Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said he will publish details of his meetings with senior figures at Manchester City, responding to a demand from Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch that No 10 release all records of such contact.
The pledge follows criticism of Burnham’s comments after the club was 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.
Burnham’s previous role as mayor of Greater Manchester has raised questions about his relationship with City’s Abu Dhabi ownership. Speaking on the Rest is Politics podcast, he said: “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.”
He added: “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.”
Burnham defends his comments
Burnham earlier said he would be “really concerned” if City’s owners decided to sell the club after the guilty verdict. He later denied that his reaction had “downplayed the seriousness of the findings”.
Some Premier League clubs were so “astonished” by his stance that sources said they 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 had been wrongly linked. “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 was 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 initially pursued by the city’s leaders before he became the inaugural elected mayor of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority.
The process ahead
The case against City is independent of the Premier League. The commission held a 42-day hearing in 2024, which led to the verdict announced last month. The club was also found guilty of all charges except one relating to non-cooperation with the league’s investigation.
The commission’s report stated 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, which will be heard by a separate independent appeal board, and the club continues to deny any wrongdoing.
City returned to action for the first time since the verdict on Sunday, when they won 3-0 at Liverpool.