Baroness Brinton
Main Page: Baroness Brinton (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, it is crucial that funding is invested strategically in the right sports, the right athletes and the right support programmes. The noble Lord is right that England Netball is having great success at the national level, winning the gold medal, in its strengthened domestic superleague and in increasing participation at grass-roots level. Not only does it benefit from Sport England support but we will be welcoming to Liverpool the 2019 World Cup, where I wish it every success. This is a work in progress. Netball’s focus needs to be on looking ahead much further than just two or three years.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, following on from my noble friend’s Question, one problem that netball, squash and bowls face, because they are not Olympic sports, is that their performers are not eligible for athlete performance awards, which is a different issue to talent pathways. The APAs for swimming are £3.6 million, for hockey £4.4 million and for modern pentathlon over £600,000. All those sports were also played at the Commonwealth Games. Are we not setting back the three sports that are not played at Olympic level by not allowing them to be eligible for APAs?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
We will certainly be looking at that, but UK Sport has a clear remit, agreed with government, to maximise medal performance at Olympic and Paralympic Games, which covers many of the things that the noble Baroness has mentioned. This allowed it to achieve unprecedented medal success at Rio, but I will take her point back.