The Premier League has acted like a “bully” in its dealings over extra cash for the football pyramid, Gary Neville has said.

Talks over a ‘New Deal’ on television money between the Premier League and the EFL have been on hold since March, with no sign of any imminent resumption.

Football’s independent regulator is set to be given ‘backstop’ powers to settle the dispute, with Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy stating on Monday that the legislation to bring forward the regulator would be introduced to Parliament “within a matter of weeks”.

The Premier League is committed to investing £1.6billion in solidarity payments to the wider game over the three years up to the end of this season, an arrangement which will continue until any new deal supersedes it.

However, former Manchester United defender Neville believes the top flight should be doing much more to support the sustainability of clubs outside it.

“I have no idea what they’re playing at. They look awful to me,” he said at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool.

“They look selfish. They look greedy. Everything you wouldn’t want to be in life, everything your parents wouldn’t want you to be.

“We’re happy to accept conditions around the money coming down, because the reality is, we want a sustainable game. I’m an owner of a football club (League Two side Salford), I want my club to be sustainable.

“(Football) is not sustainable, and we have a Premier League that are entitled. They feel entitled. They’re the big brother that sit there and distribute scraps of food to the little brothers around the table. It’s not what you do when you’re in a family.

“I know exactly what they’re doing – if they had wanted to have done a deal, they would have done a deal. But their mindset is such of a bully, their mindset is that they can influence a regulator once a regulator is introduced and get a better deal potentially the other side of the regulator coming in.”

The Premier League declined to comment, but top-flight sources have dismissed Neville’s remarks around bullying.

The Premier League is continuing to discuss the football regulator with the new Government and its position remains that light-touch, targeted and proportionate legislation can be made to work.

Neville, along with EFL chairman Rick Parry who was at the same event in Liverpool, criticised the suggestion that an increased distribution to the pyramid would “kill the golden goose” of the Premier League and weaken it in relation to its European competitors.

Parry, using figures published by Deloitte, said the Premier League’s wage spending was £2.2billion more in 2022-23 than the average of the other ‘big four’ European leagues combined.

Included within the £1.6billion flowing down from the Premier League are parachute payments to relegated clubs. There have been calls for the Football Governance Bill to be amended when it is brought back to the Commons to include a consideration of these payments within the regulator’s backstop powers.

Parry said that in 2010 parachute payments totalled £30million, which equated to seven per cent of the total revenue of Championship clubs in 2010. By 2021, Parry said, they had risen to £233m, 39 per cent of the same total.

He described them at Monday’s event at the Labour Party Conference as “the cuckoo in the Championship’s nest” and has called for them to be abolished. The EFL wants its television revenues pooled with the Premier League’s and split 75-25 in the Premier League’s favour.

The Premier League remains committed to parachute payments. It believes they are vital in giving promoted clubs the confidence to spend in order to compete and help them manage in the event of relegation.