Football: Women’s World Cup

Lord Triesman Excerpts

Wednesday 8th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Courtown]

My noble friend is quite right that it should be. However, the fact is that there will not be a women’s football team representing Great Britain at the Rio Olympics in 2016. As I have said, that is very disappointing. The English FA lobbied for this but the other home nations were not in favour.

[Lord Triesman (Lab)]

My Lords, I join the Minister in congratulating the women’s team. Its success vindicates those who fought very hard to see it properly funded and to make us accept that football is not, as many used to say, simply a man’s game. In my view, that success is not dimmed in any way because it ended in an own goal. I have scored a few of those on football pitches—and even more in here.

There have been a significant number of MBEs and other awards to successful men’s teams but very few to women’s sport, particularly in football. Will the Government look at whether we should reflect on the success in that way? Could the Government encourage the FA to include more than a couple of women on a rather tokenistic basis among the 100-plus men on the Football Association council?

[The Earl of Courtown]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, posed two questions. The first concerned honours. Since 2012, there have been much improved figures for honours for women generally in sport but it is still up to the public to make nominations, particularly for those at grass-roots level. The noble Lord also mentioned women on sports bodies and mentioned the FA in particular. We need to ensure that our sporting organisations are diverse and represent a range of views based on different backgrounds and experience. There is a goal that all national governing bodies will have 25% of their boards made up of women by 2017. Around half of them are already achieving that goal.