Resources will not be a blocker on Maccabi Tel Aviv football fans attending a match in Birmingham next month, Lisa Nandy has vowed.
The Culture Secretary said the Government was working with West Midlands Police and Birmingham City Council to “consider all the options available”, in a bid to “ensure fans” from both Aston Villa and Maccabi Tel Aviv can attend the fixture.
Ms Nandy faced questions in the Commons, after Birmingham’s safety advisory group – the body responsible for issuing safety certificates for every match at Villa Park – last week informed Villa that no away fans will be permitted to spectate.
She appeared in Parliament as the Tel Aviv derby between rivals Hapoel and Maccabi was called off on Sunday following violent clashes between supporters.
Ayoub Khan, whose Birmingham Perry Barr constituency is home to the Villa Park Stadium, claimed MPs hoping to overturn the decision were playing “fast and loose with” community safety.
And Labour MP for Liverpool Wavertree Paula Barker warned of a “slippery slope when safety concerns are ignored” at football stadiums, following the Hillsborough crowd crush in 1989.
“This decision was not made in a vacuum,” Ms Nandy told the Commons.
Referring to the attack on the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue earlier this month, the Culture Secretary continued: “It is set against the backdrop of rising antisemitism here and across the world, and an attack on a synagogue in Manchester in which two innocent men were killed.
“It has a real-world impact on a community who already feel excluded and afraid.
“It is therefore completely legitimate to support the independence of the police to conduct that risk assessment and to question the conclusion that follows when it excludes the people at the heart of that risk.
“Following the decision last week, the Government has been working with West Midlands Police and Birmingham City Council to support them to consider all the options available, and to tell us what resources are needed to manage the risks, to ensure fans from both teams can attend safely.
“If the assessment is revised, the safety advisory group will meet again to discuss options.”
Ms Nandy also said: “It is not for the Government to assess the risks surrounding this football match, but we are clear that resources will not be the determining factor in whether Maccabi Tel Aviv fans can be admitted, and that this fundamental principle that nobody in our country will be excluded from participating in public life because of who they are must be upheld.”
She later admitted that “there are a minority of supporters in every club, and in this club in particular, whose behaviour is reprehensible”.
This was “not the case for all fans”, she added, and said: “And what is astonishing in this case is that it is unprecedented in modern times that all away fans have been banned because of the behaviour of a small minority.”
Ms Barker claimed safety fears at Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough stadium were raised a year before the crowd crush which killed 97.
“We have safety advisory groups for a reason, and it’s a slippery slope when safety concerns are ignored, and I believe unprecedented for a Government to try to overturn such advice,” she said.
The MP said she made her comments “purely based on safety” and asked Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy “on what grounds” she disagreed with safety advice, if she did disagree, because “people are going to ask questions” if Maccabi fans face or commit acts of violence.
Ms Nandy replied that she and the Government “take the safety of all fans and the wider community with the utmost seriousness”.
She added: “What is completely different about this case is not just that it’s the first time since the early 2000s in this country that a decision has been taken to ban entirely away fans from attending a game, it’s that the risk assessment is based in no small part on the risk posed to those fans that are attending to support Maccabi Tel Aviv because they are Israeli and because they are Jewish. Now, we should be appalled by that and never allow it to stand.”
Mr Khan told the Commons: “I know the reality on the ground, and I know that there has been a deliberate disingenuous move by many to make this a matter of banning Jews, to conflate matters of policing with those of religion.”
The Independent MP later added: “Those who are not welcome in Aston are hooligans that have a long history of violence and vile racism, chants like ‘F the Arabs’, ‘we will rape their daughters’, that ‘there are no schools in Gaza because there are no children left in Gaza’, it’s these hooligans that are not welcome.
“Can I ask the minister, how many millions of British taxpayers’ money is her Government offering to overturn the respective expert judgment of the West Midlands Police and the safety group?”
The Culture Secretary replied that she was “appalled by those” chants but added: “It is entirely disingenuous to say that you respect cohesion and inclusion when you’re seeking to divide and exclude.”
Gareth Snell, the Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central, had earlier referred to the Swiss football club BSC Young Boys, who face Villa later in November.
On fan misbehaviour by supporters of the Bern-based club, he said: “The challenge will be, if this ban is allowed to go ahead, the game after the Maccabi game is with the Swiss-based Young Boys. Their fans have been involved in two riots including hospitalisations.
“If their away team is not banned, the question should be, ‘what is different between the Maccabi fans and the Young Boys fans, and what is it that we want to talk about?’”
Ms Nandy said Mr Snell had “put it better than” she could.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has previously called the move to bar fans attending “wrong” and said the country “will not tolerate antisemitism on our streets”.
On Sunday, Israeli police said that an Israeli Premier League match should not take place as scheduled after trouble reportedly flared prior to kick-off in and around the Bloomfield Stadium, a venue shared by Hapoel and Maccabi.
Downing Street said the UK Football Policing Unit was “reaching out” to Israeli authorities “to gain an understanding of what happened” on Sunday.
The Government is expecting West Midlands Police to set out early next week what they would need to police the game safely with both sets of fans present.
