Sport: Women on Governing Bodies

Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts

Thursday 6th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend. The figure of 30% for women is one thing, but the Sporting Future strategy also outlines the requirement for diversity in all areas and expects the sports national governing bodies to produce diversity programmes which should be published annually in order to report on progress.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I declare a number of interests in this area that are listed in the register. A number of governing bodies could do much better on this. The pipeline is incredibly important, but what are the Government doing to ensure ex-athletes—I declare an interest—have an opportunity to move on to boards? A number of athletes are on programmes. There could be training opportunities. It is not just sitting on boards and being chief execs and chairmen of governing bodies, but senior coaching roles, where we have a huge lack of women numbers.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I completely agree with the noble Baroness, who obviously knows about these things first hand. UK Sport is working to address this, but there are issues that have to be addressed. The main thing is there has been a sea change in attitudes towards diversity in general and women in sport in particular. The present Sports Minister deserves great credit for taking a very firm approach to this and making significant progress.