Piers Morgan has accused Health Secretary Matt Hancock of creating a “stigma” around Premier League footballers. The Conservative MP sparked a row by calling on top-fight stars to take a pay cut amid the coronavirus crisis last Thursday Express Co uk Reports.
The Premier League and clubs responded by asking players to sacrifice a maximum of 30 per cent of their wages for the next 12 months, with the situation reviewed every four weeks, but some of the leading players believe they are effectively being bullied into the decision.
Express Sport understands the players are committed and willing to make big financial sacrifices – but are determined that their money goes to charities and not to wealthy club owners.
Decisions taken by Liverpool, Tottenham and Newcastle chiefs to furlough non-playing staff has sparked anger.
And Morgan is critical of the Government for targeting the players when the “real issue” is the billionaire owners of Premier League clubs.
The Good Morning Britain host was interviewing Robert Jenrick – the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government – when he brought up the issue of Premier League players being asked to take pay cuts, which would have the knock-on effect of reducing the Government’s own tax receipts.
Morgan asked: “I have a problem with what the Health Secretary’s been doing repeatedly targeting the players, who to my certain knowledge in many cases are either ongoing contributors to a number of charities or intend to make significant contributions.
“Why is the Health Secretary trying to, in a way, put a stigma around footballers when the real issue, it seems to me, is the billionaire owners, not the players, who are furloughing staff, not dipping into their own massive pockets.
“It’s not the players making that decision and yet they’re an easy target and they get whacked in all the headlines and I don’t understand why the Government keeps targeting the players and not the real organ grinders.”
Jenrick replied: “I think that’s a fair point. I think what the Health Secretary was saying was that the everybody needs to play their part.
“The players have a role to play but so do business owners and you shouldn’t be making use of these schemes if you’re a business with all the resources to get through this crisis.
“We need to be careful where we deploy these schemes. These schemes are designed to keep people in work to maintain a connection between an employer and an employee so when we’re out of this crisis businesses can start up again and we don’t have very large numbers of people unnecessarily unemployed.
“If you are a business owner you need to consider carefully whether you should be taking advantage of those schemes because of the cost to the taxpayer.”
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