioner’s report. We set up a group that consulted across clubs in the game. We also put out the consultation to players in Club Academy Scotland. Based on all the responses, we went back with our response to the commissioner. An aspect of that response was that we should have a game-time rule and it was thought that a 25 per cent level would be appropriate. We will monitor it to see whether it is appropriate, but that is the percentage that we came up with. I am not going to pretend that there was magical science behind it.

In general, the clubs were happy with that.

Yes.

In your submission you outline some changes to be brought about as part of project brave, including the introduction of summer football, which you say

“will necessitate a change to the system of registrations including the age groups for registration.”

You indicate that the detail of the change

“is currently being considered and has still to be finalised.”

As you know, the period of registration for players in the 15 to 17 age group is an issue of concern to a number of people. Is there any flexibility in the work on-going at the moment to look again at the question of what happens to young people who are registered at 15 but who cannot make their own decision about moving on at 16?

That issue will be looked at as part of the on-going work.

Do you accept that there is an issue there? At 16, a player should be able to say, “I’m entitled to move on.”

We have given our reasons in relation to the age groups a few times, in submissions and in response to questions, but those issues need to be looked at as part of project brave.

Your submission refers to the upheaval that could arise if the period of registration was shortened, and expresses concern that that could disrupt family life and education. As I think we have asked you previously, why is it the business of the SFA or the SPFL and not the parents of young players—or young players themselves if they are over 16—to determine what best serves players and their families?

That goes back to the start of our journey with the Public Petitions Committee back in 2010. We have been on that journey for seven years, and the questions that are being asked now bear no relation to the six points that were set out in the petition. In fact, we have not discussed two of those points at all, in any of the times that we have been before the committee. It would be interesting to get the committee’s view on where we are with those points.

On the registration of players, we mentioned at the first meeting we attended that compensation for training is a key reason why clubs continue to run academies. If another club can simply come along and take a player, after several years of training and development, clubs will cease to focus on the development of young players. A registration is a way of managing that.

A registration complies with FIFA guidelines and is operated by most football associations across the world. We have made changes and improvements to the process; for example, a player can leave the club if they do not wish to stay, and they can return to the grass-roots game. That option did not exist before and is one of the improvements that we have put in place as a result of our dialogue with the committee and the petitioners.

We have also introduced the game-time clause, which we have set at 25 per cent. If a player or his parents feel that he is not being treated well by the club and getting game time, he can leave. He has a 14-day window at the end of the season in which to exercise that option.

We have made specific changes to try to address the challenges, but if we were to remove registrations and allow players to be picked up by other clubs after several years, we have to ask ourselves whether that is in the best interests of the development of elite players in Scotland. Although we must consider the rights of children, we must also look at the rights of potential elite performers and whether we are giving them the best possible chance of making it.

The question of the club being able to retain registration, subject to compensation payment being made, has come up before in the committee’s consideration of the petition. I want to establish as clearly as possible the position in that regard. Which FIFA statutes regulate the transfer of players and exactly what do those statutes say about the payment of compensation?

There are two specific areas to focus on, one of which relates to domestic football. Two or three years ago—possibly longer—we agreed on a training matrix in Scotland. Again, that improvement resulted from our dialogue with the committee.

The second area relates to cross-border compensation when a player moves from country to country. Through FIFA, guidelines have been put in place that work across all countries. Depending on the movement of the player, we will operate the appropriate matrix.

You have not answered the question about the payment of compensation according to FIFA. Are there regulatory differences there?

There is a different payment mechanism—maybe Andrew McKinlay can pick up on that. I will try to understand the question, though. Are you asking whether FIFA acknowledges that compensation should be paid if a player moves? If so, the answer is yes, in the same way as domestic compensation is paid if a player moves within Scotland. There are different models, and different sums are involved, but there is a training compensation formula that works for cross-border and domestic.

That was the question. Thank you.

While we are talking about FIFA, I want to ask about the concerns you have expressed to us regarding the implications of external regulation. Both PFA Scotland and FIFPro have indicated that they do not consider that their status in FIFA would be at risk should national legislation regarding child welfare be applied to football. That is quite an important point, compared with your suggestion that if there is some kind of external view on what is happening with the wellbeing of young people in football, it would damage your prospects of staying in FIFA. Do you accept that that suggestion is simply not credible?

We were asked to provide FIFA articles and statutes in relation to the whole topic of Government intervention in football. That is what we have done; we have set out the actual FIFA guidelines. We have given you several examples where FIFA has intervened and suspended members because of Government intervention. Whether FIFA would choose to intervene in the case of any regulation of the Scottish FA by the Scottish Government is a matter for FIFA. We have simply drawn your attention to the relevant articles in the statutes.

But do you accept that the evidence suggests that there is no prospect of FIFA coming in to remove your status on the basis that the Scottish Government has said, “Child protection and wellbeing should be central to what you do and we think that you should have a role in ensuring that clubs are not exploiting young people in relation to the national minimum wage”?

I think that we would identify to FIFA all the changes that we have made as a result of this discussion and the on-going dialogue—whether that is the introduction of a child wellbeing panel, the introduction of a training compensation matrix, changes to our scouting process, the introduction of commitment letters, the renewal of schools football for players who are with an academy, the creation of a child protection and wellbeing department, the reduction of the number of players through project brave, the introduction of a grass-roots 28-day clause or the introduction of the game-time clause—as well as the facilities improvements under point 6 of the original petition, which we have not mentioned for several years.

We would flag up all those changes to FIFA. It is unlikely that FIFA would think that we were in any way breaching any of its regulations. We cannot comment on whether it would choose to suspend us because of Government intervention; that is a matter for FIFA.

But do you accept that both PFA Scotland and FIFPro have said that in their view, such a suspension would not happen because of this kind of intervention—because the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament think that there are child protection and exploitation issues here that we want to be part of a conversation on?

The original characterisation of the situation was that the suggestion by the Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland that there should be external regulation of the wellbeing of young people in particular threatened your membership of FIFA. However, the evidence tells us that such a suspension would not happen.

It is a hypothetical question because we do not know what changes you would seek to impose. Until they are put in place, FIFA is not able to comment. We note that the children’s commissioner has written to FIFA flagging up concerns about the operation of Scottish football and there has been absolutely no response from FIFA—there has been no comment or request for information. On that basis, we assume that FIFA is content with how we are managing the issue in Scottish football, which is no different from how other associations operate.

So we can work on the assumption that it is also hypothetical that FIFA would come in and remove your status on the basis that we think that it is legitimate for Government to look at the whole question of child protection in football—it is equally hypothetical.

We know that FIFA takes a dim view generally of external interference in the affairs of football associations—

Does FIFA take a dim view of the exploitation of young people in relation to the minimum wage?

—and we cannot know what view FIFA would take of any intervention here.

But we can assume that FIFA would take a dim view of an organisation not complying with the law of the land.

As Stewart Regan has just pointed out, I would hope that all the changes that have been delivered by the Scottish football authorities—working with this committee—over the past seven years demonstrate to FIFA, to people within the Scottish Government and to the world generally that Scottish football takes its responsibilities very seriously, that a positive culture exists and that talk of exploitation is simply wide of the mark.

Before I ask my main question, I want to return briefly to the minimum wage question. Is there anything in the registration contract that says that the club will abide by the law and pay the player at least the minimum wage?

Following the discussions with the committee, we recently introduced a change to the registration form whereby clubs have to confirm that they comply with minimum wage legislation.

11:00  

To add to that, the single-player contract that is used by the SPFL and by players and clubs does not, in its current form, specifically mention the national minimum wage, just as it does not specifically mention any other law that may be relevant to the contract. However, in response to the dialogue with the committee and the concern over the issue, the new part-time player contract, which is currently in draft form, will refer specifically to the national minimum wage. That is part of our efforts to ensure that clubs that are trying to comply with national minimum wage legislation are better able to ensure that they do so.

When will the new draft come in?

We hope that it will be in place this summer. It is currently being consulted on; PFA Scotland has a draft copy of it and, as soon as we are in a position to recommend it to our board, it will be approved, we hope, and rolled out for use by clubs.

I have a follow-up to the convener’s question about compensation. What is your opinion on the suggestion by the former Children and Young People’s Commissioner Scotland that compensation is due only at the point at which a player signs their first professional contract, and on how that complies with the regulations?

I think that the commissioner suggested that as an alternative to what we have in place—

What is your view?

What we have in place is the current matrix. Our view is that, if we introduced something similar to what has been suggested, it is likely that the bigger clubs would take a punt and take players from the smaller clubs. There would be no encouragement for them not to do that, and that would then discourage the smaller clubs from having academies. Our view is that the current system is fairer than the alternative that has been suggested.

Is that the general view?

Yes, absolutely. If you look at the role of clubs, you will see that we are all interested, through project brave, in developing home-grown talent that can go on and play for Scotland. One of the recommended ways to do that is through running an academy. If that academy has no protection in place and the bigger clubs from Scotland or elsewhere can simply come in and take the best players, the clubs will just shut those academies down. From a children’s rights perspective, with regard to elite players, we do not think that that is the best solution.

I want to go back to project brave and explore the matrix a wee bit further. You have indicated that the compensation matrix, or the reimbursement of training costs, is to be re-examined as part of project brave. What does that entail? Does it simply involve the levels of compensation, or is it about more than that?

It may not involve the levels of compensation. The matrix is based on the status of the club, and through project brave the status of clubs is likely to—or will—be different, so we will have to change the matrix to deal with that. As part of that change, we should look at the matrix and speak to clubs about what the alternatives might be. We have on-going discussions with clubs about rules and whether there are other ways to do things.

I want to touch briefly on the point that was raised about the minimum wage now being highlighted. Will that now be, as I suggested earlier, one of the areas that has to be checked, given that you have said that the minimum wage will be part of the new arrangements?

You are either genuinely misunderstanding the position or your approach is deliberate, but the fact is that we cannot know from the face of the contract whether it is national minimum wage compliant. It depends on how many hours the player will be working in that pay reference period, and that will be known only to the club and the player.

I am clearly being stupid here, and I apologise for that. I will go back to my original question. If it does not say on the front of the contract that the rate of pay is clearly above the minimum wage, would that raise a red flag that would enable you to say, “Don’t worry about that one,” for such and such a reason? If it is being checked, and there is a red flag against something but you understand that it is secure and safe, and it is working fine—

But what are we checking?

As the convener just said, we are checking that young boys are not being exploited. If on the front of a contract it says that someone will be paid £1 a week, people should be able to say, “What’s this? £1 a week?” and you can say—

If the person is not working in that pay reference period, where is the breach?

If a club ticks a registration form to say that it is complying with minimum wage legislation, which clubs will now have to do, and if it submits a contract that says that it is paying £1 a week, the logical assumption is that there is something other than £1 a week—such as an appearance fee—to take the player’s earnings above the level in the minimum wage legislation. Unless that is flagged by a young person or by an individual, we have to assume that the club is abiding by the law, in the way that we do for the working time directive and age and gender discrimination laws. We do not go to every club and ask, for every employee, “Are you following all the laws?”

Mr Regan, how many times do you think that you have those £1 a week contracts, or whatever it is, with the person being paid by appearance? I suspect that it is a pretty minimal number, and I suspect that it would not take much to check that. You could get in touch with the club and say, “Let me just make sure why this is. Is it because the person is getting appearance fees? Can you give me the details of that contract?” That would not be an onerous task for the SFA or the SPFL.

As we have continually tried to highlight, that does not address the point that you are trying to get to. Where do you draw the line—at £1 a week, £5 a week, £10 a week or £7 a week?

I would draw it at the minimum wage.

The minimum wage is the total earnings and not the figure that is in the contract.

No, it is not. You seem to misunderstand what the minimum wage is.

It is the hours multiplied by the player’s earnings.

What do your hours consist of? If I sign a contract with you, I sign it from, say, 9 o’clock in the morning on a Monday to 5 o’clock on a Friday, and I expect to get X amount of money for that.

It is the hours of regulated work. That includes travelling time, which Maurice Corry talked about, training evenings and match time. All of those things give the number of hours, and the earnings divided by the hours will give you the wage and show you whether it is above the minimum wage that is set in legislation. You are shaking your head, but that is actually the point.

I am trying to be helpful. What I am suggesting would be an easy way out. Somebody could check whether the wage exceeds the minimum wage. If the contract does not have the minimum wage on it, there should be a reference point against which somebody can check to say that it—

But if a club is ticking a form to say that it is abiding by the minimum wage legislation, who are we to assume that it is breaking the law? It is the same in lots of other areas. If that comes to our attention, we deal with it. We cannot go and check every transaction on every contract for every player across every club. We would be operating a bureaucracy, and where would we draw the line? What other legislation are we going to check?

You would be operating a bureaucracy, which is what you are.

Would we check in relation to the working time directive, age discrimination, sex discrimination, health and safety or PVGs?

You have just told us that you are going to have a specific new clause about the minimum wage. You have not told us that you are going to have anything about sex discrimination, race discrimination or anything like that, so you recognise that the minimum wage is an issue. Do not try to lump it in with everything else so that you cannot highlight it in the way that I am asking you to.

We have addressed that point because it came up in the discussions with the committee. As an organisation, we have tried to be helpful, as we have for the past seven years with all the other improvements that we have made, and we have deliberately taken a step to introduce a mechanism so that clubs confirm, on that point, that they are complying with the law. I am not sure that that is anything other than being helpful and positive about the committee’s concerns.

The point that we would make is that you are in a unique position to help encourage the best of behaviour among clubs.

We do that.

We do that.

When you see a £1 a week contract, I would have thought that the next step would be to check whether that player is getting appearance money. I do not know, but I assume that appearance money is in contracts and that it will not be all that common for youngsters to get appearance money.

To the contrary.

So, if you have a series of contracts that say £1 a week, the presumption would be that there is not going to be appearance money, and therefore it would be reasonable for you to check further.

Generally, you would have appearance money in a contract.

You would have?

Yes.

So it would be a simple thing to check.

Check what? The fact is that you do not know whether a contract is minimum wage compliant without knowing how many hours a player has worked in that pay reference period. We can absolutely help and encourage clubs to be compliant; they want to be compliant and we are trying to educate them. However, it is a difficult area, because you need to know how many hours the player is working for. What constitutes work will vary from club to club, and what the players are required to do as opposed to what they might wish to do might be different.

Let us work on the assumption that the vast majority of contracts do not say that players will be paid £1 a week. When you go through the process of registration, you will be able to say, “This one’s fine, this one’s fine—but here’s one that talks about £1 a week. Let’s check whether there’s appearance money in the contract and ask the club what that actually means.” I go back to the point that no matter how little you are working—even if it is a matter of opening your eyes when you arrive at the football stadium—it is virtually impossible to work for a pound’s-worth of national minimum wage.

This is something that we will want to reflect on later, but the question that we put back to you is that, having accepted that there is an issue with the minimum wage, how can you be positively involved in encouraging good behaviour? That is really what we are asking you. We are not asking you to go back and check every single contract, but there are basic questions that you could ask to ensure that people are not trying to avoid the advice that you have been giving them.

Perhaps I can respond to that. We are positively engaged with clubs in encouraging good behaviour and compliance with the law and ensuring that they understand it. It is a difficult area of the law, and where there is a request for adjudication, we will deal with it. However, we cannot be on the ground at the training grounds, monitoring how many hours individuals work.

Of course you cannot, but you have a role in encouraging good behaviour.

And we fulfil that role.

I will repeat this again so that we understand the context around all these issues: there are young people and families who are willing to be exploited, and in my view, part of your job is to ensure that that is not permitted and to discourage people from trading on other people’s dreams.

I think that we do that.

But that is the evidence that has been given to this committee and which we have heard from beyond.

It has been suggested that other associations somehow monitor the contracts and registrations that are put in front of them in this way, but we do not believe that to be the case. Andrew McKinlay has certainly had conversations with the Football Association about this.

It was suggested that the FA did this but that is not my understanding from the conversation that I had with a senior person at that organisation. To be fair, it is hardly a big deal for the association at the top of its game, but it does not do it.

So exploitation of young people must be part of the culture of football.

This was to do with the specific suggestion that if the FA was doing this sort of thing we should be doing it, too. I have spoken to the FA, and that is not our understanding.

In its letter to the committee, real grass roots stated that the FA was doing this, and it asked why, if that was the case, we were not doing it, too. Our information is that the FA is not doing this, and it is not something that is monitored in the way that was suggested.

This could go on for some time, but it feels to me that the issue is not all that difficult. You are in a privileged position to improve clubs’ behaviour, which has been identified as being pretty unacceptable in some places.

Brian Whittle will ask a couple of final questions, after which we will wind this up.

Just for clarification, I point out that salaries and bonuses are two different things. Minimum wage is calculated on the salary that you are paid, not the bonus that you might get.

It is not a bonus.

It is a playing bonus.

It is not a bonus.

Yes, it is. Under the law—

They are appearance fees, which are different from bonuses. You get a bonus if you win something, but you get appearance fees if you play in the team’s starting 11.

Trust me on this: I come from sport, I have worked with an awful lot of national governing bodies and I have been in a sales environment. Bonuses are not counted within salary.

It is not a bonus. You are misunderstanding the point—a bonus is something that is in addition to your salary. Appearance fees are part of your earnings, because they are paid if you play on the team.

If you play. That is why they are not counted in salaries.

However, my point is, having worked with many national governing bodies, I believe that the wellbeing and protection of children and young people in the sport and therefore the future of the sport are always paramount. Gentlemen, given your responses so far, I am concerned that that is not the focus of the SFA or the SPFL. What I am looking for is some recognition of the need for a culture change. I totally understand that you are working in a professional environment, but I am looking for reassurance that you are looking after the wellbeing of children and child protection, especially with regard to PVG checks. That situation is not good, either in football or in coaching, and such checks do not even need to be carried out on agents or referees. These are the things on which I am looking for some indication from you.

11:15  

Earlier in this discussion and earlier in this evidence session, I identified 10 fundamental improvements that we have made for the benefit of children in football as a result of on-going dialogue, despite the fact that the original petition and what we are now talking about are two completely separate things. We have moved on. Over the past seven years, the committee has brought more and more and more topics to the table. We have demonstrated in all those cases that we are prepared to make changes and improvements, and we have done that.

I say again that we are interested in young people’s rights, and the changes that we have made demonstrate that. At some point, there has to be an acknowledgement that we have made those changes, rather than our continually being criticised for doing things that you feel are not looking after the best interests of children. Of course we are interested in that.

You mentioned intermediaries. They are not covered under the current PVG scheme. We are aware that Disclosure Scotland is looking at that, and if it includes intermediaries, we will fully support that. We have said that in a seminar involving ministers and Disclosure Scotland. Of course we would do whatever we could to make that happen.

All that I am saying to you, sir, is that, in the responses that have come to me, looking after the children and their wellbeing is not what has come through. That is really all that I am concerned about, and that is what I am asking you for.

What do you base that judgment on?

You hardly talk about it unless we prod you with a stick. It has always been about procedure. All that I am concerned about is the wellbeing—

You have asked about procedure, so we have given answers on that.

I have asked only about the wellbeing of children.

I think your criticism is utterly unfair and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the good work that is going on in Scottish football and in the clubs. I am very disappointed that someone from a sporting background, such as you, should wish to try to criticise all that good work.

I never criticised all that good work. I criticised you.

In seven years, we have had a single visit from a representative of the committee. That was the children’s commissioner attending one academy for one visit, and we got absolutely no feedback from that visit.

It would be very helpful—and the offer is open again—if the committee came to the academies to talk to the families, the children and the clubs and actually heard from them before you arrive at your conclusions, because there is a lot of good work going on in our clubs.

That is certainly one of the things that we will want to do. I very much hear what you are saying about having a proper understanding of what is happening.

I will ask one last question and then we will pull this together. What support has been put in place to assist non-professional clubs to accommodate players who come out of the club academy system into youth and other recreational football? I am thinking about the journey back, where there may be a sense that players have not made it. If you are reducing the numbers, how will you deal with that transition? How will you support clubs that might want to pick those young people up again?

I have heard some anecdotal evidence that, when young people are picked up by clubs and they, for want of a better word, fail or do not make it, they are then lost to the sport all together. In terms of wellbeing and health, that would be a concern.

Again, you are speculating on what may be an issue. We have no evidence and there are no instances to our knowledge of anyone flagging a concern to us that they have somehow been lost to the game of football.

We have listened to the petitioners and to the committee, and one of the fundamental recommendations of project brave is that we reduce the number of players in the system by reducing the number of centrally funded academies. Where elite academy status is not achieved, clubs may choose to continue to run a youth programme and fund it of their own volition. In that case, those players will not come out of the system. We are speculating on how and when players will come back to the grass-roots level.

On specific initiatives, I can think of one. PFA Scotland runs trial events for players who are released from clubs to try to identify opportunities for them going forward. We have taken in former players for internships, which is another example of us trying to help, and modern apprenticeship programmes are run in conjunction with clubs, private providers and local colleges. Again, some of these things would come out if you were able to visit the academies and see the work that is going on.

My question was not meant to be a harsh one, because I recognise that there is a tension between, on one hand, the needs of elite young players, the football system and the ability of Scottish football to improve and, on the other, the experience of young people who do not make it. I was just asking how we deal with that tension in the system between the aim of getting young people active and involved in football and that of producing elite sportspeople, which is a challenge in any sport. It would be interesting to find out more about some of the things that you have mentioned at a later stage.

Do members have any final questions?

Gentlemen, do you have any idea of the average number of hours per month for which a young player on the £1 contract works, excluding appearance time?

No.

Would it not be worth having a look at that?

As we said earlier, we have thousands of transactions. Without understanding the hours that are involved in every case, we are not able to provide that information. We have asked clubs to comply with the minimum wage legislation. Going into football clubs and looking for shadows that might not be there is not a good use of football’s time.

Given that we are considering the petition, would it not be a good idea for you to come up with that information? I am just asking for an average; I am not asking for detailed information. Could each club not be asked for how long, on average, a young player—

There is no average. What work, if any, a player does for their club will vary from week to week.

There will still be an average.

That information will be known only to the club and the player. It is necessary to be at the training ground to know that. Unless we install an SFA or an SPFL team at the training ground and at the stadium to monitor for how many hours an individual player is working, we cannot know that.

It would be in your interests to ask clubs that question.

Are you suggesting that we should put people into every club in Scotland to identify that? What are you suggesting that we do?

I am not suggesting that. You say that you are taking a lot of interest in what the clubs are doing. That is fine, but if I were in your position, I would want to ask the clubs—to make sure that they are not seen to be paying less than the minimum wage—for how many hours a week, on average, the kids we are talking about are on the field, excluding the appearance time that you mentioned. That is not difficult to calculate.

It is not difficult to calculate, as long as you are there, seeing how many hours a player is putting in.

I am asking you just to ask the clubs.

We are encouraging and helping the clubs to be compliant, and we are educating them about the law, but it would be wrong to usurp the authority of HMRC as the primary authority in this area.

Would it not be sensible for you guys to have that basic information available to you so that you can answer that question?

It is impossible to know how many hours a week a player is working for. That can only be known by the player and the club.

Unless I am misunderstanding your explanation of your understanding of the minimum wage, it seems to me that the children in question are being signed up on zero-hours contracts. You say that if they do not play, they do not get paid—they get an appearance fee.

I am not sure about your reference to children. We are talking about professional football players.

Okay, but they are young people or children.

There is a misunderstanding of the difference between a registration and a contract that has pervaded much of the discussion that we have had over the past seven years. A registration will apply to all players who are registered with the Scottish FA, whatever their age and regardless of whether they are professional or amateur.

In the case of the SPFL, a contract will be a professional contract; sometimes it will be for a full-time player, and sometimes it will be for a part-time player. It is clear that the minimum wage legislation will apply only to professional players, because there is no payment for work for an amateur player. Our focus is on ensuring that our member clubs are abiding by the law in that and other areas, and we will assist them to do so.

Earlier, I asked how many of the registrations mention financial payments and you could not tell me. I am struggling to understand the whole system. Earlier, you said that some payment is mentioned when players register, but now you are saying that that is not the case. Am I correct about that?

I am not sure that I understand the question. Andrew McKinlay has given evidence that about 18,000 separate transactions involving the Scottish FA registration department are processed a year. Clearly, a large number of those will have a financial element to them. A number of those will be purely amateur related, where there is unlikely to be any financial information, but anything to do with a professional player will have a financial element.

Yes, I understand that.

Your expectation would be that if a young person is on a contract of £1 a week, that would in effect be a zero-hours contract and that they would get paid for the hours that they work.

I am sorry, but I am not going to get into generalisations about what is going on. Ultimately, there is the law of the land on the national minimum wage. We are doing our utmost to ensure that clubs have the information available to them to understand what the law is and how it applies in the professional football sphere. We have delivered out a seminar to which all professional football clubs were invited. We will continue that education process. We are amending the professional contract that we give to clubs to use, so that we have one that is specifically for part-time players. As it is drafted, that part-time contract makes specific reference to the national minimum wage; it also includes individual schedules that can be completed by the club and the player to ensure that there is a complete understanding of what is work and must be paid for and what is not work—that is, other activity that will not be paid for. That must be agreed between the club and the player. That is what appears at the Scottish FA as part of our registration process.

You have talked about the petition growing legs. We could have a whole argument about what is and what is not work and what a player is obliged to do at a football club that they do not get paid for but if they do not do it they will not get work or a game. The whole thing is—

If you are obliged to do it, then it is work.

That is, in itself, a useful flag to the clubs regarding some of the issues that we have picked up.

Convener, your point relates to the earlier comment about whether someone is getting paid a weekly wage of £1, £5 or £10 or whatever the amount may be. Someone who is coming in every day and training hard but not getting game time might be getting only £1 a week.

That should not be the case. If they are being obliged to—

But that is—

Please let me answer your question. If they are being obliged to train and are called up and obliged to play in a game, that would be work and they should be paid at least the national minimum wage for that work.

I am making the point that they might not get called up to play a game. Like many other children or young people, they are at a club, training hard, but they may not get a game.

If they are obliged to work in that week, whether it is training or any other work that they are required to do, they should be paid the national minimum wage for that work, irrespective of whether they play at the weekend.

That was the point that I was trying to make earlier.

We have just about run out of time. I want to deal with the point that the petition has been open for a long time. The committee has looked at not holding on to petitions for too long. We do not necessarily want to keep them open, but as long as there are issues material to the subject, it is legitimate for us to look at them.

I hear what has been said about the original petition and how it has grown arms and legs. I suspect that it has grown arms and legs because issues are emerging regarding a sport that we all care deeply about and the way in which young people, who also care deeply about that sport, are maybe ending up feeling as though they have not been treated well. Those are powerful reasons for our including the Children and Young People’s Commissioner for Scotland’s intervention.

I recognise that there has been movement and progress by you. That in itself tells us that there have been issues to address. We are keen to take up your invitation to visit academies and that can be done as soon as it suits you. We have a shared interest in ensuring that young people are not exploited, that child protection is in place and that we are supporting the sport.

Our intention is to draft a report on the petition. We also hope to have a debate in the chamber. You will know from the petitions process that it is possible for us to close this petition and for a new petition to be lodged on some other issues that were not immediately relevant at the point that the initial petition was submitted.

My sense is that everyone in this room wants to ensure that we develop the elite sportspeople in football, but we must not do it on the back of a football culture in which young people and their families will accept things that they ought not to be encouraged to accept. I think that there is evidence of that and we are interested in your role in discouraging people from being encouraged to do things against their own interests.

I hope that we can agree to get the academy visits up and running and that there will be a debate in the chamber. If there are further points that you want to make as a consequence of today’s discussions, we would be more than happy to hear from you. We recognise that you have already submitted quite a lot of evidence to us. Are there any final comments?

11:30  

I would like to make a couple of points. First, I do not think that we should forget the progress that we are making within Scottish football at an elite level. Our under-17s are currently ranked sixth in Europe and have played in four successive European finals tournaments. Our under-19 women’s team has qualified for European finals; our women’s A squad has qualified for its first ever A squad international tournament in Holland later this summer; and our under-21s have just beaten Brazil for the first time in a competitive match. We are making significant progress and it is a result of our collective investment of time into Scottish football at the elite end.

There were two references in the original petition that we have not talked about for several years. One was about increasing the education target from two hours of physical activity a week to four hours. That would be helpful, because that is really important to Scottish football, to hear what progress the committee has made in that area and where changes have been made.

The final point in the original petition talked about the introduction of artificial surfaces across Scottish football for the benefit of player development. We have made significant progress in that area, thanks to the investment of cashback for communities funding and Scottish Government support for the development of Oriam—the national performance centre in Edinburgh.

I think that it is worth acknowledging the progress that has been made in that area, as well as your focus on some of the areas where you have concerns.

We recognise the progress in Scottish football, even though it did not particularly feel like that last week. However, we have seen that there are changes and we would support those.

There is an opportunity to test what the Scottish Government is doing during the debate in the chamber and we will make sure that those questions are asked—certainly, I will make sure that those questions are asked. We will get a response from the Government because the debate itself affords the opportunity for the Scottish Government to lay out what it is doing in relation to the petition and more generally on Scottish football.

On the question of artificial surfaces, we can look at that further. Certainly, the debate on the petition will allow for an opportunity to get a sense of how much progress has been made and what still needs to be addressed both in terms of the wellbeing of young people and sustaining the sport in Scotland.

I recognise the stresses between elite and grass-roots sport. It is strange for me to be on the other side of that argument; I am usually defending elite sport.

As regards the gentlemen’s earlier points, in drafting the report, it would be helpful if we could come to some conclusions about what we think from the discussions that we have had and put forward some ideas to the boards. I recognise that we get heated about this issue quite a lot—I am quite passionate about it, as you probably noticed—but it is incumbent upon us to put forward some ideas as well.

That would certainly be the intention—once we have had the committee debate and heard from the Scottish Government, it will be possible for us to reflect on the petition, produce a report on it and decide what to do with it.

I understand that the debate will not be until after the summer recess. We did not want to squeeze it in at the end of a crowded business period in the chamber. We will make sure that witnesses have plenty of notice about the debate. I thank the witnesses for their attendance and I close the meeting.

Meeting closed at 11:34.