This petition calls on the government’s new Football Regulator to introduce urgent, independent governance oversight of the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL).

PGMOL has an outsize influence on English football. Its referees can award penalties (89% chance of a goal) or send players off, and its VAR officials can cancel or award goals.

Yet despite having more of an influence on games than the most prolific Premier League striker, they earn a fraction of the salary of top players. This makes it a huge point of weakness to football’s integrity.

Despite this, there is no discernible governance oversight of PGMOL. Although nominally answerable to English football’s governing body and leagues, the Football Association, the Premier League and the English Football League (EFL), in practice it is entirely self-governing. 

This lack of governance translates into an egregious lack of diversity. Its referees are largely drawn from one, small section of England - the northwest - and almost all are white, working-class men.

Five years ago a study found that more than a third of the Premier League’s English footballers come from London. Yet at the same time not a single referee comes from England’s largest population centre.

The Premier League is one of the most important assets the UK has to project its image around the world. It is the richest league in world football and it deserves the best referees. It is time to abolish PGMOL and restructure English football’s system of officiating.

That should mean, where possible (and inter alia):

• An independent, expert oversight panel reviewing referee and VAR decisions every week, perhaps supported by AI technology
• Hiring the best referees from around the world
• Drawing on best practice from other sports’ anticorruption measures e.g. surrendering telephone records and bank-account details
• For match officials to provide their whereabouts information at all times, in the same way as athletes must under World Anti-Doping Agency rules
• Paying much bigger salaries to referees, commensurate with the responsibility they hold in the game

Only by introducing wholesale reform can trust be restored in Premier League refereeing. The time to introduce that reform is with the introduction of the new Football Regulator.

If you believe English football deserves the best, most objective officiating, please sign this petition.