The Prime Minister has defended accepting thousands of pounds-worth of free football tickets by saying it saves the taxpayer money on security.
Sir Keir Starmer, an avid Arsenal fan, has come under pressure in recent weeks for accepting more than £35,000 of free football tickets over the last Parliament, along with thousands more in free clothes and concert tickets.
Although he is an Arsenal season ticket holder, Sir Keir told the BBC on Thursday that security concerns meant he could no longer watch games from the stands without a large and expensive police presence.
He told BBC Yorkshire: “Frankly, I’d rather be in the stands but I’m not going to ask the taxpayer to indulge me to be in the stands when I could go and sit somewhere else where the club and the security say it’s safer for me to be. That is for me a commonsense situation.”
Sir Keir’s register of interests shows most of his tickets have been provided by individual football clubs or the Premier League, although investment firm Cain International and Bishop Auckland-based Teescraft Engineering paid for him to attend games against Chelsea and Newcastle respectively.
Speaking to BBC London, the Prime Minister added: “Once these things are explained, which is the whole point of the rules and declarations, I think most people would say well, that’s a perfectly sensible arrangement.”
Premier League football clubs have meanwhile been lobbying against the Government’s plans to introduce a football regulator, leading opposition MPs to raise questions over a potential conflict of interest.
Ben Obese-Jecty, newly elected MP for Huntingdon, said the Prime Minister’s acceptance of free football tickets meant his decisions on the football regulator “should receive ‘forensic’ scrutiny”.
Sir Keir is far from the only MP to have received freebies over the past year, with more than 70 current MPs from across the political spectrum listing free tickets to sporting events in their registers of interests.
Tickets have been provided by private donors, corporations, football clubs or sport governing bodies, among others.
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