Andy Burnham: two hospitality dinners with Manchester City chair

Prime Minister Andy Burnham dined twice with Manchester City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak while he was mayor of Greater Manchester. The BBC reports that the hospitality dinners took place in separate home matches in 2017 and 2018 at the Etihad.

The disclosure lands as Burnham faces mounting pressure to explain his past dealings with City since the club was found to have “systematically” broken Premier League rules and will appeal the verdict. Downing Street argued the dinners were simply hospitality at home games and had already been declared.

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This Monday, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority published meetings from Burnham’s time in office, including a formal meeting with Al Mubarak in October 2021 at the UK Government’s Global Investment Summit and an “informal” chat in the stands in 2019 during a testimonial for former player Vincent Kompany. However, the statement did not spell out that it also covered the two hospitality dinners.

A previous GMCA declarations register listed an Etihad dinner in August 2017 for £300 (with then-Manchester City Council leader Richard Leese) for an Everton match, and another dinner in April 2018 for roughly £699 during the Manchester City-Manchester United derby. The register has since been deleted from the GMCA website. City was found in September to have breached Premier League financial regulations over a nine-year period between 2009 and 2018, using “sham” contracts to secretly funnel more than £830m into football operations, and it denies wrongdoing.