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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure women in football receive equal pay to their male counterparts.

It is important that women and men are recognised and paid equally for doing the same work. I welcome the positive step that has been taken to ensure that all companies in Great Britain with more than 250 employees are required to report their gender pay gap to the Government Equalities Office.

We know there is some work to do to narrow the gender pay gap across the sport sector. If this is to happen progress must continue to be made in the wider culture of sport to ensure women are treated equally to men at all levels. I am pleased to see Lewes FC paving the way by paying their women’s team the same wages as their men’s team and we hope others can look at how they can reduce gender pay gaps.

In order to close the gender pay gap it is also crucial that we provide greater exposure and commercial opportunities. As part of a broader aim to support greater equality of coverage, in September 2019 the government consulted on whether to add women’s equivalents of men’s events currently on the list to both group A and group B categories. The consultation closed on 11 December 2019. The government is now carefully considering the responses in detail and we will respond in due course.