Racism in Football Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
Nick Thomas-Symonds
Main Page: Nick Thomas-Symonds (Labour - Torfaen)Department Debates - View all Nick Thomas-Symonds's debates with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport
Racism in Football
Nick Thomas-Symonds Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
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Nigel Adams
I totally agree that any form of abuse is unacceptable. We have seen footballers like Paul Pogba, Troy Deeney and Tammy Abraham receive such abuse online through social media. We want to tackle it, and we will work closely with the Select Committee on Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. We have been clear that social media companies need to do more, and we will hold them to account on this issue.
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)
It is a privilege of mine to be president of my hometown football club, Blaenavon Blues. Although, of course, we try to promote the best behaviour at grassroots level, an example has to be set by the highest body in the game in Europe. Will the Minister make it clear to UEFA that if it fails to act properly on last night’s awful racist abuse, it will have consequences right across the game?
Nigel Adams
The hon. Gentleman is spot on. We are making that clear and, as I said, I am writing to the president of UEFA today to say that enough is enough. We have seen too many examples of this horrific abuse. We saw it on TV, and there was CCTV in the crowd—the FA also had monitors in the crowd. It is beyond belief that this is still happening, and we will support the FA, which is unable to comment today because it has asked for an investigation to be launched. We expect the UEFA response to be robust.