Andy Burnham outside of Downing Street (Alamy)
4 min read
Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham is leading calls for government and football authorities to do more to address the sport’s “shocking” dementia crisis.
The Labour Mayor has accused the Football Association (FA) and the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) of showing inadequate leadership on the issue.
Burnham, a former culture secretary, has urged the Labour government to support an amendment to the Football Governance Bill and establish a compensation scheme for former players with neurodegenerative diseases.
The amendment is being drafted by campaigners and Chris Evans, the Labour MP for Caerphilly. Steve Rotheram, the Labour mayor of Liverpool, is also pushing ministers to adopt it.
The Football Governance Bill is making its way through Parliament and is currently at Committee stage. The legislation sets out government plans to reform English football, with the creation of an independent regulator at its heart.
Football authorities are accused of giving former players with dementia and their families very limited financial support.
Burnham told PoliticsHome: “They gave everything to the game and it’s not been there for them, and obviously the union specifically falls within that issue. The scale of it has shocked me, to be honest.
“We shouldn’t be looking to the government, we should be looking to the game, it should have shown leadership, but it hasn’t, unfortunately.”
Burnham co-chaired a recent event in Parliament with Rotheram, which was attended by former England internationals Sir Geoff Hurst and Kevin Keegan, and heard testimony from affected family members.
Burnham said the upcoming Bill needed to put “all of the right prods in place” to make sure football gets its “house in order”.
“It is for the game to sort out, but when it comes to something like dementia, this Bill has to create that back power to say if you don’t, someone else can require it.
“At the moment, the cost is fully falling on public services – to the extent that families are getting any support, it’s more likely to be the NHS or councils and often then it won’t be what they fully need, because we know how overstretched services are.”
Burnham said that while football should be “like a family”, it had failed to behave as such and needed to be held to higher standards.
He added: “The game is often not there, and the leadership has often not been there, and therefore the national game needs to be held to higher standards.
“And that’s what the football governance bill, I think, will in the end do. It’s still about saying ‘football, heal thyself’, that’s still the message, but it just will mean in future there is power behind it.
“We love football, we love everything about it – just so often it falls short when it comes to issues like this.”
Rotheram said it was time for the sport to “put its house in order” and deliver real change on the issue.
The Liverpool mayor has spoken about his mother’s experiences with dementia, while Burnham’s father is currently living with a form of the disease.
Rotheram told PoliticsHome: “Labour is the party of social justice or it’s nothing, and this is about ensuring that justice is done.
“[People] might think it’s about very rich footballers whose families have hit a bit of a hard time, because these people are going through this terrible period.
“It’s not very rich footballers… This is having a detrimental impact on their families, many of whom have to sell the house, the medals and everything, the family jewels, to provide care to their loved ones.”
He added: “We’re not saying that everybody will need support.
“What we’re saying is that for many people, this is their last opportunity to try and get the support that they need to give them some quality of life.”
An FA spokesperson told PoliticsHome: “We continue to take a leading role in reviewing and improving the safety of our game.
“This includes investing in and supporting multiple projects in order to gain a greater understanding of this area through objective, robust and thorough research.
“We have already taken many proactive steps to review and address potential risk factors which may be associated with football, whilst ongoing research continues in this area, including liaising with the international governing bodies.”
The PFA has also been contacted for comment.
