Burnham says Man City owners never raised Premier League charges in their meetings

Prime Minister Andy Burnham told the House of Commons on Tuesday that Manchester City’s owners and directors never raised the Premier League’s financial charges against the club during any of their meetings, after details of those contacts were made public earlier this week.

Burnham was questioned during Prime Minister’s Questions by Conservative MP Jerome Mayhew, who asked whether anyone associated with the running of Manchester City had raised the charges — charges on which the club has since been found guilty — with Burnham or any member of his team. “They did not raise those issues with me,” Burnham replied, adding that he was “very happy” for everything to be set out in full.

The disclosure follows the publication on Monday of a statement by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), which Burnham had requested in response to pressure from the Leader of the Opposition and others. The statement detailed his key dealings with Manchester City’s owners during his time as Greater Manchester mayor.

According to the GMCA, Burnham held a formal meeting with City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak at the UK Government’s Global Investment Summit in October 2021, an event arranged by the Department for International Trade. He also met the chairman informally in the stands at Vincent Kompany’s testimonial match in September 2019, where he had attended as a guest of the club. Both engagements were declared through the standard process, the authority said.

The GMCA statement also noted that representatives of Greater Manchester sporting clubs routinely joined business delegations during Burnham’s tenure as mayor, a practice he described as standard procedure for the role.

Manchester City were found guilty of breaching the Premier League’s financial rules and of failing to co-operate with the league’s investigation across the majority of charges brought against them. The verdicts have intensified scrutiny of the club’s relationships with public figures, prompting Burnham to move quickly to place his own contacts with the ownership group on the public record.