Sport and the 2012 Olympics Legacy

Barbara Keeley Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Whittingdale]

I absolutely do. The games in London, and particularly some of the wonderful role models established in many different sports, certainly led to growing enthusiasm among young people, and hopefully the games in Rio next year will have a similar impact. Some of those effects are not picked up in the Active People survey, because young people do not yet come into the statistics.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State touched briefly on women’s participation in sport, but there is a key issue, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) referred. We already had a gender gap of 1.8 million, and 200,000 fewer women are taking part in sport, but the only activities that are growing are things like park runs and the 10 km runs hon. Members have mentioned. There is a serious problem when that is the only type of sport that is increasing.

[Mr Whittingdale]

I agree, which is why the Select Committee that I chaired in the last Parliament carried out an inquiry on women and sport. As the hon. Member for Rhondda mentioned, the barriers to women’s participation are varied. A lot have to do with image, embarrassment, and the nature of the facilities available. It is a complicated picture. That is certainly something that I am keen to see addressed. There are few people more qualified to talk about women’s sport than the Minister with responsibility for sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), who is a very active participant. This is an issue to which we both attach considerable priority.

--- Later in debate ---

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

I want to talk about women’s participation in sport. As I said earlier, 212,000 fewer women have participated since 2012. That is a real issue, because there is already a wide gender gap: 1.8 million fewer women than men engage in sport once a week, and 80% of women do not get enough exercise to benefit their health. That is why this is a serious issue, and that is why we should be discussing it.

Even before the recent falls in participation, there were reasons for us to be concerned about the gender gap. Nationally, 40% of men participate in sport every week compared with 30% of women, but the figures for women are much lower in some parts of the country. It is all very well for Conservative Members to talk about London, but the position is not the same in Greater Manchester, and it is not the same in Salford, where the figures are 20% and 24% respectively. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said, the low participation rates in some parts of the country will lead to diabetes, coronary heart disease and strokes. That is why this is a serious issue.

A number of barriers have been identified, as the Secretary of State said, to increasing female participation in sport, including practical, personal, social and cultural issues, but there are also financial reasons, which my hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Christina Rees) laid out so well. I co-chair the all-party group on women’s sport and fitness with Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson. One of its three main aims is to investigate the participation of girls and women in sport and to reduce those barriers to participation. Its first meeting is next Tuesday and I urge hon. Members to attend, if they can, and to join if they care about this issue.

I congratulate the new sports Minister on her role. I know she cares about these issues. She was a member of the all-party group in the previous Parliament, and she has said that the Government have an out-of-date sports strategy. She says she is going to rip it up and start again. I hope she does.

The Minister might want to think about a couple of things as she does that. Unequal funding is the key issue running from school sports through to the unequal pay and poor sponsorship levels in elite women’s sport. Yesterday was the 43rd birthday of the Title IX legislation in the United States: landmark civil rights law that prohibits gender discrimination in any educational programme or activity that receives federal support. It has been law since 23 June 1972 and is famous for its transformative effects on girls and women’s athletics. The US has the highest level of participation of girls in sport in the world, largely due to Title IX bringing in equal funding for girls and women. Figures show that participation has increased by 990% in high schools and by 560% at college level since the law was passed.

In this country, however, we do not have that law. We have very poor media coverage of women’s sport and a lack of sponsorship. The Select Committee that the current Secretary of State chaired looked at those issues, but we have to do something about it. The sports strategy must include working with the media to ensure better coverage of women’s events.

Finally, on pay and sponsorship, the pay levels of women footballers playing in the women’s super league and in international competitions are very low and probably a surprise to many. The majority of centrally contracted players earn about £20,000 from their clubs, but there are players in the super league who are on as little as £50 a week. Those who are tempted to comment on the standard of women’s football need to think about that low level of reward. We won the women’s rugby world cup with a team who were not even paid professionally; nearly all of them had other jobs. How could any of us train and win at international level if we had other jobs to do?

There are so many other issues we could talk about, and they will, I hope, be explored in other debates; that is a very sound idea. We will definitely explore them at future meetings of the all-party group.