Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said he will release details of his meetings with senior figures at Manchester City, following criticism of his comments after the club were found guilty of all charges related to breaches of the Premier League’s financial rules.
An independent commission found City had broken rules over a nine-year period between 2009 and 2018 by creating “sham” contracts with commercial partners to secretly funnel more than £830m into their football operations. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has demanded that No 10 release all details of meetings between the prime minister and senior figures at the club, citing Burnham’s previous role as mayor of Greater Manchester and questions about his relationship with City’s Abu Dhabi ownership.
Burnham told the Rest is Politics podcast that he was happy to publish the details of his meetings. “I will quite clearly put out there everything that I have done working with them in my previous role as Mayor of Greater Manchester,” he said. “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.”
Comments under scrutiny
Burnham initially told the BBC he would be “really concerned” if Manchester City’s owners decided to sell up following the guilty verdict. He later denied that his reaction had “downplayed the seriousness of the findings.” Sources said some Premier League clubs were “astonished” by his stance and were “concerned” about political interference in the appeal process.
Burnham rejected the suggestion that he had misspoken. “I don’t think I misspoke,” he said. “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.”
He also argued that the two subjects should be kept apart. “I didn’t link those two things. You know, the questions linked those two things. What I would say is they’re very separate,” he said. “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.”
Burnham served as mayor of Manchester from 2017 until earlier this year, a period that coincided with sustained success for City. As mayor, he championed investment from the Gulf as a way of growing Manchester’s economy, a strategy the city’s leaders had pursued before he became the inaugural elected mayor of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority.
The verdict and what comes next
The independent commission held a 42-day hearing in 2024, which led to the verdict announced last month. City were found guilty of all charges except one relating to non-cooperation with the Premier League investigation. The commission’s report said that “a number of important club witnesses gave false evidence in key respects and that some knowingly gave untrue and dishonest evidence.”
Sanctions have yet to be announced. City have lodged an appeal, and a separate independent appeal board will hear it. The club continues to deny any wrongdoing. City returned to action after the verdict when they played at Liverpool on Sunday, winning 3-0.
