Andy Burnham has defended his intervention in support of Manchester City’s owners as he agreed to opposition parties’ demands to publish details of their meetings.
The prime minister was criticised after he said he would be “really concerned” if City’s Abu Dhabi owners sold the club after it was found to have breached the Premier League’s financial rules, crediting them with being “a huge partner in the building of modern Manchester”.
Downing Street was forced to issue two clarifications of his position, with a spokesperson for the PM insisting the guilty verdict against the club is “serious”.
Mr Burnham faced calls to “keep politics out of football”, with the case set to proceed to an appeal board and a sanctions hearing, and demands from opposition leaders, including Kemi Badenoch, to publish “everything” related to his work with the club as Greater Manchester mayor.
Mr Burnham said he would “put out there” everything he had done to work with the club’s owners while he was mayor, in an interview with the Rest is Politics podcast to be released on Monday.
He defended his comments on investment in Manchester, saying: "I don't think I misspoke. What I would say is my mind hadn't been on all of the issues. My mind had been on Labour Party conference and I was doing interviews in relation to it.
"And also, I didn't link those two things. You know, the questions linked those two things. What I would say… is they're very separate.
"The football issues are different from the investment issues. People will try and conflate those two things, but they shouldn't, in my view. The football issues, the findings of the independent commission are serious, as I said in the interview."
He added: “I’ve been asked by the leader of the opposition to publish details of my meetings, which I’m happy to do.
“I will quite clearly put out there everything that I have done working with them in my previous role as mayor of Greater Manchester.
“None of it is recent, actually, in terms of the meetings I had. I only had one significant meeting, actually, and that was in 2021. That is right and I will put that all out there.
“But the football issues, they are serious and have to be dealt with, and the process is independent and it has to run its course. But I think everybody should separate the investment issues because they’re not the same thing.”
The Premier League said an independent commission found City arranged “sham” commercial deals with a number of its sponsors during the period, which were part of a disguised funding scheme, whereby those companies were required to pay only a portion of the relevant sponsorship fees.
The commission found that the remainder was funded by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s Abu Dhabi United Group Investment & Development Ltd, which majority-owned the club.
Shadow sports minister Louie French called for Mr Burnham to also “come clean” about any meetings since becoming PM and urged Sport Secretary Lisa Nandy to respond to questions.
“The prime minister must publish every contact between his ministers, officials and Manchester City since he walked into Number 10, the prime minister must also explain why he inappropriately intervened in this case, and Lisa Nandy must answer the questions I have put to her in full,” he said.
City have lodged an appeal against the guilty verdict, having claimed the commission’s decision contained “clear material errors, of law, principle and fact, and is unsafe”.
