MPs stage coup over new Liverpool FC stadium
Oct 23 2008 Liverpool Daily Post
The city council and LFC are yet to sign an agreed 999-year lease on the ground.
The extraordinary suggestion that ministers should decide whether a loan should be made – and, in consequence, who owns a football club – can only be made because of the unprecedented £37bn banking bail-out.
The crisis involved pumping £20bn into RBS, securing a 60% stake in the bank and, it is argued, the right for ministers to call the shots on lending. Within hours of the rescue, Sir Fred Goodwin, the much-criticised RBS chief executive was forced out and ministers vowed to take places on the bank’s board to steer it through the crisis. Yesterday, Mr Kilfoyle called for that power to include “ensuring that the Royal Bank of Scotland does not renew that credit facility at the end of its current term”.
The Labour backbencher tabled a Parliamentary motion, quickly signed by George Howarth (Knowsley North and Sefton East), Eddie O'Hara (Knowsley South), Louise Ellman (Riverside), Bob Wareing (West Derby) and Derek Twigg (Halton).
It calls on the Government to act because “the American own-ers have failed to deliver a new stadium for Liverpool FC, thereby delaying indefinitely the regener-ation of one of the most needy areas of the country.”
Mr Kilfoyle said: “The Govern-ment is not putting £20bn of tax-payers money into the RBS in order for two foreign nationals to use that money to buy a British institution without putting in any money of their own.
Liverpool fans have already been putting pressure on RBS to call in the loan by threatening to boycott the bank if it does not.
OPINION: PAGE 12; SPORT: PAGES 38-40
