Sport: Women and Girls

Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

My noble friend speaks from a huge amount of experience and she is of course right that it is extremely important that we develop this from the earliest age—getting children out of pushchairs, for example, and onwards. As for primary schools, she is right. I am sure that she will be reassured to know that discussions are happening at the moment about how to strengthen school sport from primary schools upwards. An announcement will be made very shortly.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson]

My Lords, media coverage is very important and I declare an interest as chair of the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation’s Commission on the Future of Women’s Sport. However, for elite success and media coverage we also need good participation figures and recent data have shown that mums are much less likely to take their daughters to play sport than their sons because of their own experience of sport in school. Can the Minister say what plans the Government have to insist in changing the culture around women so that they encourage their daughters to play as much sport as their sons?

[Baroness Northover]

Again, the noble Baroness speaks with huge amounts of experience and the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation is a crucial body in trying to take this forward. Sport England has awarded a grant to that organisation to try to identify how best to encourage women and girls to be involved in sport. The noble Baroness is absolutely right that mothers who were themselves switched off from sport are less likely to encourage their children to be involved in sport. That is one key area where we welcome insights into how best to tackle this.