European Women’s Football Championship: Girls and Young Women

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the 2022 UEFA European Women’s Football Championship and participation of girls and young women in sport.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. Before we kick off, I want to pay tribute to the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), who has shown great leadership in this place, not just on women’s football but women’s sport in general. I really hoped she could be with us today, but sadly she cannot.

I am grateful for the opportunity to lead this debate, which has been a little late due to the sad death of the Queen. It was scheduled for just after the summer recess following the Lionesses’ success but had to be pushed back. I want to take this opportunity to record my and the House’s congratulations to our fantastic English national football team, the Lionesses, on their historic win at the European championships earlier this year.

After 56 years of hurt, England finally brought football back home, and it took the women to achieve it. The nation celebrated and we were all bursting with pride. It was the first time in my life I have ever seen England lift an international trophy in football, and I was bawling my eyes out as it happened. The residents of Teddington in my constituency were so proud that the Lensbury club was the Lionesses’ training base for the tournament—and still is for some of their home fixtures—that crowds gathered that night at about midnight or 1 am to welcome the Lionesses back from Wembley to celebrate their awesome victory.

There is no doubt that the Lionesses brought the nation together this summer, and the legacy of their stunning win is there to be shaped. News this week from YouGov that an extra 4 million of us now define ourselves as fans of women’s sport is testament to their performance. Indeed, women’s participation and profile in other sports is increasing. But like many of the Lionesses themselves, I strongly believe that that legacy should be more than just warm memories. It must mean support for the generation of girls and young women now inspired to get out on the pitch and bend it like Beth.

[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)]

Only 63% of young girls have football offered as part of physical education in school, and football continues to largely be seen as a sport for men and boys. Does the hon. Lady agree that this cultural change should start at a young age to drive passion for the sport among girls and young women, and nurture future talent?

[Munira Wilson]

I could not agree more. The hon. Lady has already cited a statistic I was going to come to later on. I could talk in a lot of detail about how we must promote girls’ sport in schools and the community.

I saw at first hand the impact of England’s triumph on my own daughter, who is eight. Together we attended her first live football match during the tournament, just down the road from where we live in Brentford. We went to see Spain play Denmark. By the final, when England were playing Germany, she was giving her own expert commentary on the game and providing live demos of various tricks in our living room. She was super excited when we had the chance to watch the Lionesses beat the USA at Wembley last month.

Like parents and PE teachers across the country, I believe girls like my daughter deserve every chance and should be given every possible opportunity to follow that passion, be it for football or any other sport. This is a legacy that the Lionesses themselves have thrown their full energy into achieving. Following their success in the summer, they wrote to both the Conservative party leadership candidates, calling on them to take action to ensure every young girl in the nation is able to play football at school. They called for all girls to have access to two hours of PE lessons every week. The current Prime Minister responded at the time by saying he would love to see all schools provide two hours a week.

It sounds like a simple ask, but as the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) has already mentioned, just 63% of schools in England offer equal access to football during PE lessons. That means that more than one in three girls are excluded from the beautiful game. When we look at secondary education in particular, the numbers get even worse, with less than half of schools empowering girls to play football as part of the curriculum. At secondary schools, teaching gets increasingly gendered, whereas in primary schools, children are taught in mixed groups.

According to the Youth Sport Trust, a staggering 42,000 hours of PE have been lost over the last decade as the curriculum has been more and more squeezed, with a relentless focus on tests and ensuring boxes are ticked for Ofsted inspections. Girls in particular have been impacted. The trust found that by the age of seven, girls were already a whole year behind on physical literacy—that is the development of movement and sports skills.

With such a patchy offering of girls’ football in schools, it is no surprise that many of our current generation of women footballers have spoken of struggling to access the sport, relying on extracurricular clubs and far-flung opportunities to rise to the top of their game. That is not to talk down the importance of extracurricular clubs and activities. The Liberal Democrats would love to see a much stronger offer from the Government in that area, including vouchers to help all children access extracurricular opportunities—both as part of the post-pandemic catch-up package, and longer term, outside the covid recovery.

A number of organisations are doing a sterling job in supporting the women’s game. Of course, that includes the Football Association. It runs grassroots initiatives in schools, such as the Disney-inspired Shooting Stars programme, and in the community, such as the Squad Girls’ Football programme, which is designed to keep secondary school-aged girls engaged with football where PE lessons may fall short. That is supported by Sport England. The FA’s community-based Weetabix Wildcats programme for girls is offered through Hampton Rangers Junior Football Club in my constituency on a Saturday morning. I was also pleased to support the FA’s #LetGirlsPlay initiative earlier this year, by going to play football with girls at both Twickenham School and Trafalgar Junior School in my constituency. I urge all Members to take up the opportunity next year. It was great fun—even if people made total fools of themselves, as I am sure I did—but it was also a real boost to the schools and to the pupils there.

McDonald’s Fun Football programme brought England legends Sir Geoff Hurst and Karen Carney into Parliament last week. I learnt that it runs waves of footballing activity across the country, with over 500 children in my constituency benefiting from the programme at Orleans Park School. They also enabled two year seven pupils from Teddington School to have the training session of a lifetime with footballing hero Beth Mead in September. There is no doubt that those extracurricular clubs and corporate responsibility initiatives play a vital role in nurturing children’s passions, but it is equally important that they do not become a substitute for access to sport in school for free as part of the curriculum. Otherwise, we risk football—and indeed many other sports—becoming elitist and open to only those who can afford to pay.

I am grateful to the parliamentary engagement team for all its work in securing feedback and stories from parents, young people and teachers for this debate. One teacher, James, said:

“My daughter is involved in netball and cricket outside of school. This has given her great fitness and confidence and is hugely beneficial to her overall wellbeing. For her to actively participate in this way costs hundreds of pounds per year but she simply would not have had any opportunity to play team sport regularly otherwise.”

We cannot let that cost be a barrier.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

The hon. Lady will be aware that for many decades, many of Scotland and England’s national players for the women’s teams have had to do other day jobs, while their male counterparts have been paid frankly outrageous fortunes to play professionally. Does she agree that we need greater coverage in the media, and greater sponsorship and support for the women’s game, so that our female players can enjoy some of the riches that the male players enjoy?

[Munira Wilson]

I could not agree more. As the hon. Lady says, there needs to be parity in terms of salaries, sponsorship and so on. That does not mean that the women’s game wants to ape the men’s game. I went to an event in this place celebrating women’s football, and the clear message given by those who are involved in the women’s sport was that women’s football has its own special culture. Frankly, I think it is far healthier and far nicer than the men’s sport. I would never have taken my young daughter to a men’s football match, just because of the sort of culture and atmosphere there.

I do not think that male footballers need to be paid as much as they are paid, but I do think that women footballers should be paid more. If I am not mistaken, Lewes Football Club is the one football club in the country that pays men and women equally.

I welcome the Minister who will answer the debate today, the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the right hon. Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew); I welcome him to his place and to his new role. He is from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and I very much welcome some of the positive noises that have come from both the Secretary of State and her predecessor, the right hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Ms Dorries), on this issue.

I understand that the Department is committed to investing some £230 million to build or improve up to 8,000 sports pitches across the UK. That is clearly a step in the right direction. However, it is also yet another example of how utterly disjointed the Government’s policies are when it comes to our children and young people, because at the same time that DCMS is building community pitches, schools across our country are haemorrhaging playing fields and other sports facilities due to shrinking budgets. Liberal Democrat analysis has uncovered that 100 school sports fields have been sold off in the last seven years, impacting more than 75,000 pupils. That not only puts the Lionesses’ legacy at risk but potentially bars tens of thousands of children from a full range of outdoor sports.

While we are on the subject of sports fields, it is with great regret that I tell the House that Udney Park playing fields in Teddington, which is in my constituency, was sold off in 2015 by Imperial College to a hedge fund company that sought to make a quick buck on that precious community site. Having been prevented by planning inspectors from concreting over the fields and building on them, the facility has since gone to rack and ruin, with community groups fighting tooth and nail for it to be maintained for community sporting use.

I salute my constituent Jonathan Dunn, who has led the charge to bring Udney Park playing fields back into community use, and I hope that, now the ground has been sold on to another investor, that it will be revitalised quickly and then opened up to the many grassroots sports clubs in my constituency that are clamouring for playing field space across the Borough of Richmond and simply cannot get enough of it. If the Minister is able to offer any assistance in that regard, I would be absolutely delighted.

Participating in sport is a fantastic way to take care of young people’s physical health, to boost their mental wellbeing and to teach children important skills, such as teamwork and communication. More than 150 children and young people sent in their views for this debate, as part of the Pupil Parliament programme, and they wrote overwhelmingly about the positive impact that sport has had on their lives. They said it made them more confident and more fulfilled, and gave them a sense of community.

At the same time, when those children were asked what had been holding them back, the same few words cropped up and again, including phrases such as “men’s sport” and “women’s sport”, which is the idea that netball and gymnastics are female and football, rugby and cricket are male. In light of the Lionesses’ victory, those ideas and phrases may seem like outdated tropes, but they are far from being a thing of the past when our children and young people still feel held back and over a third of girls do not have the opportunity to play football at school.

[Margaret Ferrier]

Women’s football has a longer history than people might think. Church documents reportedly refer to women playing football in my local authority area in South Lanarkshire back in 1628. Does the hon. Member agree that women’s contributions to football over the centuries should be recognised more frequently, to inspire girls and young women to take up the sport today?

--- Later in debate ---

[Munira Wilson]

Yes; indeed I could not agree more. We need to celebrate and give a profile to that history as part of the process of inspiring the next generation, in the same way that often happens with the men’s game, to be honest.

I am very grateful that the public engagement team have facilitated pupils’ interaction with this debate and of course I also thank all the students from the Bishop of Hereford’s Bluecoat School, Eardisley CE Primary School and Knighton Church in Wales Primary School for participating in the process and feeding back to this debate. One parent, Diana, described the “misogyny” she had witnessed at her daughter’s mixed-gender primary school football club. She said:

“I approached the school and asked if they could run a group for girls who were leaving the after-school club, one after another. The school offered her netball. It was at that point she lost all interest in sport.”

So I will echo the very simple ask of one of the pupils who responded to my survey. She said:

“Let girls participate in all sports at school. I want to do the same sports as the boys—if we do dance, so should they. And if they get…rugby, so should we.”

As MP for Twickenham, I am so proud of our strong sports heritage and the thriving network of grassroots sports clubs, run almost exclusively by dedicated volunteers. At the elite level, Twickenham is of course the home to English rugby, and we will play host to the Rugby World Cup. The gendered title of “Women’s World Cup” was dropped last year, so the Rugby World Cup is coming to England in 2025. I hope that England’s women’s team will come to defend their world cup title. We all wish the Red Roses, England’s women’s team, who have reached the final this weekend against hosts New Zealand, the very best of luck.

In Twickenham, we also have the Harlequins, a premiership rugby club, whose home the Stoop is just across the road from the Rugby Football Union. They have a phenomenally successful women’s team. Bushy Park was home to the very first parkrun, and we also lay claim to the oldest hockey club in the world, in Teddington, which has a number of girls’ and women’s teams.

I spoke earlier this week to an inspirational woman in my constituency, Natalie Raja, who founded Bushy Park girls’ cricket club 10 years ago, when her daughters and other girls were struggling to find anywhere to play cricket. From the handful of girls she gathered together in 2012, she now has 120 girls and women from age 5 upwards, and a cabinet full of trophies. Sadly—this shocked me—as recently as last season, when she was negotiating access to pitches for her teams, she was still receiving emails saying, “We need to get the boys’ fixtures sorted first, then we can organise the girls.”

In football, as well as Hampton and Richmond football club, there are so many grassroots football clubs—I could not mention them all. Two I could mention with plentiful girls’ teams are Whitton Wanderers—they are very close to where I live—and Hearts of Teddlothian. I give a special shout-out to the Parakeets and Cygnets, dedicated girls’ clubs founded by a local dad, Eamonn, when he could not find anywhere for his girls to play football because they were regularly being put off by joining boys clubs.

Thamesians women’s rugby team, who currently train at St Mary’s while Udney Park is out of action, flooded my inbox with support for this debate to talk about the impact of sport on their lives. I was particularly moved by this comment:

“I’m 25 years old and I have been playing rugby since I was 19. I am 6ft 1 and 85 kg and for the first 19 years of my life, I hated the way I looked, felt and I had no confidence and no motivation. I found rugby as a way of making some new friends and enjoying a run around while doing so. To say it changed my life is an understatement. Women’s sport is special, because it brings a group of people who face similar challenges in day-to-day life together, and provides a safe space, a place for encouragement and love, and lights a fire within people who didn’t realise they had it. Being around women who are praised for having different body types has skyrocketed my confidence. I feel empowered in my life outside of sport, knowing the things that I have accomplished and my worth.”

That is what the Lionesses want for girls and women across England: the chance to get involved in women’s football and, indeed, other sports, and to allow it to change their lives. My Liberal Democrat colleagues and I want the same: equal access to the joys and opportunities of playing sport for every child, no matter their gender, their background or where they happen to live.

In an interview on Sunday, Baroness Sue Campbell, the FA’s director for women’s football, spoke positively about the Lionesses’ meeting with the current Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, but said that the big issue is the Department for Education. I wholeheartedly support the steps DCMS has taken to support women and girls’ access to sport in the community. I look forward to hearing more from the Minister about what else he and his Department are doing to support girls and women’s participation in sport at all levels, especially the grassroots. I hope he can also tell us how he plans to work constructively across Government, especially with the Department for Education.

In particular, does the Minister agree that the sport premium is so important when it comes to supporting access to sport and tackling childhood obesity? Will he press his Education colleagues to continue funding the sport premium in schools? Will he press the Department to include PE in the Ofsted inspection framework, as the FA and the Lionesses have called for? What of the Prime Minister’s assertion that he would like to see two hours of PE for all? Will we see that come to fruition? Will the Minister impress on his colleagues the need for a moratorium on selling off school playing fields, which means funding schools properly so they do not have to do that?

I hope the Minister will agree—as we have heard from the quotes and stories I have cited—that sport is crucial for everyone’s physical and mental wellbeing, yet women are too often left behind. In particular, sport helps to boost children’s educational and academic outcomes. If we truly want to celebrate the Lionesses’ amazing victory this summer, we need to secure their legacy by working together to help deliver for England’s next generation of sportswomen.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stuart Andrew]

I think that the hon. Lady will know that this issue will continue to be high on my agenda. The Government are fully committed to supporting women’s sport at every opportunity, and to pushing for greater participation, employment and commercial opportunities in women’s sport, and for greater visibility both in the media and, as was mentioned, in this House. Let me start by wishing the Red Roses the very best of luck for the rugby union world cup final this weekend.

I am delighted to take on the role of Minister for sport at such an exciting time, and I look forward to making real progress on issues that I feel very passionately about, such as equality and diversity. Overall, I can see that there has been clear progress in a number of areas, but it is also clear that we have a long way to go. I am determined to strive for greater equality and opportunity for girls and women.

I join the hon. Member for Twickenham in celebrating the wonderful success that we witnessed in women’s sport this summer, when our very own Lionesses beat the German team at Wembley to lift the UEFA European championship trophy, teaching the men a thing or two. That inspirational tournament was staged in July in venues across England, from Rotherham and Wigan down to Southampton and Brighton.

So many records were broken during the tournament, but I will just mention two outstanding examples. The final at Wembley was attended by a crowd of over 87,000 people. That was a record for a women’s international game in Europe, and it broke new ground for a women’s or men’s Euro final tournament game. The tournament also became the most watched women’s Euros ever, with a global cumulative live viewership of 365 million across TV, out-of-home viewing and streaming. That massive number is more than double the number of people who watched the last UEFA women’s championship, staged in the Netherlands in 2017.

My local pub, the Red Lion, was transformed; usually, everyone is watching Leeds United, but they watched the championship, and I cannot tell you how excited they were and how they cheered. It was fantastic to witness. The tournament was a truly groundbreaking moment for sport. It has super-charged interest in the women’s game, bringing it to the forefront of people’s mind. We are looking forward to that momentum being maintained and built on, with the FIFA women’s World cup in Australia and New Zealand next year.

When I went to Wembley to see the Lionesses beat the USA, I sat next to Baroness Sue Campbell, and my arm was bruised afterwards because she was clutching on to it with so much excitement. When I meet her in December, I will know to sit on the opposite side of the table. She is clearly a passionate advocate of the sport.

To commemorate the team’s incredible achievement, we are working with the Football Foundation and the FA to name sites after the players in the towns and cities that shaped their careers. That is in addition to investing £230 million between 2021 and 2025 to improve grassroots sports facilities across the UK and help more women and girls to access high-quality facilities. I am looking forward to going to Stenhousemuir multisport facility tomorrow to see the work going on there and to support the Billie Jean King women’s tennis tournament in Glasgow.

We know this is not a one-off. Major sporting events unite the nation, instil pride in our communities and give us all something to feel good about, in a way that few other things can achieve. They also provide fantastic opportunities to create lasting legacies. We continue to see the impact of the women’s Euros. It has increased interest in the club side of the women’s game. Clubs in the women’s super league, which kicked off in September, are still reporting huge surges in demand for tickets. The new broadcast deal with Sky will see women’s football reach more people than ever.

The women’s super league attendance record has been smashed, as we have already heard, after 48,000 watched the north London derby between Arsenal and Twickenham—sorry, Tottenham, I am getting Twickenham on the brain—on Saturday 24 September. That would have been frankly unimaginable just a few years ago. We saw something similar in Birmingham for the Commonwealth games in the summer. There were some important firsts, including more medal events for women than men—a first in major multisport event history—and 173,000 spectators attended the T20 women’s cricket at Edgbaston, a record for women’s cricket.

This year’s rugby league world cup, played across venues mainly in the north of England, has been the first time that all three world cups—men’s, women’s and wheelchair—have been staged at the same time. That has helped to give visibility and a platform to those teams and players. Women and wheelchair players are also receiving prize money for the first time, as well as equal participation fees across all three tournaments. I wish all the teams every success.

As a country, we continue to reap the benefits of hosting major and mega sporting events. That is why the Government are fully committed to building on our world-leading reputation as a host. Although it is right to celebrate and reflect on the success of the Euros, we must now refocus to ensure that that success translates to the continued growth of the women’s game. That is why I am pleased that in September we launched an independent review of the future of women’s football, which is being chaired by former England and Great Britain footballer Karen Carney.

The review is looking at how to deliver bold, sustainable growth of the women’s game at elite and grassroots level. The Secretary of State and I recently met Karen to discuss progress to date. I look forward to working closely with her as the review progresses over the coming months. This is a defining period for the women’s game, and I want to ensure that the review contributes to the bold and sustainable growth of the game at elite and grassroots level.

Challenges frankly remain for women’s and girls’ participation in sport. As we have heard, Sport England data showed that the pandemic wiped out all of the gains made in women’s sport participation over the previous five years, falling back to just below 60% of women being active. The latest data, published in April this year, showed that men are still more likely to be active compared with women. The latest Sport England data for children and young people from December 2021 is more positive, showing that physical activity levels are very similar for boys and girls in education, with 45% of both defined as active. However, it is clear that more work needs to be done to continue to break down the barriers that prevent women and girls from being active, such as a fear of judgment, safety concerns and a lack of time.

We know that football is a popular choice for women and girls to get active—indeed, it is the most popular team sport for women and girls. Programmes such as Game On, Shooting Stars and Barclays Girls’ Football School Partnerships are engaging more girls in football at school—for example, more than 3,200 primary schools participate in the Shooting Stars programme. Initiatives such as Sport England’s This Girl Can continue to inspire millions of women to get active, regardless of shape, size, or ability. That campaign has helped to eliminate fear of judgment by normalising women taking part in sport and changing perceptions of what sport is. It also aims to prove that barriers such as time and money can be overcome.

The Lionesses’ fantastic performance at the 2022 women’s Euros has truly inspired the nation, and it is great to see that confirmed by the recent figures published by UEFA in its post-tournament flash report. For example, more than half of local residents and two in five spectators and tournament volunteers have been inspired to do more sport and physical activity generally, and 84% of those participating in UEFA’s women’s Euro 2022 legacy activities report that doing so has improved their confidence and self-esteem. We want to build on that momentum.

[Munira Wilson]

The Minister is outlining a lot of fantastic community initiatives. If he is going to come on to this topic, I hope he will forgive me, but could he address some of the questions I asked about working with the Department for Education to make sure that PE is on the agenda in the way the Lionesses have been pushing for?

[Stuart Andrew]

The hon. Lady does not have long to wait. We want to build on the momentum that the tournament has created to ensure that every woman and every girl has the opportunity to take part in football if that is what they want to do, and—more importantly—to get active in any way that suits them personally. Our £230 million grassroots investment will be key to achieving that.

The Secretary of State was delighted to meet the Lionesses last month; they are extraordinary ambassadors for sport. We will continue to invest in grassroots sport to bring on the next generation of Lionesses. We know how valuable PE at school is: it gives pupils an opportunity to excel, be active and lead healthy lives. We are actively working with the Department for Education to understand the barriers that prevent the ambition of two to two and a half hours of PE a week being achieved. I commit to personally engaging with my colleagues in the Department for Education to ensure that girls have equal access to sport. We are also reviewing the barriers that prevent girls from getting access to two hours of PE. There is more work for us to do to identify and address the different barriers to participation that exist for young people, and I absolutely commit to making that my priority.

Alongside that, the Department for Education is working on updating the school sport and activity action plan, which will set out actions to improve PE teaching in primary schools and help schools to make better use of their facilities. That will include a £30 million project to open those facilities after hours. More broadly, we need to work with other Departments, such as the Department of Health and Social Care. This is a policy area I care passionately about, and I know that if I do not do something about this issue, I will have far more debates to answer, although I will be happy to do so.

[Munira Wilson]

I thank Members for participating in the debate. I was told there was a delicious irony in the Member for Twickenham talking about football; I think there is a delicious irony in the fact that four of the seven Members present do not represent English constituencies, but also congratulate the Lionesses and wish them well. I am pleased to see the Scots enjoying English victory.

I thank Members for the important points they made, not least regarding the equalities issue—I wholeheartedly add my support to the comments made about Qatar hosting the World cup. I thank the Minister for his passion and commitment and urge him to keep pressing the Department for Education, particularly on the sport premium. With spending cuts coming down the tracks, that is an easy thing to go after, but it is so important, particularly for less well-off children. Given that we are running out of time, I will end there.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the 2022 UEFA European Women’s Football Championship and participation of girls and young women in sport.