Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, if she will make an assessment of the implications for her policies of the debate that took place at the Council of Europe between 24 and 28 January 2022 on sports policies in times of crisis.

The Government recognises the crucial work of the Council of Europe and in particular the PACE in this sphere, noting that recommendations will go to the Committee of Ministers in due course for appropriate review.

The Government recognises the important role that sport and physical activity plays, and took action to support the sport sector during Covid as a time of crisis. This is demonstrated by the £600 million Sport Survival Package set up in November 2020 as a result of restrictions on crowd capacities.

Furthermore, the £100 million National Leisure Recovery Fund has supported local authority leisure centres to recover and reopen during the pandemic. This is in addition to more than £6 billion of unringfenced funding that has also been given to local authorities since the start of the pandemic to allocate in line with local needs which includes leisure facilities.