HC Deb 13 September 2004 vol 424 cc967-9
3. Mr. Jim Cunningham (Coventry, South) (Lab)

What action her Department has taken to promote female professional athletics in the United Kingdom. [187893]

The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Tessa Jowell)

I would like to begin by joining the Minister for Sport and Tourism, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Central (Mr. Caborn), in taking this opportunity to thank all our Olympians, men and women, who performed so magnificently at the Athens Olympics. They inspired and moved us all, and redoubled our determination to try to bring the Olympic games to London in 2012. In addition to thanking and congratulating our athletes, I would also like to thank Team GB and the scores of support staff who made those performances possible. My right hon. Friend and I will also be supporting our athletes at the Paralympics, which start this weekend.

The Olympics have clearly focused our pride on our women athletes, who won four of our five track and field medals in Athens. For the future, UK Athletics is fully committed to implementing what it has described as a new equality standard. In practice, that will mean ensuring that girls and boys, and men and women, have a chance to do well and to compete on an equal basis, whatever the sport.

Mr. Cunningham

I associate myself with my right hon. Friend's remarks, but I would also like to ask her what proportion of the resources allocated to the Olympics will be allocated to females athletes, so that we can maintain the high standards that we have seen at the recent Olympics?

Tessa Jowell

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. The equality standard to which I referred will be applied by the governing bodies, and will be one of the conditions against which decisions to fund governing bodies will be taken. It is a lever with which the Government can influence the behaviour of those bodies, to ensure that they take seriously the ambitions of women in sport as well as those of men.

Mr. Don Foster (Bath)(LD)

May I associate the Liberal Democrats with the Secretary of State's congratulations to Team GB and all its support staff at the Olympics? We also wish our team well in the forthcoming Paralympic games. May I remind her, however, that under this Government, female participation in athletics and sport has declined? Does she agree that this is not helped when television sports coverage of women's sports is only 5 per cent. of the total coverage, and less than 3 per cent. in our tabloid newspapers? Will she therefore lobby the newspapers and broadcasting companies to ensure that they start to give our women a fair deal?

Tessa Jowell

Yes, yes and yes.

Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody (Crewe and Nantwich)(Lab)

Is the Secretary of State aware that, in Crewe, we have a special team of young people who are taking part in the Paralympics, of whom we are inordinately proud and who have produced some very good results in the past? Will she make a special effort not only to encourage these children but to find ways of financing the work that they do, which is tremendously important to them and which needs to be encouraged at every level?

Tessa Jowell

I thank my hon. Friend very much for her question. This is one of the reasons why my right hon. Friend the Minister for Sport and Tourism and I want to go to Athens, to provide the support that our Paralympic athletes deserve.

Mr. Andy Reed (Loughborough)(Lab/Co-op)

I am sure that all hon. Members here would like to congratulate the British Olympic team and the Paralympians, and, if so, that they would also like to sign my early-day motion 1602. I hope that they will do so, to double the number who have already signed it. The problem for women's sport in particular is the massive drop-off rate during the teenage years. By the time young women get to the age of 17, the number participating in sport has reduced dramatically. What work is my right hon. Friend doing with the Department for Education and Skills to ensure that girls continue with sports at school, and what role models can those girls look up to when, as the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) rightly said, there is inadequate media coverage of women's sports? Let us hope that we can use Kelly Holmes and others to ensure that in future more women will want to participate.

Tessa Jowell

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. Many of our female athletes—Kelly Holmes in particular—take their responsibilities as role models very seriously. Long before their recent Olympic fame, they were in schools providing exactly the kind of leadership that my hon. Friend is talking about. We are very concerned to address the issue that he describes, and the school sport partnerships that are now covering nearly 50 per cent. of schools place a special focus on presenting sport to girls in a way that they can engage with. We recognise the issue, we are determined to tackle it, and we will be judged by our success in doing so.