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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps he is taking to support (a) grassroots football and (b) other sports in (i) Jarrow constituency, (ii) South Tyneside, (iii) Gateshead and (iiii) the North East.

Government, through Sport England, is investing over a billion pounds over the next four years to support grassroots sport. The Football Foundation is an organisation investing £60m each year into improving the country's grassroots football and sports infrastructure with money provided by its funding partners: the Premier League, The FA and the Government (via Sport England).

Total grassroots football investment (Sport England and Football Foundation) for the North East is over £23m since 2010.

A full breakdown of figures for other grassroots sports funded by Sport England are available on their website: www.sportengland.org.

UK Sport, which receives funding from the UK government and the National Lottery, prepares athletes for Olympic and Paralympic Games across the UK, and is investing up to £345m to fund at least 38 sports across the current 4-year Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic and Paralympic funding cycle. UK Sport has also invested over £32m into Winter Olympic and Paralympic sports in the current PyeongChang 2018 funding cycle.