New Petitions

Our final new petition this morning is on Scottish football. PE757 is from Graeme Pirie, on behalf of Fans for Football. The petition calls on the Parliament to urge the Executive, as a matter of urgency, to launch an inquiry into the management and structure of Scottish football, with the aim of restoring Scotland's standing as a leading football nation. The petition is prompted by the decision of the Scottish Premier League on 1 June to deny Inverness Caledonian Thistle Football Club promotion, based on a stadium ruling. The petitioners believe that the Scottish Football Association should take control of the administration of all leagues in Scotland. Inverness Caledonian Thistle won the 2003-04 first division championship, but its promotion was initially blocked due to ground-grading requirements. However, two SPL teams forced a second vote on the matter, and a proposal for Inverness to ground-share with Aberdeen Football Club was accepted by the SPL clubs on 22 June. The Enterprise and Culture Committee has appointed two members to investigate the current situation in Scottish football and will consider the conclusions of that work in due course. At its meeting of 17 March 2004, the Public Petitions Committee agreed to refer PE647, which called on the Parliament to investigate the SPL's decision to deny Falkirk Football Club promotion to the SPL, to the Enterprise and Culture Committee for it to consider in its investigation into Scottish football.

I declare an interest as a director of Dundee United Football Club. I notice that the petition has 16,000 signatures. For my time on the committee, that is a record. It is not quite clear to me what is being suggested. The petition says:"Whilst we applaud the on-going investigation into the management and structure of the game".I am not sure whether that refers to an inquiry into the structure of the game that was partly funded by the Executive and the SFA, which I think reported earlier this year. If that is the case, that inquiry is not on-going.Although I can understand the widespread concern about the bad publicity associated with the case of Inverness Caledonian Thistle, I cannot see the Executive agreeing to establish another inquiry so soon after the one that it has just completed, which it spent a significant amount of money on undertaking. I would like some clarification from the petitioners. Near the end, the petition says:"We present in support of this petition, the online petition presented to those organisations mentioned above."There is not an online version of the petition to us, is there?

No.

So that is a separate issue entirely. It would be helpful to ask the petitioners to await the response that they get from the various organisations that they have listed before coming back to us. We could then see whether any further action is appropriate.

On your first point, the petition is indeed asking for another inquiry into Scottish football, following the original one. That has been made quite clear to us. The petitioners are concerned that the structure of Scottish football is not working to the best advantage of Scottish football, and they want that to be addressed. I take on board your other comments, too.

Yes. I suppose that I should declare an informal interest as a Partick Thistle supporter. I agree absolutely with the terms of the petition, in that I think that people believe that there is a lot of institutional clutter in football—whether in relation to the SFA, the SPL or the Highland Football League—and that that lack of clarity has spilled over into some of the recent decision making. Having said that, I think that Mike Watson is right: I do not think that the Executive will necessarily invest in another review. However, I am aware that the Enterprise and Culture Committee has appointed two reporters—Brian Adam and Richard Baker, I believe—who are investigating the structure of Scottish football and will report back to the committee on a number of things. I suggest that we send the petition to the Enterprise and Culture Committee for information; write to the Executive as a matter of course, to get its position; and write to the SFA, because its view might be interesting.

I do not see any difficulty with that.

That is a much bigger question. If we had the answer to that, we would not have had to listen to the English commentators on Euro 2004; we could have had our own.

Does that mean that the convener supported Portugal?

The convener supported Bulgaria; that was the kiss of death.

The suggestion is that we send the petition to the Enterprise and Culture Committee, because it is investigating the subject; that we send it to the SFA and ask it for a response; and that we ask the Executive for its view on the current situation. Are members happy with that?Members indicated agreement.

If we all want to make individual contributions to the debate we can do so.