Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) has issued a statement on now PM Andy Burnham’s meetings with the owners and senior management of Manchester City Football Club during his time as mayor of the city region, following Burnham’s own promise to publish details of his dealings with the financial scandal-hit club over the weekend.
City have been found guilty by an independent commission of a total of 114 instances of breaking Premier League financial rules between 2009 and 2018, although the club continues to deny all wrongdoing and is in the process of appealing the verdict, insisting the club has “a comprehensive body of irrefutable evidence” to prove its innocence, and which the Premier League has declined to take into account.
Burnham has now attracted heat of his own given the club’s Abu Dhabi ownership’s extensive involvement in the regeneration of the club’s East Manchester home, and regeneration and development work around Manchester more widely.
Following pressure from his political opponents, Burnham told The Rest is Politics podcast yesterday (Sunday 11 October): “I’ve been asked by the leader of the opposition to publish details of my meetings, which I’m happy to do and I’m going to. 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.”
In its own statement on the matter this afternoon, the GMCA said: “In October 2021 Andy Burnham, in his role as Mayor of Greater Manchester, had a formal meeting with Khaldoon Al Mubarak at the UK Government’s Global Investment Summit arranged by the Department for International Trade.
“In his capacity as Mayor, he was a guest of Manchester City FC at home matches on a small number of occasions, including attending Vincent Kompany’s testimonial match in September 2019, where he met the Chairman informally in the stands. These have been declared in the usual way.
“Also during his time as Mayor, representatives of Greater Manchester sporting clubs would routinely join business delegations as part of Mayoral international visits. This included representatives from Manchester United travelling to Austin and Dublin, Lancashire Cricket Club joining a delegation to India, and Manchester City FC staff supporting visits to China and Japan.”
