Jane Purdon gave evidence.

Q We will hear from Jane Purdon, the former CEO and director of Women in Football, who is now an ambassador for the same organisation. We have until 4.10 pm for this session. Will the witness please introduce herself for the record?

Jane Purdon:

I am Jane Purdon. I have worked in football and elite sport for about 22 years, starting as the in-house lawyer at Sunderland football club. I went on to do 10 years at the Premier League, rising to become director of governance. I then went to UK Sport, where I co-authored the code for sports governance. More recently, my work has been with Women in Football. I have just stepped off the board, but I remain an ambassador; I think that means I have the privilege of rocking up to events like this. Thank you for having me. I also have another chair role in football and a quasi-board role with Premiership Rugby, so I now have a portfolio career.

Q Do you think that the Government are right to exclude the women’s game from the scope of the regulator to start with? Do you think that it should be included in the future?

Jane Purdon:

Women in Football does not have a corporate view on this, and we do not have a view on the regulator at all. The reason for that is that opinions vary, so I cannot answer for Women in Football. A lot of our focus—we have put in a written submission to the Committee—has been on the effect on the football workforce and the women in it as a result of this legislation.

If I can give you my personal opinion, the Government launched and backed Karen Carney to write a review on the future of women’s football, and it really was a privilege to be an independent expert on that. I am still working with Karen on what is called the implementation group, run under the auspices of the Secretary of State and the Minister.

A lot is going on in women’s football. It is fast evolving and the needs are huge. We need innovation. Not all the solutions that have worked for men’s football will work for women’s football. The Government are—I do not know what the word is—managing the process, or putting the right amount of pressure on the stakeholders, to see where we get to. But at some point, we may need to review those processes, how they are working and whether women’s football is landing in the place where we want it to land. Whether when we get to that point we say, “Gosh, we have a regulator here. The regulator has a role,” I do not know, but it is an open question and one that I think we ought to keep asking.

Q You mentioned the Carney review. What progress do you think is being made on those recommendations? Is there enough legislative impetus behind the review?

Jane Purdon:

As I say, we have this implementation group run under the auspices of the Secretary of State and DCMS, and there are some real, chunky issues there. Where I am right now with it is allowing that group, which I think is due to meet again in July, to continue its work, but we must keep this under continuous review and not feel complacent that we have sorted women’s football.

Q Do you think there is a risk that clubs make asset transfers from the women’s game to the men’s game in order to become financially sustainable?

Jane Purdon:

One of the classic models at the moment, as you have heard, is that the women’s team sits within the same legal entity as the men’s team, and there are pros and cons to that. The pros are obviously that the club has the brand, the IP and the infrastructure. The cons are that it can make the women’s team very vulnerable to what happens in the men’s team. I saw that with my own club, Sunderland, which 20 years ago was so ahead of the game, but the men’s team fell down two divisions. I understand that it is a cost centre and tough decisions must be made, even if they are not the decisions that I would make.

I have actually posited the question before of what happens when women’s football begins to make money and becomes profitable. What are we going to do with that profit, and how much will go back into the men’s game and how much stays in the women’s game? I think that would be a great question for football to debate.

Q Good to see you, Jane. You are obviously involved in Women in Football, which is not always about women’s football. Do you think clubs are making enough progress in ensuring that there are more women on their boards and that there is greater diversity in the boardroom? What do you think the regulator should or could be involved in in the future?

Jane Purdon:

There are some statistics and research showing that, I think, 10% of current Premier League directors are women. That research was done earlier this season, but the key thing is that it has not shifted since somebody last looked at it in 2019. The answer, with a very broad brush, is that it would appear not. I have to say that there are some clubs doing fantastic work, some of whom have given evidence today. If you want a great exemplar, take a look at Brentford football club, but as a whole, I do not think the industry is moving fast enough. We need to look at not just boards but executive committees—the lead executive decision-making body within the club.

We speak to our members a lot about this. We have 9,500 members, 80% of whom are women—we do welcome men into our membership—and we talk to them regularly about how they are feeling. We are getting a very mixed picture. We are told that 89% of them feel optimistic about the future of football, but at the same time, again, getting into 80% say that they have experienced sexism in their football careers. A minority of them feel that they are supported to get to the highest path. I would say that things are changing but not quickly enough.

To the second part of your question about what the regulator could do, we have a proposal for a code of governance practice. What concerns us at Women in Football is that both on the face of the legislation and through discussions we have had with the Government in our lobbying activity leading up to this point, there is an indication that it will not include any provisions about diversity. Having co-written the code for sports governance in 2016—under your maestro-ship, Tracey, if I may say so—and having seen how that really shifted the dial, I am really concerned about this. I think it is a poor vision of corporate governance if you do not address equality and diversity. You are not actually writing something about governance. You are writing something else.

To really shift the dial on this, you need three things. You need to make the business case and win hearts and minds. People need to understand and not be frightened, and realise that there are really sound business reasons for doing this. You need to give them support, but you do need to have a bit of a lever—whether that is a funding consequence or a “comply or explain” consequence and the transparency that comes from that in the case of the UK corporate governance code. That is one thing we would like more assurance on and express reference to in the legislation.

Q Yes, the world of sport did not fall apart by having more women on boards. Going back to the game, when Charlton were relegated, one of the first things they did was ditch their women’s team. That is not unique; other clubs have done exactly the same. Should the club’s licensing requirements state that clubs have to continue their investment in the women’s game regardless of where they are in the leagues?

Jane Purdon:

This is such a tough question, because that money has to come from somewhere, and what do you cut? Do you cut funding to your academy? It is so tough. The real answer is that we have to get women’s football independently standing on its own feet and turning a dollar in its own right.

Q Following on from the previous question, I have asked different witnesses about the corporate governance statement that clubs are required to make. I think you touched on that. Do you think it would be appropriate for clubs to have to consider how they meet their wider obligations as part of that corporate governance statement? I think it would be relevant to the regulator if a club was seeking to meet its financial regulatory standards by trimming back on other things it should be doing.

Jane Purdon:

I think transparency is a great thing, as is transparency in sport. If you have ever read the code for sports governance, it kind of flows through that. We said to the sport governing bodies who were not as well resourced as many football clubs, “Tell the world what you are doing. Even tell them when you don’t hit your targets and then explain what you are going to do, because it breeds trust.” Against that, we do need to be proportionate and make sure that we are not asking organisations to report for the sake of reporting, and that there is real value that comes from the onerous work that reporting involves.

Q Would you have a problem if it was merely a requirement for clubs? Clubs have certain obligations they are expected to meet by their competition organisers or by the Football Association, and as part of corporate governance they have an explanatory statement about how they do that?

Jane Purdon:

In the legislation there is provision to say how you are meeting this code of practice. I do not have a problem with that in theory. As with all these things, the devil is in the detail, but I think that is right. I have talked about not making it too onerous, but on the other hand it can be a very simple measure to engender trust, and fan trust as well.

Q One final question. The commercial development of women’s football seems to be on an exciting path of growth. Where you have Premier League clubs that have men’s and women’s teams, do you think the club should be regulated—or do you think that they should be regulated separately because they are competing in different competitions?

Jane Purdon:

As I say, Women in Football does not have a position on this, so I have to be quite careful. If I am brutally honest, my personal opinion—and this is not shared by all by Women in Football colleagues—is that I am not convinced by the intellectual case for an IFR at all, particularly financially. I would need to be persuaded on that one. Maybe it is something we need to think about going forward in the game, and look at the fact that the two teams, the two set-ups, sit in one legal entity. The plus side is when you have a club like Chelsea or Manchester City, which get it and back its women’s team and provide the spectacle in the women’s game that we are used to seeing in the men’s game, that is fabulous, but there is risk as well. Maybe how we manage that risk is something we need to take forward.

Q I suppose ultimately, however it is done, we would want the same standards to apply to everyone. Clubs that have a men’s team and a women’s team should be regulated in the same way as clubs that just have a women’s team.

Jane Purdon:

There is a proportionality. One of the other bodies I chair is PGAAC—the Professional Game Academy Audit Company—which is the academy quality assurance body. It is a joint venture between the FA, the Premier League and the EFL, and there is proportionality in what we do. We quality-assure all the academies, and we have just started doing the girls’ game as well. We are not taking what we apply to Manchester City to what we apply to a League Two community organisation that happens to run a girl’s elite training centre. It has to be proportionate and you have to make sure that you are adding value all the way.

In fairness, for full disclosure, I have spoken to people in the women’s game who disagree and say that if this if this is coming in for the men’s game, it ought to come in for the women’s game. I look at things like the owners and officers test, which we have written to the Committee about, because we think there are real problems in the drafting. I think that is going to be incredibly onerous for clubs. If you then put that into the women’s clubs as well, many of them who are running on much lower resources, it is an unintended consequence of bureaucracy to what end.

Q I am an MP from north Wales. The Football Association of Wales told me that girls drop out of football at teen age. That is the big cliff edge, and it is principally to do with facilities that are available, as it is a time when that is particularly important. What do you think are the biggest barriers to women participating in football?

Jane Purdon:

By the way, hearing where you are from, may I sound a note of congratulations to Wrexham FC? I saw it had an attendance of 9,500 for one of its women’s games—wonderful.

What are the barriers? We need the role models. We have those. Our Lionesses are wonderful. We need infrastructure. We need more, more, more, more, more. It is as simple as that. We need more pitches, we need more people, we need more coaches. I sometimes say to people if you want to know what needs to happen in future, take a walk around your town and count up all the football pitches you come across—the ones down the park, the ones in the school, the ones for the professional football club. Now double that. If we are serious about opening up football to the other half of the population, it will look something like that. So, yes: more, more, more.

There has to be some rate of organic growth in this. We cannot do everything at once. Many of the people looking at this, the people at NewCo, the people at the FA and, in fairness, the Sport Minister, have taken a good interest in this. There is good work happening, but we have a long way to go.

If there are no further questions from Members, I thank the witness. We will move on.