Discrimination in Sport

Debate between Alex Sobel and Rosena Allin-Khan

Wednesday 12th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Allin-Khan]

As an avid football fan who stands on the terrace alongside many other fans, I always feel very welcome. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that we have come a long way, but we have not come far enough. We need to stamp out any form of discrimination that makes any fan—even one—and any player—even one—feel unwelcome and as though there is not a place for them enjoying the sport that they love on any terrace in our country.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

There is another form of discrimination relating to the second largest team sport played by black and minority ethnic people, marginalised communities and 11 to 15-year-olds: basketball. Basketball is hugely underfunded and under-supported. It is a sport played by the majority of black people in this country and it would take just £1 million a year to support it at elite level. Other sports played in posh public schools are hugely supported, so is it not a form of discrimination in sport that a sport played by our urban youth and black people is not supported but those played in the top public schools are?

[Dr Allin-Khan]

Basketball has no greater advocate than my hon. Friend, who makes very important points that I hope are heard across the House about the importance of making sure that no child is discriminated against in their life in relation to achieving their full potential in whatever their endeavour is, whether that is academic or about exercising their sporting prowess. We need to make sure that every single child, every single young person and every single anybody who wants to have access to sports and fulfil their potential is able to do so.

We must recognise the work done by governing bodies, clubs and supporters’ groups across all sports to combat discrimination. Furthermore, I am clear that the only way to make progress on this is by involving fans’ groups and giving fans a seat at every table. Fans are the beating heart of sport and sport enjoyment. With the far right on our doorstep, let us be aware of their attempts to infiltrate football and other sports. Let us ensure that we are brave in speaking up against them. When combating the far right, education is an extremely effective tool. Without the understanding of a deep-rooted issue, without realising the connotations behind a particular chant, innocent fans can get caught up in unsavoury actions. When there is a deliberate instance, however, of hate speech, whether on the terraces or on Twitter, the Ministry of Justice should be encouraging the Crown Prosecution Service to prioritise these cases and seek the harshest possible sentences.

We on the Opposition Benches, and I hope all of us in this House, want to live in a country where differences are welcomed—not just accepted, but wholeheartedly welcomed. I believe that there is no greater unifier than sport. Let us send a clear message from this House today that discrimination in sport will not be tolerated.

Safeguarding Vulnerable Adults: Care Homes

Debate between Alex Sobel and Rosena Allin-Khan

Tuesday 26th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Allin-Khan]

I thank the hon. Lady—I will call her my hon. Friend—who is tireless in fighting against loneliness and for people to have dignity in their communities, and she makes the most essential of points: we are at the start of a ticking timebomb.

While all this was going on, my father was admitted to hospital one afternoon for a routine issue. As we were undressing him, we found bruises all over his body. Did the Ensham House care staff phone to check on him? No. Did Optivo show any care? No. Instead, we were served an eviction notice, detailing a list of allegations against my father without any evidence. How heartless is it to receive an eviction notice while in hospital? What did Wandsworth Council do at this time? Nothing. What was London Care doing? In the space of just five months, London Care had five separate managers at Ensham House. This all started after the first incident with my father. One manager after another came and went, unfamiliar with my father’s safeguarding cases. Some were hostile, others made up incidents involving my father being difficult. Dementia is a degenerative illness, but it does not spiral downwards overnight. Prior to those incidents, as I previously mentioned, not a single issue regarding my father’s difficult behaviour had ever been reported.

In all meetings, it was agreed that the extra care setting was appropriate for my father as he still knew his way around the area, he had a level of independence and my very young daughters felt comfortable visiting him there. Why deny someone their last few months of independence? The extra care setting was deemed by the social services team and everyone involved to be entirely appropriate for him. However, each time we interacted with Ensham House care staff following the first incident in which we found my father beaten, and when we had not been called, we felt as though we were on trial, that we had somehow made up the fact that he was acting afraid, and our concerns were dismissed by a different manager every month.

We found multiple examples of my father’s medication not being written on the drug chart, with London Care saying that he had refused medication when we had seen him take it. We even found one manager had written a note in the staff communication book asking staff to write negative comments about my father in his care notes. The final nail in the coffin, and the point of no return, was when we found my father unconscious on the floor, with blood on the walls and the floor, and a carer’s set of keys left next to him. Following this, he spent one month in hospital.

Four months after that final event in October, there was nothing from Wandsworth Council addressing any of these concerns. The catalogue of disasters crescendoed last week, when the director of adult social services at Wandsworth Council, Liz Bruce—who had refused to look at photos of my father’s injuries, did not know how many open safeguarding complaints there were relating to my father, did not talk to anyone else who knew my dad and had never met him herself—declared that my father had sustained the injuries because “he had asked for it.” Despite police voicing their concerns in the meeting and saying that they cannot rule out abuse, despite her failure to investigate London Care fully and despite her clearly having no detailed knowledge of the case, she chose to use Optivo’s letter, which was full of unsubstantiated claims in the language of the Ensham House managers, as her proof. Well, I think we can all agree that this is a dangerous, highly unprofessional and highly unsatisfactory approach.

Of course it is easier to blame the patient and the family, anything other than looking inwards and accepting responsibility for the fact that the council is awarding care contracts to organisations that are, frankly, unsafe. Quoting CQC ratings in safeguarding communications, when it is well known that patients are fearful to talk, is frankly unacceptable. If this were happening to the UK’s children, the country would be in uproar, and rightly so. Someone living with dementia is just as dependent in their final years as children are in their first years.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Dr Allin-Khan]

I am just finishing.

With an ageing population and an increase in degenerative illnesses, this issue will only get worse. As parliamentarians, we must act now to ensure that even more families do not experience the horror of finding their loved one bruised, bleeding and terrified. We owe it to the elderly in our community. We owe it to the vulnerable. We have to be their voice. They should not be deprived of their quality of life. We must give our vulnerable a fair chance at ageing safely and gracefully. Their voices must be heard.

Sport in the UK

Debate between Alex Sobel and Rosena Allin-Khan

Monday 4th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Allin-Khan]

The hon. Lady makes a most excellent point. If you can see it, you can be it. I firmly believe that, and in my position as shadow Minister for Sport I have always pushed for equality in the boardroom, not only based on gender but across socioeconomic divides and for the black, Asian and minority ethnic community.

While I celebrate our wonderful Olympic success in London and Rio, I question whether we should be pumping millions into niche sports to gain a couple of gold medals when sports such as basketball, which is ever so popular in the UK, are going through a funding crisis. Should our success be measured by the number of gold medals we win?

[Alex Sobel]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for mentioning basketball. I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on basketball. The UK and Team GB are on track for Olympic qualification, which will happen at the world cup this summer, but we will need the funding from the National Basketball Association and the Women’s National Basketball Association to get our players into that qualification tournament and into the Olympics.

[Dr Allin-Khan]

I know that my hon. Friend has been tireless in his pursuit of ensuring that basketball gets the funding it deserves. I also know that, like me, he was staggered to discover that shooting is getting £6.9 million while basketball, a popular grassroots sport that can be played by all, has had its funding cut.

Should our success be measured by the number of gold medals we can win, or by the millions of people we can motivate to get fit and active and take the opportunity to play the sport they love? Just £23 million a year is being put into grassroots sports by the Government, and half of that was put in under Labour. Local government cuts have resulted in more than 1,000 grass pitches, swimming pools and sports halls being closed over the past two years. The discussion surrounding the sale of Wembley stadium sparked an interesting debate about the funding of grassroots sport in the UK. We believe that the Football Association answered all our questions and had the best intentions, but did we really need to consider selling our national stadium to build grassroots facilities fit for the 21st century?