MPs say EFL should pay ‘reparations’ to expelled Bury players and staff

The English Football League failed to enforce its own rules in the lead-up to expelling Bury in August, and the league should apologise and pay “reparations” to staff and players who lost their jobs, a parliamentary committee has concluded.

Substantial changes are needed to football’s “fit and proper person” owners and directors test, and other key areas of regulation, the digital, culture, media and sport committee recommended, following an inquiry last month into the collapse and expulsion of the League One club. If the leagues and Football Association do not introduce those reforms, the committee said, the government should move to legally create independent regulation for the game.

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“If the football authorities fail to implement these reforms, or conclude that a statutory framework is needed to give them full effect, we recommend that the government immediately brings forward the necessary legislation to introduce a fully independent system of football licensing and regulation,” the committee said, in a strongly worded letter sent to Debbie Jevans, the acting EFL chair, Greg Clarke, the FA chairman, and the sports minister Nigel Adams.

The letter was not sent to the Premier League, which has the same rules as the EFL and whose acting chief executive, Richard Masters, gave evidence to the inquiry alongside Jevans and Clarke.

The committee, chaired by the Conservative MP Damian Collins, acknowledged that it made similar recommendations, calling for a licensing system in football, following a previous inquiry in 2011, but the government has shown no inclination to legislate for football reform. The government told the inquiry that it is the “responsibility of the football authorities to govern the sport”.

Collins said the MPs had heard “compelling evidence of failings at every level of football governance – from the clubs themselves to the EFL and FA as overall governing body”, leading up to the expulsion of Bury after 125 years as Football League members.

He argued that the EFL did not intervene early enough to address the club’s failing financial situation, and claimed that the club were “rading outside” of the rules, the “salary cost management protocol”, limiting players’ wages in League One. The committee highlighted as a key flaw in the rules the ability of Steve Dale to buy the club for £1 in December without having passed the owners-and-directors test first.

Dale subsequently did pass the test, which principally bars people who have unspent criminal convictions for dishonesty or have been involved in insolvencies at two football clubs. However, Dale never provided the EFL with the required evidence that he had the money to sustain Bury through a season, and that was ultimately the reason for the club’s expulsion. The MPs call for the owners and directors test to be administered before any takeover, and for disqualification of people with a record of company insolvencies, as Dale has, not just football club insolvencies.

The committee also sent their letter to Jonathan Taylor QC, who is conducting a review for the EFL of its governance.