Pressure is growing on Andy Burnham to distance Labour from the Man City financial scandal after revelations that Labour MPs received almost £290,000 of freebies from the club and its UAE owners.
Spread over a decade, the gifts came in the form of VIP match tickets, flights and luxury junkets to the Arab state where City’s majority stakeholder Sheikh Mansour is deputy prime minister.
Among the main beneficiaries was Labour’s deputy leader Lucy Powell, whose Manchester Central constituency includes the club’s Etihad Stadium. According to the MPs’ Register of Interests, seen by The Sun, she accepted free tickets worth £2,360 to five matches over an 11-month period.
Last night, the TaxPayers’ Alliance watchdog urged the PM to ‘make clear that football regulation will be left entirely to the proper independent bodies, with no political interference whatsoever’.
In total, Labour MPs scooped £14,000 of City tickets and hospitality while 25 of them took handouts worth £275,000 in flights and luxury trips to the UAE.
Tory members picked up nearly £175,000 of UAE trips while the SNP, Lib Dems and Reform accounted for £18,500 of Emirates state hospitality.
The extent of the City-linked handouts has emerged in an analysis of the MPs’ Register of Interests. Among Labour MPs who benefited from club freebies were Manchester MPs Andrew Western and Jeff Smith who each accepted tickets for four matches. Former PM Keir Starmer, an avid Arsenal fan, received a £900 ticket for City’s home game against the Gunners in March 2024.
John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘Football fans and taxpayers alike have every right to expect complete transparency when politicians accept expensive hospitality from powerful organisations.’
Andy Burnham chats with Manchester City’s Emirati chairman Khaldoon al-Mubarak
Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium. It has been that Labour MPs received almost £290,000 of freebies from the club and its UAE owners
It comes as the Prime Minister’s close links to the club have raised fears among Premier League rivals of political interference.
Last month an independent commission found City guilty of 114 of 115 alleged financial rule breaches between 2009 and 2018.
After the verdicts were announced, Mr Burnham caused controversy by telling the BBC that ‘…if wrongdoing is established those responsible should face the appropriate consequences’. Wrongdoing had by then already been established and a No 10 spokesman attempted to clarify the statement by replacing the word ‘if’ with ‘wherever’.
Mr Burnham denied he had downplayed the findings. Rival club sources later told the BBC his comments were ‘absolutely bizarre’ and ‘at best naive and at worst quite manipulative’.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has demanded that Downing Street releases details of all meetings between the PM and senior Man City figures.
