Discrimination in Sport

Debate between Rosena Allin-Khan and Hannah Bardell

Wednesday 12th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dr Allin-Khan]

It is almost as though my hon. Friend had read my speech. He is right about the sterling work of Show Racism the Red Card, which works tirelessly in schools to ensure that racism is rooted out from the heart, where it never deserves to see the light of day. Kick It Out has also worked for many years to eradicate that blight on our beautiful game.

Sadly, discrimination in sport, as in society, also extends to gender. Now retired from the pitch, former Arsenal and England player Alex Scott is a successful and respected TV pundit. Despite 140 caps for the England women’s team, multiple FA cups, several premier league titles and a Champions League trophy, Scott is still subject to intense sexist abuse. Alex Scott has said that she receives sexist insults online every single day.

Outside the pundits’ box, things are hardly better. In March, The Daily Telegraph surveyed more than 300 elite sportswomen from 20 sports and found that, shockingly, more than a third had been subjected to sexist comments from fans or social media, more than half had been the victim of gender discrimination and almost a third said that they had suffered sexual harassment.

When I called out an incident of sexism aimed at a female BBC reporter, in one day alone, I received 1,000 abusive tweets, including one from a former footballer and pundit who still presents on the radio today. He said, “Imagine being offended by it,” then called me an expletive. Other colourful tweets directed at me included: “Get a grip, woman”; “Get a life, silly girl”; “Tell her I’d give her a slap”—another expletive—and then a threat that I might get a slap; and “Shut your mouth and get back to the kitchen to make my tea”. I am rather good at making a cup of tea, particularly a builder’s brew, but I have no desire to get into any kitchen and make a cup of tea for someone directing social media abuse at me. Those tweets remain online today.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech and I congratulate her wholeheartedly on bringing such an important issue to the Floor of the House. On social media abuse, does she share my shock that, when I was at the Women’s World cup at the weekend, supporting Scotland, I took a clip of a celebration by a female footballer on my iPad while watching one of the other matches, posted it online, and FIFA almost instantly got in touch with Twitter and had it removed? Does the hon. Lady agree that it is incredible that social media companies take copyright issues much more seriously than abuse?

[Dr Allin-Khan]

I thank the hon. Lady, whom I will call a friend and a teammate—I will explain shortly—for her intervention. How can it be that she was requested to remove her clip, yet millions of pieces of abuse directed at many Members of the House, let alone the wider public, remain online?

If elites of the sporting world are experiencing such prevalent sexism, one can only imagine how much worse the problem is at the grassroots. Fortunately, one area of the grassroots that I can vouch for is the women’s parliamentary football team. I would like to take the opportunity to give a great big shout-out to my football colleagues, who are some of the finest women I have ever played alongside. As our recent match against Crawley Old Girls showed, it does not matter what gender or age people are, or indeed what party they represent or which newspaper they may write for, sport is a uniting force.

Back pitch-side, Sol Campbell, with his hugely successful Arsenal and England career, also had impressive form in his first managerial role. When he took on the role of manager of Macclesfield Town in 2018, the Silkmen were rooted at the bottom of League Two and five points from safety. Under Campbell’s leadership, Macclesfield pulled off the great escape and stayed up with a last day draw against Cambridge United. All that was not enough to protect him from discrimination, however, with audible homophobic chanting recorded by several fans during a January game between Macclesfield and Cheltenham. The FA is investigating and I hope those responsible face appropriate and harsh consequences.

A titan of a different sport, our very own Gareth Thomas, played rugby for Wales 100 times and is the second-highest try scorer for his country. In December 2009, he courageously became the first openly gay professional rugby union player.

[Dr Allin-Khan]

I am very happy to say that he also played rugby league. Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for your very important intervention and clarification.

Sadly, in November last year Thomas was viciously attacked just for being gay. Showing the immense strength of his character, however, Thomas chose to pursue restorative justice against his attacker. He made a full recovery, but the incident is a reminder of the barriers LGBT sportspeople continue to face, barriers that need not be there and must not be there.

[Hannah Bardell]

On homophobia in sport, does the hon. Lady agree that it is frankly ridiculous that we have countries such as Russia and Qatar holding international competitions like the World cup, when they persecute LGBT people and have seriously dubious human rights records? If we want to send a really strong message, we should not be allowing such countries to hold very important competitions.

[Dr Allin-Khan]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, articulated perfectly as usual. She is absolutely right that no international competition should be held anywhere where fans, players, coaches and the wider public at large are persecuted for being of a minority group.

It will surprise no one in this Chamber that the discriminatory views I have outlined are plaguing social media platforms. This abuse is mostly left unpunished on social media. Racists, sexists and homophobes can leave awful comments, but without the use of specifically harmful phrases the algorithm does not notice how discriminatory those posts are. These comments would be indefensible in a court of law and indefensible in front of an employer, yet they go unpunished on social media. With social media, it is direct and it is personal. I know that many Members in the Chamber have themselves experienced abuse on social media. We use Twitter daily and not just for our work. We scroll through when we wake up in the morning, while we travel to work or are on a tea break. When something hateful is directed at us, the pain and fear runs deep. It is personal; it is disgusting; and it is wrong.

For our sportsmen and sportswomen, who often carry millions more followers than the average MP, the abuse, and the pain that is felt, is magnified. Faceless accounts are run by bullies in bedrooms, sitting in their underpants, where an attacker can keep their anonymity and post vile replies to tweets. These people can be identified, but only through a police investigation. We want a system introduced where this information is sent to our sports’ governing bodies and clubs, so that offenders can be banned from attending matches and sporting events. To be clear, a minority of fans take part in homophobic, sexist or racist chanting and it is important that we do not tar all fans with the same brush.