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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what communications he (a) has had and (b) plans to have with hon. Members on venues in their constituencies hoping to run pilot sporting events with spectators in attendance as covid-19 restrictions are eased.

The Events research programme (ERP) is overseen by an industry-led steering group co-chaired by Nicholas Hytner and David Ross and working closely with national and local public health authorities. The board will consider the evidence from the pilot events and make recommendations to the Prime Minister and the Secretaries of State for DCMS, BEIS and DHSC on how restrictions could be safely lifted.

As part of our stakeholder engagement, we liaise with a number of companies and organisations in DCMS sectors, and will continue to engage with stakeholders and the scientific community to help shape ERP plans. The ERP delivery team is also working closely with the event operators, local Directors of Public Health and local authorities. I wrote to you on 16 April offering a conversation, and am happy to speak with any member with a pilot event being run within their constituency.

We have selected our pilots to examine a range of settings, venue types, and activity types (e.g. seated or not, indoor/outdoor etc) so that the data is generalisable and findings can inform thinking on the reopening of similar settings across multiple sectors.

An independently-chaired Science Board of cross-Whitehall Chief Scientific Advisors, independent scientists, and public health experts established the pilot approach to generate usable data across a variety of settings and sectors. Priority has been given to settings which allow for testing of mitigations in varying configurations. The ambition of the ERP remains, building a set of replicable data that can be extrapolated to other settings and sectors. To achieve this goal, focus will be given to settings identified by our Science Board.

There may be the opportunity to feed in options for our second phase of pilots over May-June. We will share more information with stakeholders on this process and what scientific criteria we will need these events to cover in due course.