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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what plans she has to encourage female and BAME involvement in organised sport.

Government’s strategy ‘Sporting Future: A New Strategy for An Active Nation’ and Sport England’s strategy ‘Towards an Active Nation’ highlight the importance of focusing on groups that are particularly unlikely to take part in sport and physical activity, such as women and girls and some Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) groups. It places a clear emphasis on putting the customer first and there are some innovative programmes to encourage female and BAME participation in sport, such as the This Girl Can Swim campaign.

But as the Government’s sport strategy makes clear, participation is not just about playing sport, and the "Sports Governance Code", launched in October 2016, seeks to ensure the very highest standards of governance across all sport bodies that receive public money, including in terms of diversity, and aims to help the sport sector to be more inclusive and welcoming to all. If sports bodies do not adhere to the code and cannot demonstrate full commitment to becoming compliant with its requirements they will not be eligible to receive public funding.