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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what the evidence basis is for his Department's decision to allow 4000 spectators at sporting events in tier 1 areas after the November 2020 covid-19 lockdown.

The safety and security of players and spectators remains of paramount importance and we will continue to be led by wider public health guidance. These capacity limits have been agreed by the Government with SGSA and PHE as a maximum capacity for spectators, in light of the updated Covid Tiering system.

We want fans back in stadia as quickly as is safe to do so, and believe that now we can permit these still extremely limited numbers of fans to attend matches. A series of successful pilot events demonstrated the ability of the sector to follow covid secure guidance. We will be updating our guidance to the sector, and the SGSA’s SG02 guidance sets out explicit guidance on how safe socially distanced capacities can be maintained.