Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of implementing the recommendation in the Duty of Care in Sport independent report to Government by Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson, published in April 2017, that the Government should create a sports ombudsman or sports duty of care quality commission, with powers to hold national governing bodies to account for the duty of care they provide to all athletes, coaching staff and support staff.

It is important that the systems elite sports have for dealing with concerns about athlete welfare are as effective as possible, regardless of whether any new service - be that an ombudsman or a different model - is developed. All sports and clubs should have appropriate procedures in place, and when formal channels have been exhausted and a matter remains unresolved, investigations should be conducted independently through an appropriate organisation such as Sport Resolutions UK.

The Code for Sports Governance came into force around the same time as the Duty of Care report was published in April 2017. This imposes clear requirements on all funded sports organisations to have appropriate whistleblowing and safeguarding policies and procedures in place. In addition, UK Sport have proactively worked to strengthen the existing systems, structures and responsibilities for dispute resolution within the high performance system, and introduced numerous measures in the 12 months following the report’s publication. These actions included mandating an independent element in discipline and grievance procedures, establishing a dedicated integrity unit, and introducing an annual Culture Health Check survey that monitors athlete welfare and enables issues to be picked up and addressed.

My department will continue to work closely with UK Sport and keep this issue under review, looking to strengthen provision wherever necessary.