UK Sports: Funding

Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they have assessed the funding allocations to individual sports from 2017 onwards announced by UK Sport following the Rio Olympics in 2016.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Ashton of Hyde) (Con)]

My Lords, decisions on elite funding allocations are for UK Sport. Its no-compromise approach has delivered our greatest Olympic performance in a century. However, it is crucial that funding is invested strategically in the right sports, the right athletes and the right support programmes. Team GB’s historic medal haul in Rio was an amazing achievement and our athletes made the country very proud. I hope that this success will continue through to Tokyo 2020.

[Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab)]

My Lords, badminton is enjoyed by over half a million people regularly in this country because it is one of the most accessible and affordable competitive sports. Those half a million people cheered when Team GB’s badminton team won the medal that they had targeted in Rio last summer. Yet all their funding—all of it—has been dismissed by UK Sport for the period up to the Tokyo Olympic Games, while sports that won no medals have received millions of pounds. This is surely wrong, and while I recognise and support the view that government should not routinely intervene in the decisions of UK Sport, there is surely a case, on this issue, for Ministers to haul in UK Sport, ask it what is going on and make sure that it makes the right decisions in the public interest for sport in this country in the future.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I start by acknowledging that Chris Langridge and Marcus Ellis did a fantastic job in winning a medal at the Olympics, and deserve a lot of credit. The problem is, first, that this is a matter for UK Sport; and, secondly, that it is not right that Ministers should be involved when the appeals process is still going on. The next stage of the appeals process is going on today and there is yet another stage that badminton can go on to. One reason that those athletes did so well was the potential for winning medals in badminton: since it has been an Olympic sport, Britain has won three medals, China has won 41 and Korea and Indonesia 19 each. So UK Sport took this very difficult decision on that basis purely of the ability and likelihood of winning medals.