UK Sports Minister Richard Caborn was in Parliament today to meet MEPs to discuss the Commission's forthcoming white paper on the future of sport in the EU.

There was a general fear that the Commission white paper will not adequately address three major issues: the number of "home-grown" members of a team; the collective sale of TV rights; and placing spending caps on teams.

Qualified football referee (and Conservative MEP in his spare time) Chris Heaton-Harris was alone in taking a different view on TV rights. While he believed that selling TV rights collectively is better for the game, he stuck to his guns about the rights of some clubs to sell TV rights individually, such as Barcelona and Real Madrid in Spain. This is not a view widely held as not only does this give these two clubs an unfair advantage in their own leagues, it also gives them an unfair advantage when competing in European competition. Chris also argued against spending caps (which have proved successful in the Rugby and Football leagues), saying they contravened the free market.

An area everyone agreed on, and an area Richard was extremely keen to see at the fore of the discussion was the issue over "home-grown" players. How could we implement this objective, that sport's governing bodies (such as UEFA), national governments and the European Parliament all support, without falling foul of EU employment laws? "Leave it to the Courts" is the Commission's recommendation but unfortunately the Courts might declare the practice illegal under current legislation regarding the free movement of labour. It would be better to have clarification that the Commission considers the UEFA 'home-grown player' rules to be acceptable.

After the meeting, I had lunch with UEFA President Michel Platini and Press Officer William Gaillard who agree with the above. However, I couldn't resist the opportunity to upbraid them on their comments on Liverpool supporters at the European Cup Final in Athens, and implicitly, all English club supporters for travelling to matches without tickets. They are not the only ones to do that and there is little that can be done about it. What UEFA should do is focus on what it CAN do, namely have a proper system of checking tickets at the stadium. I know people who walked straight in without tickets, which is ludicrous and will only encourage ticketless supporters to try it on in the future. There was also a problem of forged tickets being sold to supporters.

On the last point the University of Leeds is setting up a new Anti-Forgery Research Centre (ARC) which is at the forefront of developing technologies such as invisible barcodes that could help prevent this problem in the future. I am putting them in touch with UEFA.