Monday 21 October 2019 23:51, UK
Football Association chairman Greg Clarke has admitted he only spoke to Bury owner Steve Dale after the club had been expelled from the English Football League.
Clarke gave evidence to the Digital Culture Media and Sport committee in London on Monday, as the cross-party group of MPs investigated how Bury's demise had happened and what could be done to stop other clubs suffering the same fate.
Bury's EFL membership was withdrawn in August after Dale was unable to provide financial sustainability guarantees, and a bid to have the club reinstated in League Two for the start of next season was rejected by the 71 members of the EFL at a clubs' meeting on September 26.
A winding-up petition was adjourned on October 16, with the club now facing the threat of liquidation at a hearing on October 30.
MPs criticised the EFL and the FA over their handling of the Bury situation, and questioned Clarke on when he had first had direct contact with Dale.
"He wrote to me making a series of observations about how he had been treated," Clarke said about Dale. "I wrote to him offering him a meeting to explore those issues, and that was the last I heard."
Asked by the committee when that was, Clarke replied: "I would say three or four weeks ago."
Asked why he had not spoken to the club over the telephone, as Clarke said he had in his role as Football League chairman between 2010 and 2016, he said: "I didn't because when I used to get on the blower I was responsible for enforcing Football League rules.
"I do not interfere in the league enforcing their rules."
EFL executive chair Debbie Jevans was questioned about the effectiveness of the EFL's rules.
She said that Dale had passed the league's owners' and directors' test but that evidence of the source and sustainability of funding were never forthcoming.
"When that information wasn't supplied the club were placed under [a transfer] embargo," Jevans told the committee.
"At that point we were working with him and with the club because we wanted the club to survive."
Asked by Ian Lucas, the Labour MP for Wrexham, whether it was a deficiency in the system that he was able to take control of the club without providing financial guarantees, Jevans said: "We want to learn lessons from this. That's why we're having an independent review into this and I don't want to pre-empt or anticipate what the results of that may be."
Jevans said there had been a good deal of "evasiveness" from Dale when the EFL had sought information regarding funding.
"He was in hospital a lot and if someone says that they're in hospital and recovering from cancer, you don't want to say that that's wrong at all," she said.
"There were any number of excuses. He provided evidence of funding, we then investigated what that source of funding was and we found that on every occasion the funding didn't exist and couldn't be backed up."
Jonathan Taylor QC, the co-head of the sports group at law firm Bird & Bird, is leading an independent governance review of the EFL.
Part of that will be a financial sustainability review looking at the circumstances surrounding Bury's demise and whether the regulations need strengthening to prevent a similar situation arising in future.
There were concerns expressed that the views of the Football Supporters' Association would not be consulted, to which Jevans said: "It will not be lip service. There has been communication with the FSA, we want this [review] to be far-reaching."
