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Hello and welcome again to the Bench Report, where we discuss recent debates and briefings from the benches of the UK Parliament. You're listening to Amy and Ivan. In this extended episode, a close look at the Independent Football Regulator.

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What we're going to look at today is the uh intense controversy around a single appointment. David Cogan as the chair of the Independent Football Regulator or IFR?

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Aaron Powell And there's a real tension at the heart of this, isn't there? It's a clash between getting the ethical governance right versus the urgent, desperate need to protect football clubs.

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Aaron Powell That's the whole story. On one hand, you have the rules of public appointments. On the other, you have failing clubs and desperate fans.

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Absolutely. We're talking about a body that's meant to save these community institutions. So to really get to grips with why this was so rushed, we need to go back to the beginning. Why was this regulator even necessary?

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Aaron Powell Well, the IFR came directly out of the 2021 fan-led review of football, the one shared by Dame Tracy Crouch. For years, you know, we've seen club after club just fall victim to bad ownership, financial mismanagement.

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Pure asset stripping in some cases.

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In some cases, yes. And the review's conclusion was stark. The sport can't regulate itself. The only answer was an independent statutory regulator.

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And the government, specifically the Secretary of State, Lisa Nandy, made it clear they were making this a priority. The Football Governance Act 2025. It was about delivering on a promise.

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A promise the previous government hadn't delivered. And you can feel the urgency in the debate. For anyone who follows football, the names they mention in Parliament, they carry a heavy weight.

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They really do. We heard about Derby County, Scunthorpe, Wigan, Reading.

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And of course, the ones that went under completely, like Bury and Maclesfield Town. These aren't just businesses, they're the heart of their communities.

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So when you frame it like that, any delay in appointing a regulator means more clubs are left vulnerable. The fan perspective is that this is unacceptable.

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They're living with the consequences right now. You look at the situation with Chen Siri at Sheffield Wednesday, and you see fans watching Westminster argue about process while their clugs are in peril.

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So the argument from many MPs was that this fight over the appointment is frankly a distraction from the real job.

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Which is stopping bad owners from ruining more clubs.

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But that very urgency brings us right back to the appointment process itself. A process that, according to a major report, was deeply flawed. David Cogan was confirmed on the 6th of October. What exactly went wrong?

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The alarm bells went off because of Cogan's status as a donor, a significant donor. He'd given money to Lisa Nandy's leadership campaign, and this is key to the Prime Minister's campaign as well.

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Trevor Burrus, Jr. And the Commissioner for Public Appointments investigated. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

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And concluded that Nandy had breached the governance code for public appointments multiple times. The opposition, led by Mr. French, claims there were three specific breaches.

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Aaron Powell What does a breach of that code actually mean in practice?

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It means the fundamental rules designed to keep public life transparent and independent were either ignored or just circumvented. The opposition's main charge was that Nandy was briefed about the conflict of interest from Cogan's donations twice. Twice. Yeah.

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By her own department.

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Aaron Powell Yes. And crucially, before she picked him as the preferred candidate. If that's true, it makes the whole thing look like classic political cronyism. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

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A failure to maintain that critical distance between political connections and independent roles. And the criticism went even higher than the Secretary of State. What did the report say about the Prime Minister?

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Aaron Powell The Commissioner's report used the phrase that the Prime Minister's fingerprints are clear. That's a huge statement. It's because Kogan's donations weren't just to Nandy, but also to the PM's constituency Labor Party and his leadership campaign.

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So the opposition's argument was if Nandy had to recuse herself.

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Then surely the Prime Minister should have stepped back too to protect the integrity of the process right from the very top.

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And the timeline around Cogan's selection, it doesn't help the optics at all. It really suggests they were prioritizing speed over transparency.

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It absolutely does. The opposition pointed out that Kogan was apparently asked to make arrangements for an appointment without competition. Even worse, he had actually pulled out of the race in November 2024 because of what he called the noise about labor donors. Yet he was then reinstated in March and appointed quickly. That sequence withdrawing due to the politics then being brought back in, it strongly suggests the political need for speed just steamrolled the proper process.

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So on one side, you have this compelling case, political donations, a flawed process, and a supposedly independent regulator who looks anything but. Let's turn to the defense. How did the Secretary of State respond?

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Nanny's defense was built on two pillars. First, taking responsibility, and second, stressing Cogan's merit. She took full responsibility for the administrative mistakes. She apologized to the Prime Minister. But, and this is a very important detail, she specified the report found the breach around the donations to her was unknowing.

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Wait a minute. If her department briefed her twice, how can she possibly claim it was unknowing? Isn't that their job to give her that exact information?

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And that is the absolute core of the disagreement. Her argument is that while the department might have failed in its process, she personally was not aware of the conflict when she chose him.

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So when did she say she found out?

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She says it was the night before Cogan's select committee appearance on the 7th of May. And as soon as she knew, she declared it, made sure Cogan told the committee, and immediately recused herself from the rest of the process.

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Okay, so a flawed process, she admits. But the government line was still that Cogan was the best person for the job. We have to look at his credentials here.

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And his credentials are, to be fair, very strong. This was acknowledged across parties. The select committee unanimously called him an exceptional candidate.

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What's his background?

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It's directly relevant. He has huge media experience. He's represented the Premier League, the English Football League, even the NFL in America. He has a serious track record in complex sports governance.

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And this is where the narrative gets more complicated, because Nandy essentially turned the accusation of cronyism back on the opposition.

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She did. She pointed out that Cogan was on the candidate list she inherited from the previous conservative government.

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So he was their candidate first.

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They'd already approached him for the job. And what's more, that same previous government had appointed him to the board of Channel 4, knowing full well he was a labor donor. The implication is clear. If his donor status didn't matter to them then, why is it suddenly a disqualifying issue now?

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That does put the opposition in a tricky position.

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Yeah.

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Still, the select committee, even though they liked Cogan, seemed very concerned about the process.

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Extremely concerned. Dame Caroline Danaj, the chair, so the committee took what she called an unprecedented step.

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Which was what?

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They confirmed he was appointed, but they recommended he take concrete steps to reassure the football community of his neutrality. That's a huge red flag.

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And why they do that?

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Because it was Cogan himself who disclosed the donations at the hearing, not the department. The committee's action sends a message. He might be the right man, but the process has damaged confidence in his independence before he's even started.

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Which brings us back to that question raised by MPs like Clive Betts and Clive Efford. Are we all just stuck in a Westminster bubble argument that means nothing to the average fan on the terraces?

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They argued that forcefully, that fans don't care about the ins and outs of the public appointments code. They just want a tough regulator in place now to deal with their club's financial problems. For them, this whole debate is a distraction. The outcome is all that matters.

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Let's widen the lens a bit, because the commissioner's report wasn't just about the Secretary of State. It pointed to a much bigger, perhaps systemic failure within the department.

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This is a really key takeaway. Dame Caroline Dinanage pointed out that this is much bigger than one appointment. She revealed that nine out of the last ten public appointments overseen by DCMS that required parliamentary scrutiny have had problems.

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Nine out of ten.

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Nine out of ten. That points to a widespread internal procedural failure in the department's machinery. It's not just a one-off error.

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The 90% failure rate is.

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Yeah.

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Well, it's staggering. So what is Nandy committed to doing about that?

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She's committed to implementing all of the commissioner's recommendations. And she's promised the committee a full list of concrete actions to completely overhaul the DCMS appointment process.

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And looking ahead, to stop this happening again, Sir Edward Lee, the father of the House, suggested a structural fix.

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A very practical one. He proposed tightening the ministerial code itself so that civil servants are required to check for political donations at the very start of a selection process.

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And if a donation is found.

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It triggers an automatic recusal. It takes the judgment call out of it and ensures transparency from day one before a candidate even gets to an interview.

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So we're left with this fundamental conflict. Does the public's confidence depend more on a perfect process following every rule, even if it causes delays or on the outcome?

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Nando was very clear where she stands. She said the ultimate test is whether Kogan can deliver on the promise that we will deal with bad owners and put fans back at the heart of the game.

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The government is basically betting that if he succeeds, if he saves clubs, then the messy, flawed process of how he got the job will be forgotten.

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Which leaves us with a final thought, and it's a challenging one about public service. If a candidate, despite their political past, is recognized by everyone, including a cross-party committee, as the most qualified, exceptional person for an independent job, how much should their past political donations really count against them?

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As always, find us on social media at bench report UK. Get in touch with any topic important to you.

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Remember, politics is everyone's business.

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Take care.