Meg Hillier
Main Page: Meg Hillier (Labour (Co-op) - Hackney South and Shoreditch)Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
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Mr Whittingdale
The voting on Friday was not public, although there has been widespread speculation about which countries supported Mr Blatter and which voted for the alternative. The important thing now is to try to build as wide a consensus as possible, and in the early stages that will be within UEFA. I very much hope that the French will be a part of that consensus.
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s robustness in this matter, but further to the question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), what further conversations is the right hon. Gentleman having with his counterparts around the world? We clearly need to see pressure from UEFA but also courage from the political masters around the world.
Mr Whittingdale
The hon. Lady will know from the exchanges that took place last Thursday that the Minister for sport, the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), wrote on that day to all her counterparts in the European capitals to call for co-ordinated action. This is a matter for football in the first instance, and I want to work closely with the English FA and the other home nations’ FAs, but if they believe that it would be helpful for us to try to persuade other countries to act together with us by contacting members of the Governments of those countries, I would be happy to do that.