Apologies if this is a repeat
From the Times
Saracens salary-cap judgment ‘should be published in full’
The chairman of the panel that found Saracens guilty of breaching the salary cap wants his full written judgment to be published by Premiership Rugby because he believes it is in the public interest.
Lord Dyson, a former Master of Rolls and one of the leading legal minds in the country, said the lack of transparency was “unhealthy” and that rugby supporters deserved to know the truth.
Saracens were found guilty of breaching the salary cap in three consecutive seasons, fined £5.36 million and deducted 35 league points. The full 103-page written judgment is under lock and key in the Twickenham offices of Premiership Rugby Limited (PRL) and will not be published due to the league’s own regulations.
PRL released a brief summary of the sanction but did not include any explanation as to how Lord Dyson, Aidan Robertson, QC, and Jeremy Summers reached their decision.
“I am a believer in open justice,” Lord Dyson told the Law In Sport podcast. “It is really frustrating that I can’t talk more about this. I don’t actually really understand why the public is kept out of all this because there is a real public interest in this.
“What I don’t understand is why they wouldn’t publish the decision. The regulations say you can’t. If the PRL and Saracens had agreed to the publication of the decision then presumably it could have been published. I don’t think either was willing to agree to it.
“In a way, at least as bad as that is the fact the regulations say the PRL can publish a summary of the decision — they have done that but the summary is so brief. What it doesn’t say is why we imposed the penalty we imposed.
“There were two particular factors which, in our view, made it a particularly serious case. I drafted a summary for their consideration, which included those two factors but they didn’t include them, so the public has no idea why we imposed the penalty we imposed. I can’t see a justification for the cloak of privacy that is imposed in these cases.
“There is a real public interest in this. This is a very famous club. These very successful businessmen who have backed the club have done these things and I can’t see why the public should not be entitled to know why we reached the decision we reached.
“I am sure in the case of PRL they probably disagree strongly with what I have just said. I would love to know why. There was an enormous amount of interest in the Saracens case. It is still being mentioned even now, weeks after the event, and people have a right to know.”
PRL’s explanation would be that the regulations only permitted them to issue a brief summary of the sanction and nothing more detailed, which was why Lord Dyson’s key explanations were not included in the press release.
Senior executives from each of the 13 PRL member clubs are permitted to read the full judgment but not keep a copy or make notes, in an apparent attempt to ensure the contents remain confidential.
“If decisions such as our Saracens decisions were made public, then all the other rugby clubs would know what we had decided in this case then it would help them know what can be done and can’t be done,” Lord Dyson said.
“The salary cap manager [at PRL] will of course be aware of our decision but I don’t think that is good enough. The clubs should also be aware so that everybody would then be able to know.
“People don’t know about the decision. They don’t know why the authorities are unwilling to disclose the decisions. It is all very unhealthy. I can’t believe this will subsist for very much longer.”
The lack of transparency in this case — and the previous occasion that Saracens breached the salary cap, in 2015, when the other clubs agreed a private financial settlement — will form a key tenet of the review being undertaken by Lord Myners.
There appears to be an acknowledgement at PRL that the regulations need to change. The secrecy has been damaging for the reputation of the league and dragged out the whole situation.
Lord Myners, a former government minister, has been tasked with undertaking a full investigation of the salary cap structure, which could lead to tougher penalties and hand PRL greater monitoring and investigatory powers.
The review will also include recommendations of best practice from around the world, which means Lord Myners will have to consider whether publishing player salaries would improve transparency and trust in the system.
Always a Wasp