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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, how much funding her Department has provided to the Rugby Football League since 2017; and on what projects that funding has been spent.

I am looking forward to welcoming teams from across the world to the Men’s, Women’s and Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup which will take place in October and November. As part of this, the government has provided £10 million worth of funding to the CreatedBy legacy programme to support the development of large and small scale projects.

The Rugby Football League has received support from the government’s £600 million Sport Survival Package which ensured the survival of sports organisations throughout the pandemic. The Rugby Football League received £16.7 million loan support and £1.95 million grant support from the package, totalling £18.6 million of combined funding. This funding has safeguarded the immediate future of the sport for the communities it serves.

Furthermore, rugby league clubs will have benefitted from the £220m of National Lottery and Exchequer funding committed by Sport England since March 2020 to support community sport clubs and exercise centres through this pandemic.