Asked by: Louie French (Conservative - Old Bexley and Sidcup)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what discussions she has had with devolved Governments to ensure prevention, support and treatment for gambling harms is available across the UK.
Answered by Ian Murray - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Government introduced a statutory gambling levy, a mandatory charge on licensed gambling operators, in April 2025. Funds collected from the levy will be used exclusively for the research, prevention and treatment of gambling harm across Great Britain. The levy has raised just under £120 million in its first year.
20% of these funds will be allocated to research, 30% to prevention and 50% to treatment. Scotland and Wales will receive their appropriate share, to ensure prevention, treatment and support are available across Great Britain.
Officials are in frequent contact with officials in the Scottish and Welsh Governments, ensuring a stable transition to the statutory system. Additionally, both Welsh and Scottish officials sit on the Levy Delivery Group and the Levy Programme Board, each meeting quarterly. Terms of reference and membership of these groups can be found here.
While the UK Government and Scottish and Welsh Governments are coordinating closely on levy implementation, health policy is a devolved matter.
Asked by: Louie French (Conservative - Old Bexley and Sidcup)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, if she will set out the timeline for the youth portion of Every Child Can Dormant Assets funding to support the delivery of grassroots enrichment and youth provision.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
‘Every Child Can’ is a £132.5 million programme to support the provision of services, facilities or opportunities between 2024 and 2028 to meet the needs of young people. This funding will increase disadvantaged young people’s access to enrichment opportunities in the culture, sport, and wider youth sectors. Development is in active progress and further details will be announced in due course, including expected timelines.
Asked by: Louie French (Conservative - Old Bexley and Sidcup)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, which Minister within her Department has responsibility for (a) measuring the impact of the National Youth Strategy on the provision of enrichment activity for young people and (b) leading on implementation of enrichment programmes in that Strategy.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
I am responding as the Minister for Sport, Tourism, Civil Society and Youth with responsibility for DCMS youth enrichment policy.
On 10th December 2025, we published ‘Youth Matters’, the first cross-government Strategy for young people in England in 15 years. Backed by £500m of DCMS funding over the next 3 years, the Strategy will ensure every young person has somewhere to go, someone who cares for them and a community they feel part of. We are working closely with Other Government Departments to ensure the successful delivery and accountability of the National Youth Strategy, including the implementation of enriching activities for young people. This involves establishing a cross-government reporting and governance process to ensure successful delivery.
Asked by: Louie French (Conservative - Old Bexley and Sidcup)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for Education on the plans set out in the National Youth Strategy for the implementation of enriching activities for young people.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
I am responding as the Minister for Sport, Tourism, Civil Society and Youth with responsibility for DCMS youth enrichment policy.
On 10th December 2025, we published ‘Youth Matters’, the first cross-government Strategy for young people in England in 15 years. Backed by £500m of DCMS funding over the next 3 years, the Strategy will ensure every young person has somewhere to go, someone who cares for them and a community they feel part of. We are working closely with Other Government Departments to ensure the successful delivery and accountability of the National Youth Strategy, including the implementation of enriching activities for young people. This involves establishing a cross-government reporting and governance process to ensure successful delivery.
Asked by: Louie French (Conservative - Old Bexley and Sidcup)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of Local Authorities commissioning gambling harms prevention; and of their capacity to do so.
Answered by Ian Murray - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
In April 2025, the statutory gambling levy came into effect to fund the research, prevention and treatment of gambling-related harm across Great Britain. In its first year, the levy has raised nearly £120 million, with 30% allocated to gambling harms prevention activity.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport, responsible for the implementation and oversight of the gambling levy, remains confident that levy commissioners are best placed to make decisions on the future of their work programmes regarding the research, prevention and treatment of gambling-related harms.
As prevention commissioners, the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) in England and Scottish and Welsh Governments continue to work collaboratively on the development of their respective work programmes, drawing on expertise from across the system. OHID will employ a ‘test and learn’ approach as they transition to the new levy system, to better-understand what interventions are most effective in preventing gambling harms at a local, regional and national level.
Local authorities are well placed to play a central role in preventing gambling‑related harms across local communities. An OHID-led stocktake of local authority activity in this space indicated that whilst some activity is already underway, there is appetite within local authorities to do more.
OHID is developing a fund for all upper-tier local authorities across England, which will aim to strengthen local capacity to tackle gambling‑related harm by facilitating improved understanding of local need and supporting the development of effective local and regional networks. This will be delivered alongside the Gambling Harms Prevention: Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) grant fund which launched in January to fund VCSE organisations to deliver prevention activity across England until March 2028. More information on the grant is available at the following link:
Asked by: Louie French (Conservative - Old Bexley and Sidcup)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, pursuant to the Answer of 9 December 2025 to Question 96315 on Sports: Finance, how much of the £400 million announced for investment into grassroots sports facilities she anticipates will be spent in 2026, and on which sports will that funding be spent.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Government’s announcement of £400m of investment into grassroots sports over the next four years will ensure that we continue to deliver high-quality multi-sport facilities in communities that need them across the UK, including Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, in order to increase participation and allow people to be active.
According to Sport England’s Active Places database, as of December 2025 there are 56,855 non-pitch-based sport facilities in England, which can be broken down by local authority. More details can be found here.
We are working on our plans for future grassroots sports funding and we will continue to engage the Devolved Governments and our local partners across the UK on this matter. We will provide an update early in 2026.
Asked by: Louie French (Conservative - Old Bexley and Sidcup)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, pursuant to the Answer of 8 December to Question 96978 on Sports: Facilities, what data relating to non-pitch-based sports infrastructure her Department holds; and whether it holds datasets on local authority breakdowns.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Government’s announcement of £400m of investment into grassroots sports over the next four years will ensure that we continue to deliver high-quality multi-sport facilities in communities that need them across the UK, including Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, in order to increase participation and allow people to be active.
According to Sport England’s Active Places database, as of December 2025 there are 56,855 non-pitch-based sport facilities in England, which can be broken down by local authority. More details can be found here.
We are working on our plans for future grassroots sports funding and we will continue to engage the Devolved Governments and our local partners across the UK on this matter. We will provide an update early in 2026.
Asked by: Louie French (Conservative - Old Bexley and Sidcup)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, whether the £400 million announced for grassroots sports facilities on 19 June 2025 will include Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Government’s announcement of £400m of investment into grassroots sports over the next four years will ensure that we continue to deliver high-quality multi-sport facilities in communities that need them across the UK, including Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, in order to increase participation and allow people to be active.
According to Sport England’s Active Places database, as of December 2025 there are 56,855 non-pitch-based sport facilities in England, which can be broken down by local authority. More details can be found here.
We are working on our plans for future grassroots sports funding and we will continue to engage the Devolved Governments and our local partners across the UK on this matter. We will provide an update early in 2026.
Asked by: Louie French (Conservative - Old Bexley and Sidcup)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment she has made of the difference between (a) harm caused by gambling and (b) harm associated with gambling; and if she will set out which of these measures is the policy objective of her department when it comes to gambling policy.
Answered by Ian Murray - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Government is acutely aware of the impact that harmful gambling can have on individuals, their families and communities, and we are committed to strengthening protections to safeguard those at risk of both harm caused by, and associated with, gambling.
Asked by: Louie French (Conservative - Old Bexley and Sidcup)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of changes to the statutory consultee role of Sport England in the planning system on the level of provision of (a) pitches, (b) courts and (c) other sports facilities.
Answered by Stephanie Peacock - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Government is currently consulting on proposed changes to Sport England’s statutory consultee role in the planning regime and I encourage anyone interested to feed into that process. The aim of this consultation is not to reduce access to sports facilities. We will continue to work closely with the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government on the proposed reforms.