Reform of English football ‘delayed by politics’, says Tracey Crouch

Tracey Crouch says reform of English football has been “delayed by politics” with plans for a new regulator for the game yet to be put before parliament.

The author of the fan-led review into football governance, which was published 10 months ago and met with widespread support, said she was “frustrated” by the slow progress of government action, with a white paper on the proposals still to be published.

Speaking at an event chaired by the UK Onward think tank, Crouch was asked if implementing the fan-led review was high up the current government’s agenda. “I don’t know the answer,” she said. “We are coming up to the one year anniversary and it feels like there hasn’t been much public progress.

“I know the DCMS has been working hard on the white paper, but it still hasn’t been published. I would expect nothing less than top quality [from the white paper], but it is being delayed by politics and that is frustrating as I am keen to get on with it.

“The sooner we start the sooner we can prevent another Bury [which went into administration in November 2020]. It would have been nice to have some sort of safety net at least started to have been put in place.”

The government, under Boris Johnson, had previously said that a white paper would be published in the summer though a firm date was never committed to. A report in the Times last month suggested the current prime minister, Liz Truss, was considering putting plans on hold, however. On Tuesday evening, sources inside the DCMS insisted to the Guardian that the white paper was still going ahead.

Crouch said that she still believed a regulator would be implemented, even if it took a future Labour government to implement it. “It’s a no brainer, I want it done as soon as