Football Association (FA) chair Greg Clarke has issued an ultimatum to the government ahead of today’s debate: back my proposals or I quit.

MPs will debate a motion of “no confidence” in the FA’s ability to reform itself and meet its duties as a governing body, with critics accusing the association of a lack of diversity and unhappy with its antiquated structure.

Clarke refused to accept that the FA is “failing football” but did acknowledge that “our governance needs changing.”

In an open letter published late on Tuesday, he said: “We do need to be more diverse, more open about decision-making and we do need to better represent those playing the game.

“But we are not sitting idly by. The FA has a set of proposals to improve our governance which we will ratify and then take to the Minister of Sport in order to get her approval.

“If the government is not supportive of the changes when they are presented in the coming months, I will take personal responsibility for that. I will have failed. I will be accountable for that failure and would in due course step down from my role.”

Today’s debate has been secured by Damian Collins MP, chairman of the culture, media and sport select committee which has published two reports in recent years calling for an overhaul of the FA’s board and council and Clarke, who has only been in post for five months, refers to it as another of the “challenges” he predicted when he took over but there is no mistaking his annoyance it has come so soon.

That annoyance is shared in the government, with Sports Minister Tracey Crouch understood to believe the debate, which will not lead to a binding vote, is premature, given the fact she has asked the FA, and other leading national governing bodies, to come back with reform proposals by the end of March.

However, the FA believes the criticism, as on other issues, is overdone and Clarke rejects Collins’s claims the governing body is no longer fit for purpose.

“I strongly dispute the motion put in front of Parliament that the FA is not meeting its duties as a governing body,” said Clarke.

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