Asked by: Stephanie Peacock (Labour - Barnsley East)
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 adequacy of funding available for elite deaf athletes.
Answered by Stuart Andrew - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Government is dedicated to making sport in this country accessible and inclusive for everyone, including d/Deaf people.
Sport England has committed £1.2 million between 2022 and 2027 to UK Deaf Sport to boost deaf sport at the grassroots level and build wider participation. They have also agreed to explore a series of small-scale talent pilots for d/Deaf athletes. These pilots will see Sport England, National Governing Bodies, and UK Deaf Sport working together to explore support around elite competitions and suggest potential improvements.
UK Sport uses funding provided by the Government to support athletes with potential to achieve success in Olympic and Paralympic sports. As the Deaflympics falls outside of Olympic and Paralympic sport, UK Sport are therefore unable to fund athletes targeting this event. This is in line with the Government’s approach to other Paralympic sports where competition is not offered in an athlete's particular classification or discipline.
Asked by: Stephanie Peacock (Labour - Barnsley East)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what recent assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of piloting alcohol sales in sight of pitch in (a) women’s, (b) National League and (c) League Two football.
Answered by Stuart Andrew - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
As set out in “A sustainable future - reforming club football governance”, the Government acknowledges the case for pilots of alcohol sales in sight of the pitch in the lower leagues as set out in the Fan Led Review of Football Governance, and will continue to engage with a range of stakeholders on this.
Asked by: Stephanie Peacock (Labour - Barnsley East)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, when her Department plans to publish the results of the Listed Events: Digital Rights Review.
Answered by Julia Lopez - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
We will set out more detail in due course.
Asked by: Stephanie Peacock (Labour - Barnsley East)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, how many times the National Physical Activity Taskforce has met since it was created; and what progress that taskforce has made towards achieving its targets set out in the Get Active strategy.
Answered by Stuart Andrew - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The National Physical Activity Taskforce (NPAT) was launched in September 2023 as part of the government sport strategy Get Active, to bring together government departments, the sport sector and independent experts to deliver coordinated and innovative policy that will help encourage people to get active.
The NPAT meets quarterly and has held two productive meetings since its launch, with the next meeting scheduled for March. To make the ambitions of the Sport Strategy a reality requires long term behavioural change and that is why we have set our targets to 2030.
To help reach our target to get 3.5 million more people active by 2030, the Government is investing over £400 million into a wide range of grassroots sports facilities, including park tennis courts and swimming pools between 2021 and 2025. This is on top of the £323m in Exchequer and Lottery Sport England funding provided to help get people active.
We map our trends, targets and trajectories using the Sport England Active Lives Survey, and the Active Lives Children and Young People Survey, which provides data and insight into activity levels and behaviours. The NPAT commissions short term-actions and milestones that can be measured to supplement our long term targets. The minutes and actions of each meeting are published on gov.uk.
Asked by: Stephanie Peacock (Labour - Barnsley East)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, whether her Department has had discussions with representatives from professional boxing organisations on investing in grassroots boxing.
Answered by Stuart Andrew - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
Supporting grassroots sport is a key Government priority and we are committed to ensuring everyone has the opportunity to be able to play sport and be active. Our new strategy ‘Get Active’ sets out our unapologetic ambition to build a more active nation, with a target to get 3.5 million more people classed as ‘active’ by 2030.
We provide the majority of support for grassroots sport through our Arm’s Length Body, Sport England, which receives £323m in Exchequer and Lottery funding each year. Since 2020, Sport England has provided over £11.9m of investment into projects which facilitate participation in boxing. This includes £6.3m of system partner funding which has been provided to England Boxing to grow and develop boxing across the country between 2022 and 2027. England boxing has a team of club support officers based around the country who provide guidance to grassroots clubs looking to secure funding for new projects.
In addition to this UKSport have invested just over £12m in Team GB amateur boxers during the Paris investment Cycle.
Asked by: Stephanie Peacock (Labour - Barnsley East)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps the Department is taking to support amateur boxing.
Answered by Stuart Andrew - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
Supporting grassroots sport is a key Government priority and we are committed to ensuring everyone has the opportunity to be able to play sport and be active. Our new strategy ‘Get Active’ sets out our unapologetic ambition to build a more active nation, with a target to get 3.5 million more people classed as ‘active’ by 2030.
We provide the majority of support for grassroots sport through our Arm’s Length Body, Sport England, which receives £323m in Exchequer and Lottery funding each year. Since 2020, Sport England has provided over £11.9m of investment into projects which facilitate participation in boxing. This includes £6.3m of system partner funding which has been provided to England Boxing to grow and develop boxing across the country between 2022 and 2027. England boxing has a team of club support officers based around the country who provide guidance to grassroots clubs looking to secure funding for new projects.
In addition to this UKSport have invested just over £12m in Team GB amateur boxers during the Paris investment Cycle.
Asked by: Stephanie Peacock (Labour - Barnsley East)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, with reference to her Department's White Paper entitled High stakes: gambling reform for the digital age, published on 27 April 2023 and her article in the Racing Post, published on 2 November 2023, what steps she is taking to help ensure that the proposed financial risk checks are frictionless for consumers.
Answered by Stuart Andrew - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
His Majesty’s Government recognises that, while millions of people gamble online without experiencing problems, for some it becomes an addiction with serious consequences. The Gambling White Paper, published in April this year, outlines a balanced and proportionate package of measures in response - one of which is a new regime of frictionless financial risk checks.
As stated in our recent response to the e-petition concerning the implementation of financial risk checks, we are clear that the checks should not overregulate the gambling sector, should not unduly disrupt the millions of people who gamble without suffering harm, and should not cause unnecessary damage to sectors which rely on betting, in particular horse racing. These will be implemented to protect those at the greatest risk of gambling harm and to stop potentially devastating and life-changing financial losses. These checks will be based on data sharing, and we will not roll them out until we are certain they are frictionless.
We have held a number of roundtables with representatives of industry, horse racing, and the Gambling Commission to discuss how we can work together to ensure that these checks will be frictionless. We have also stressed that the status quo, a host of industry-run checks, are often inconsistent, ad hoc and can be unnecessarily onerous, with customers having to manually provide reams of personal data to navigate a maze of different tick-boxes. We have urged the Gambling Commission and industry to work together to mitigate the impact of these checks while we develop a new, frictionless system.
We and the Gambling Commission have also been working closely with the Information Commissioner’s Office, credit reference agencies, and UK Finance to ensure new frictionless checks can be implemented in an effective but proportionate way. We are also exploring the role of pilots or phased implementation to ensure the checks are effective and work as intended.
Asked by: Stephanie Peacock (Labour - Barnsley East)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what consultations her Department undertook with children and young people to (a) inform and (b) prepare the policy paper entitled Get Active: a strategy for the future of sport and physical activity.
Answered by Stuart Andrew - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Youth Voice Advisory Group was set up to encourage young people to participate and engage with national policy. They were consulted to help inform and shape the focus of the ‘Get Active’ strategy. We intend to continue to engage with young people as we implement measures in Get Active, as we have done at a recent roundtable with the Youth Sport Trust and at the most recent meeting of the National Physical Activity Taskforce.
Asked by: Stephanie Peacock (Labour - Barnsley East)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, whether she has had recent discussions with Cabinet Office colleagues on issuing guidance to Ministers on upholding the operational independence of (a) the BBC and (b) Ofcom in respect of the conflict in Gaza.
Answered by John Whittingdale
The BBC is editorially and operationally independent and decisions around its editorial policies and guidelines are therefore a matter for the BBC.
The BBC has a duty to provide accurate and impartial news and information. That is particularly important when it comes to coverage of highly sensitive events. The BBC’s accuracy and impartiality is critical to viewer trust. And as the external independent regulator of the BBC, Ofcom is responsible for ensuring BBC coverage is duly impartial and accurate under the Broadcasting Code and BBC Charter.
The events in Israel since 7 October are terrorist acts committed by a terrorist organisation, proscribed in the United Kingdom since 2021 and designated as such by many other governments and international organisations.
However, calling these acts what they are, and accurately labelling the perpetrators, helps audiences to understand what has happened, is happening and its context.
That is why the Secretary of State has communicated with the BBC, and with the public, her disappointment that the BBC has refused to describe Hamas as terrorists, or the atrocities it has carried out as terrorism. The Secretary of State made that point to the BBC on multiple occasions since the terrorist attacks on 7 October.
Ofcom has been clear that responsibility lies with the BBC to decide the vocabulary it uses to describe unfolding events. The Broadcasting Code does not prevent broadcasters referring to terrorist organisations, nor does it prevent them referring to Hamas as terrorists.
Asked by: Stephanie Peacock (Labour - Barnsley East)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what recent conversations her Department has had with platforms on the technological feasibility of offering regional prominence.
Answered by John Whittingdale
The Department engages regularly with stakeholders – including TV platforms – on all aspects of the Media Bill, including matters relating to prominence.
In particular, the Bill was published in draft on 29 March 2023 and the Department subsequently engaged with key stakeholders to ensure that it would deliver the desired outcomes for industry and audiences. The Bill also underwent pre-legislative scrutiny conducted by the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee.
Following this engagement, we are confident that the measures set out in the Bill, including in relation to regional prominence, are technologically feasible.