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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what financial support the Government plans to provide to rugby league clubs to ensure the safe return of local sport following the covid-19 pandemic.

To date, the government has provided an unprecedented £300 million Sport Winter Survival Package to give a lifeline to organisations that would otherwise not survive the winter as a result of the restriction on spectators announced from 1 October. This included a provisional allocation of £12 million to support rugby league which is in addition to the £16 million cash injection government announced in May 2020 to safeguard 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. This sector support was recently boosted by an extra £50million to help grassroots sports clubs and organisations as part of Sport England’s new strategy Uniting the Movement. Further details of Sport England funding including the organisations that have benefited can be found at: https://www.sportengland.org/why-were-here.