Football Clubs
We move now to members' business. I ask those who are leaving the chamber to do so quickly and, more important, quietly.
The final item of business today is the members' business debate on motion S1M-153, in the name of Donald Gorrie. This debate will be concluded after 30 minutes without any question being put. Those who wish to speak in the debate should press the request-to-speak button as soon as possible. Again, I ask members to leave as quietly as possible.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament notes the financial difficulties faced by some clubs in the Scottish Football Leagues and supports the clubs having a greater role in youth and community development.
I will start with three concessions: first, many members know a lot more about football than I do; secondly, the Executive has made a start in one or two of the areas that we will discuss; thirdly, Clydebank did better against Hamilton Academical than we did. However, I hope that when people have got their one-liners out of their systems, we can have a profitable debate on the subject.
I was a prime sufferer from the excellent Hamilton Accies campaign in the Hamilton South by-election. [Laughter.] I am in a good position, therefore, to pay tribute to its excellent campaign. It hit on and harnessed the widespread rage in the community about the fact that its club had been stolen. It is a serious criticism of our society that, if a fan nicked £1,000 from the gate money, he would go to jail, whereas the owners of Hamilton Academical sold the ground for several million pounds and promised to build a new stadium, but many years later there still is no stadium and they are sitting on their ill-gotten millions. That is all legal, apparently, so we need to examine the system.
Hamilton provides only the most striking example of the problems that face many football clubs in Scotland. Scottish football in general is in a bad way. Our national team has problems against the Faeroes and Estonia. When Rangers play Celtic, there are rarely as many as five native Scottish players on the park at any time.
Apart from Rangers and Celtic, almost every Scottish professional football club is having or has recently had major problems over finance or its ground. Clubs have suffered from many recent changes. The Bosman ruling has prevented them from selling good players every now and then to keep their finances going. The allocation of money from television rights is now less favourable to small clubs than it once was. Clubs are under pressure to modernise their grounds, but the money available in Scotland from the Football Trust has dwindled from £40 million to £6 million because of the impact of the lottery on the pools. Money from the lottery has also been cut. Clubs cannot survive without large private investors. Some are excellent, public-spirited people who do a great job for the community, but others are just asset strippers.
What are we to do? The Executive and the Parliament cannot interfere directly in the running of legitimate commercial organisations, but we can help and influence them and their local communities. Although my motion concentrates on youth, I hope that later speakers will address other issues.
I want to make three specific suggestions. First, those clubs that have a good youth development programme, for both players and spectators, should be rewarded with a discount on their rates. Already in many parts of the country other sports clubs that do not have bars receive a discount. Football clubs with a good youth programme could be treated in the same way.
Secondly, the Executive has started to encourage sport in schools. The football clubs could be tied in much more closely with that programme. Professionals could help to coach the kids and assist coaches in developing teams at all ages. The clubs could play an important part in that existing scheme and benefit from it.
Thirdly, we have to be bolder. Setting aside 0.2 per cent of the health, police and social work budgets would produce a fund of £10 million. If that money were spent on youth work and sport, it could make a huge difference. We would have a much healthier community, fewer young people would get into trouble with the police and young people would be able to enjoy themselves constructively. We ought to develop the preventive medicine argument—more investment in sport and youth will benefit the country and pay for itself.
We can develop a fine network of football teams, of all ages and both sexes, sustained by links with local professional teams. That could be copied in other sports. This Parliament has a great opportunity to air ideas and urge the Executive to take bolder steps. Let us have a constructive debate on how to start a revival in Scottish football.
Unusually for a debate at this time, a large number of members wish to take part. It may not be possible for all to participate, but if
speakers will be aware that many members wish to make contributions, that will help.
Looking round, I am minded to ask the Procedures Committee to come up with a policy on the wearing of colours in the chamber. However, that may just be my being sad—I am a Partick Thistle supporter.
Thank you, fellow Jags supporter. We should all welcome youth and community sport development, especially when it involves young children in the league football clubs, with their connotations of prestige. However, we must approach such development as part of a strategic package. Today's motion mentions only the Scottish football leagues.
If we look abroad, especially to Norway and Sweden, we can find wonderful examples of indoor community football facilities, which are owned by the communities and have played a major role in enabling those countries to flourish as footballing nations. We need indoor football facilities in Scotland—we all had to walk across here in the rain this evening.
The Parliament must do more than note the current financial difficulties faced by our smaller clubs. We must also investigate how the situation at the national stadium at Hampden arose. In August, the Sunday Herald reported that the lottery sports fund had been slashed by a third and that just £7 million would be allocated for all the capital projects in Scotland. Could that sum be anywhere near the amount that it is alleged in the lobbygate transcript the Government pledged following a meeting organised by Beattie Media between Sam Galbraith and the Scottish Premier League at a Rangers game?
Given how long I have waited for answers on Hampden, I wonder how long it will be before we get answers on those current financial problems. We must ensure that our young footballers have access to suitable facilities in their communities and that such access is not provided at the whim of lobbyists.
I start by declaring an interest. I am in the slightly odd position of being a long-time Kilmarnock supporter who now represents part of Ayr and who supports Ayr United's plans to build a new stadium. I wanted to get that in before Phil Gallie does.
I do not want to talk about Kilmarnock and whether the club can repeat its famous escape-to
victory routine tomorrow night when it takes on Kaiserslautern. I am thinking back to many years ago when a famous Killie team came back from being 3-0 down against Eintracht Frankfurt to win 5-4.
I want to focus on one aspect of the debate—the financial position of many of the smaller Scottish football clubs. I also want to draw members' attention to a Co-operative party pamphlet, which I have passed to the minister, entitled, "New mutualism—Golden Goal". The publication examines in detail ways in which football clubs can genuinely be owned by their supporters and ways in which supporters can have a greater influence on the running of clubs. The ideas may be of interest not only to Hamilton Accies supporters, but to other clubs.
I want to spend a couple of minutes on the example of Barcelona, although I recognise that it is not often that Barça and Hamilton are talked about in the same context. FC Barcelona is, in effect, a mutual. It is owned and run by its members, who currently number in excess of 100,000. According to the club's statutes, it exists for the pursuit of sporting excellence. It can be dissolved only on the approval of the general assembly of its members. If that happened, the unmovable assets—the ground and so on—would be transferred to the local council, on whose ground the premises are located, and the movable assets would be donated to the Catalan Government after payment of the club's debts. That is an interesting thought.
The club is run by a body that is elected for a five-year term. Annual reports must be submitted to the general assembly of members of supporters, which—interestingly—also fixes entrance and subscription fees and must approve various other matters, such as television and media arrangements.
An alternative outlined in the pamphlet is the concept of supporters trusts. Northampton Town has used the model successfully in the English league—not something that I often cite. The advantage is that dividends are not paid out to individual shareholders, but reinvested in the club. The club has taken an active part in the campaign to kick racism out of football and was the first league football club to adopt an equal opportunities policy. The club operates a football- in-the community scheme, which has taken the lead in organising league football at an English national level for players with learning disabilities.
I am not suggesting that all clubs in Scotland will want to adopt completely the ideas contained in the pamphlet, but there are a number of lessons that are worth learning. If our goal is to develop football as an important part of our social, cultural and sporting life and to develop the links between
clubs and communities, we must remember that the supporters—the people who pay week in, week out to see the clubs play—are the clubs' lifeblood and should have a greater say in their running.
Community involvement in football has the potential to play a part in our work to combat social exclusion. Community ownership might be a way of ensuring community involvement. I look forward to further debate on this matter and to a win for Kilmarnock tomorrow.
I thank Mr Gorrie for giving me this opportunity to speak on this subject. I apologise in advance if I have offended anybody by wearing my favours. A number of other members and I thought that we might bring some colour to a normally sober occasion.
I am conscious that time is, as always, at a premium, but I want to touch on a number of issues. First, however, I declare my interest as chairman of the Hibernian Football Club Shareholders Association. I am also vice-chairman of Hands on Hibs, a supporters body that was set up to campaign for the financial restructuring of the club with the particular aim of attracting new capital to deal with the debts that have been run up over the years.
Hibs is not—this season at least—considered a member of the lower leagues, but it is worth noting that, in the past two years, it has run up debts of some £3 million. The club has made a loss in six of the past nine years. It is very difficult for a club of that size to recover from having had debts for two years, never mind the cumulative debt. Even if the team was to do particularly well and, for example, win the Scottish cup as Hearts did a season ago, that would not be a guarantee of financial success.
Hearts, too, has a large debt even though it can welcome investment from the Scottish Media Group plc. Even clubs that do well in the Scottish league system find it difficult to get by, with the exception of the old firm.
In a recent survey, Greenock Morton was found to be the only club out of 30 in the lower leagues that has a net asset value. From that position, it is trying to rebuild its stadium so that, if it can get into the Scottish Premier League, it will be able to comply with the league's rules. A club such as that faces great difficulties.
A team in the English third division receives £250,000 every year through television rights. Clubs know in advance they will get that money and can budget accordingly. Scottish clubs, by comparison, have no certainty of money coming in, which has been a great disadvantage to them.
Foreign players have been introduced at all levels, particularly in the premier league. It used to be only the old firm that had foreign players, but they are now in teams throughout the premier league. That ensures that money from transfers to Scottish teams does not trickle down—money is not transferring from the larger clubs to the smaller clubs. That is creating financial difficulties.
There is a growing gulf between not only the premier league and the lower leagues, but the old firm and the other premier league teams. It is difficult to see how that can be resolved without an overall review by the leagues, not just in Scotland but throughout Europe. We must allow greater openness in markets so that teams can start earning money from television rights and so that those rights can pass down through the leagues, which will also allow teams to aspire to move up through the leagues. I would argue that the Scottish league uses restrictive practices.
Some members may want to cast their minds back to the time when Cowdenbeath won promotion for the first time in its history. What did it do? It sacked its manager.
There is no doubt that a number of Scottish teams are happy to lie in the lower leagues. We must encourage them to move up and allow those that do not try to move up to move down. Similarly, we must allow clubs that are outside the Scottish league to aspire to be better and to move into the league. There are many teams that draw larger crowds and play more attractive football than teams in the Scottish leagues do—let them move into the Scottish leagues.
In closing, I say that, as Donald pointed out, youth programmes are important—they will be the salvation of teams. It is also important for local authorities to examine the difficulties that they can create with planning consents and for leagues to investigate issues such as how many times teams play each other. We should have an open pyramid structure in Scotland so that teams from the bottom can move up, as English teams such as Wimbledon and Watford have done. Aspirational teams will move up and people will invest in them.
Any member who speaks in this debate will have a passion for football—I certainly have such a passion. I follow Dunfermline Athletic Football Club and, although we might not be in the premier league at the moment, I hope we will be there next season.
One of the most important issues affecting
football in Scotland is youth development. Unless we get that right, the game will go spiralling down. It is all very well for the Rangers and Celtics of this world to dip their hands into their transfer bags, pull out their money and buy a few players, but that ain't gonna happen with provincial clubs as it used to, so it is imperative that our smaller clubs find talent and hone the skills of local youngsters. Clubs are beginning to do that in a serious and meaningful way.
Will the member give way?
Very briefly.
Does Mr Crawford agree that the role of schools football is important to a youth policy? Unfortunately, schools football has never fully recovered from the major teachers' dispute during the lifetime of the previous Tory Government. Will Bruce join me in hoping that there will be a fair and early end to the current teachers' dispute and that the committee that has been set up by the Scottish Executive to examine the conditions and wages of teachers will also investigate this important matter to ensure that teachers get a fair remuneration or time off in lieu if they give their services to the development of football and other sports?
Dennis's point is entirely fair. The previous dispute destroyed much of the national grass-roots work on football and, unfortunately, it has never recovered.
Donald's idea that we should top-slice areas such as social work and police in local government is frankly nonsensical and will never work. Football will never be a winner when it competes for resources with tourism, the voluntary sector and theatres. If we are to help Scottish football, we will need to find ways of taking money straight out of the Scottish block.
It is vital that provincial clubs are helped in the way that they are in Holland and Norway. Although Norway is a similar size to Scotland and has almost the same weather, it has 11 indoor football pitches while we have none. That tells a tale. We need facilities to help our local people and our young people to grow their talent locally and the country needs such facilities to produce a national team of which the fans can be proud.
Perhaps we could help the smaller clubs not by top-slicing local government but by reviewing the rates that are paid on football stadiums and by examining the high cost of policing football matches. Money sloshing around in FIFA and the Scottish Football Association should be invested in the game in a real and meaningful way.
Sitting at East End Park on a Saturday afternoon, I sometimes think about the management's problem with training youngsters on its books. Its job would be impossible without the help and understanding of the naval base at Rosyth. Training facilities are required for a minimum of 80 youngsters, who make up teams of 13, 14, 15, and 16-year-olds. That difficult job is made more difficult when we add two regional league teams, the reserves and the first team. We can see where headaches multiply for provincial clubs in Scotland.
The only way we will do it is by opening up the SFA and FIFA coffers to enable the Executive to look more imaginatively at not just revenue funding, but how the lottery and sportscotland can help release the real vitality in the many youth football teams throughout the country that never seem to make it to the senior grades. Anyone here who supports Ayr United, Dunfermline Athletic beat them 2-1 on Saturday.
On a point of order—
I hope that it is a genuine point of order.
It is a genuine and serious point of order. This is the first occasion on which such a debate in the chamber has attracted a number of members who wish to speak and there has not been time for them to do so. With the agreement of members, can the debate be extended? It is an important debate and I suggest that it is extended for a further 20 minutes.
The Presiding Officer made a ruling on that last week in a previous members' debate. It was agreed that that would not be allowed in future. The extension of the debate on domestic violence was considered to be a one-off. I call Rhona Brankin to close what has been a very good debate. Can Ms Brankin have the lectern, please.
Shall I start while I am waiting?
On a point of order, are you extending the debate?
No, the minister is now winding up.
Thank you. I am afraid that I do not have a scarf that represents all the junior football teams in Midlothian.
I am delighted to have been given the opportunity to wind up a rather short but useful debate on football. It has been a good kick-off on the subject. I hope that we can debate the matter further because that is important in terms of developing football—which we concentrated on
today—and sport in general, as a means of rebuilding communities. I was delighted to be able to open some marvellous new synthetic pitches in Easterhouse recently. Football—and sport in general—are seen as playing an important part in urban regeneration.
I am well aware of the financial difficulties that a number of football clubs in Scotland face. Some of the difficulties are due in part to the requirements to carry out the essential safety works recommended by Lord Justice Taylor following the Hillsborough stadium disaster. Since 1990, the Football Trust has provided more than £168 million of grant aid for Taylor-related works throughout the UK, £39 million of which has been allocated to Scotland. If we take other related programmes into account, the total grant aid made available by the Football Trust for professional football clubs in Scotland is approximately £59 million.
I wrote to the minister on 3 September, having had representations on the issue of the Football Trust in London about the weighting mechanism that still works to the advantage of premier league teams and to the disadvantage of first and second division teams.
I received representations from a number of Falkirk Football Club fans about the weighting mechanism that works against clubs such as Falkirk, which is thinking about building a new stadium. Can the minister tell me when she will respond to my letter, which she received more than 23 days ago, on this important issue—if she gives it such importance?
Yes, I do attach importance to it and I shall find out when we will respond to that letter when I return to Victoria Quay. I will respond to it at an early stage. I thank Mr Matheson for raising that matter.
Clubs in Scotland have had more than nine years to carry out any safety works or to relocate and the Taylor changes and developments in Scotland have been largely completed.
I take it that the minister supports the Taylor report. One of its recommendations was that landlocked town-centre stadiums should be moved out into greenfield sites. Ayr United is one such case. The Scottish Executive has called in that planning application, after it had been unanimously approved by the local authority. Will the minister give the matter her best attention and see what she can do to give Ayr United's stadium consent?
Mr Gallie can rest assured that the Scottish Executive will give the matter its best consideration.
The football authorities in England are contributing to outstanding works, but the football authorities in Scotland are not contributing. The Football Trust has agreed with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport that future income resulting from the reduction in pools betting duty should be allocated towards grass-roots schemes in England and Wales. The money will be allocated on a per capita basis and 8.9 per cent will be available to Scotland. The Football Trust is currently considering projects of a similar nature in Scotland, which will include help for the development of soccer academies. We believe that although it is important to put money in at the level of the elite, we must also invest in grass- roots football.
Sportscotland has made awards for safety- related projects from the lottery sports fund totalling more than £2 million over two years. Sportscotland and the Football Trust will consider further applications soon. About £800,000 remains available in the current financial year. Sportscotland's lottery distribution strategy includes provision for the Taylor recommendations and other essential safety works.
I want to move on to talk about the football partnership. The Scottish Executive plans to contribute £1 million towards the development of a network of football academies. That is not £10 million, as was recently reported in the press. We have said that we will contribute £1 million, and the Scottish Premier League is hoping to contribute £10 million.
Will the minister give way?
Not at the moment; I have a lot to get through.
Additional funding is also being considered by the Scottish football partnership, which includes representatives from the SFA, the Scottish Premier League, the Scottish Football League, the Scottish Professional Footballers Association, sportscotland, the Scottish Institute of Sport, the Football Trust and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. That partnership agreed that a task force should draw up proposals for consideration before the end of this year.
With other members of the partnership, undertook a fact-finding visit to a number of soccer academies in England on 6 and 7 September. One of the key points that was made to us was the quality of indoor provision. I accept what Fiona McLeod said: when we are looking at future provision for the development of soccer in Scotland, we need to be able to consider indoor facilities.
One of the key tasks for the partnership is to identify potential sources of funding for the football
academies. As I have said, the SPL is expected to be the major financial contributor to the academies. As a result, the academies are likely to be based around SPL clubs. However, that is a matter that the partnership must consider, because at the moment there is no SPL club in the north of Scotland, for example.
Proposals will come out by the end of the year and will help to build on the significant youth development work that is already being carried out by the football authorities in Scotland's communities. Community access to the facilities will be a condition attached to any contribution from public funds.
I believe that the prospects for developing Scottish talent have never been greater. The proposed academies will provide opportunities to ensure that, in future, our clubs will compete at the highest level of the sport. The Scottish Executive aims to continue its support of our clubs as they strive to achieve that goal.
The Scottish Executive strongly supports football at a grass-roots level. Programmes such as team sport Scotland are already in place, in which a team sport co-ordinator works with SFA development officers to develop youth football. I welcome the recent developments in women's and girls' football in Scotland.
Through sportscotland, we also support the national coach support programme. In addition, money is available for a talented athletes programme. Football is one of the key sports in the Scottish institute of sport. We support football at all levels, but the development of youth football has been highlighted this evening. It is something to which the Scottish Executive is committed.
I will answer some of the points that were raised in the debate. Donald Gorrie talked mainly about youth football—I have covered that.
Fiona McLeod mentioned Hampden. She will have read in the press that there have been meetings to identify solutions to the financial problems surrounding the national stadium. Funders have met representatives of National Stadium and Queen's Park Football Club and made a number of proposals about further financial involvement and positive developments to National Stadium's business plan. Some further work will be needed over the next few weeks, but all parties are hopeful that a resolution will be achieved.
Fiona also mentioned the need for indoor facilities. I think that I have covered that, too. We agree that indoor facilities will be vital and we will consider developing them through the network of football academies.
Cathy Jamieson talked about new ways of involving supporters and new forms of ownership of sports clubs. Those proposals are interesting and I will be happy to discuss them with her.
Brian Monteith mentioned the possible restructuring of football leagues; that is a matter for the football authorities.
I reiterate that we regard the development of football at all levels as very important. We are keen to support the development of youth football, as Donald Gorrie moved. I thank Donald for introducing this debate. It has been very short, and I hope that we will get more time in future for this important matter.
I thank members for their participation and now close the meeting.
Meeting closed at 17:37.