MPs want to force Premier League clubs to give away more money to football support system

MPs are plotting changes to the new Football Governance Bill that could void any deal struck over the Premier League’s £900 million support system for the game and force its clubs to give away even more money.

Telegraph Sport can reveal moves are afoot to increase the powers of the statutory regulator being set up under the Bill after the Government stopped short of giving it carte blanche to impose a redistribution mechanism on English football.

The ongoing failure by Premier League clubs to agree such a mechanism triggered last week’s long-awaited publication of the Bill, which outlines a so-called backstop designed to end any impasse.

The document states this can only be activated if the league itself, or the English Football League or National League, applies to the regulator and certain conditions are met.

MPs are now exploring tabling an amendment to the Bill that would allow the regulator to step in regardless, which may include a clause stating it could even void any agreement reached over the ‘New Deal for Football’.

That follows concerns the EFL could end up caving into a Premier League ultimatum over the deal, including over milder spending limits for clubs relegated from the top-flight and in receipt of parachute payments.

Ian Mearns MP, the chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Football Supporters, said he stood ready to table such amendments or back anyone else who did so.

Branding the Bill’s limiting of the regulator’s backstop powers an “inherent weakness” of the proposed legislation, he said: “The backstop power, if that has to be triggered by the useless bodies which currently exist, that’s a pointless exercise. There’s point in actually having a regulator if it’s got no teeth.”

A Whitehall source said giving the regulator carte blanche to step in without the parties first having a chance to strike a deal – or allowing it to void any agreement already struck – constituted a “huge legal risk”.

The plot by MPs has emerged amid a threat by peers to use the Bill to limit foreign state ownership of football clubs, in the wake of moves to block similar takeovers of newspapers.

The ownership of the likes of Manchester City and Newcastle United came under scrutiny in the House of Lords last Thursday as plans to table amendments to the new Football Governance Bill to prevent “sportswashing” were announced.

Concerns including the alleged use of the game by Gulf regimes to distract from human rights abuses there were expressed during a debate held just over a week after plans were announced to outlaw foreign state ownership of UK media outlets – which would thwart an Abu Dhabi-bankrolled takeover of the Daily Telegraph – and two days after the launch of Bill enshrining in law a new independent football regulator.