UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham to Release Details of Meetings with Manchester City
Burnham to publish records of his engagements with club officials amid scrutiny over his prior comments.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced he will release details of his meetings with senior figures at Manchester City, following criticism of his remarks made in the wake of the club being found guilty of numerous charges related to breaches of Premier League financial rules.
An independent commission determined that Manchester City had violated rules over a nine-year period from 2009 to 2018, accusing the club of creating "sham" contracts with commercial partners to covertly inject over £830 million into their football operations. City has appealed the verdict.
Burnham's previous role as Mayor of Greater Manchester has prompted questions regarding his relationship with the club's Abu Dhabi ownership. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch had called for the government to disclose all information concerning meetings between Burnham and Manchester City representatives.
"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," Burnham stated on the Rest is Politics podcast. "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."
The prime minister had initially expressed concern to the BBC about potential implications for Manchester City's ownership if they decided to sell following the guilty verdict. He later denied that his reaction had "downplayed the seriousness of the findings."
Sources told BBC Sport that some Premier League clubs were so "astonished" by Burnham's stance that they were "concerned" about potential political interference in the appeal process.
Burnham served as Mayor of Manchester from 2017 until earlier this year, a period coinciding with significant success for Manchester City. In his capacity as mayor, he advocated for Gulf investment as a strategy to foster economic growth in Manchester, a policy pursued by city leaders before Burnham became the inaugural elected mayor of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority.
Addressing his past comments, Burnham said, "I don't think I misspoke." He elaborated that his focus at the time was on the Labour Party conference, and his interviews were related to that event. He emphasized that his comments were not linked to the charges against City, stating, "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."
The independent commission's process, which concluded with a verdict announced last month after a 42-day hearing in 2024, found City guilty of all charges except one concerning a lack of cooperation with the Premier League investigation. The commission's report noted that "a number of important club witnesses gave false evidence in key respects and that some knowingly gave untrue and dishonest evidence."
Manchester City returned to play for the first time since the guilty verdict on Sunday, defeating Liverpool 3-0.