MPs to investigate lack of black leaders on governing bodies following Telegraph expose

MPs are to investigate the exclusion of black people from sport’s corridors of power after a Telegraph investigation exposed just how few there were on the boards of national governing bodies and football clubs.

On Friday the Digital, Culture, Media & Sport select committee will announce a one-off session prompted by a Telegraph report last month that revealed just three per cent of directors of taxpayer-funded sports organisations were black and that no Premier League club and virtually no English Football League club had a black owner, chairman or chief executive.

The shocking findings led the Government to order an imminent review of rules governing the make-up of sports boards amid calls from campaigners for the industry to be set a 20 per cent ethnicity target.

The select committee could make recommendations to that review following next week’s session, which chairman Julian Knight confirmed would be held on Tuesday.

“This was very much prompted by the Telegraph expose,” he added. “We have huge numbers of black and ethnic-minority sportspeople. We want to know why it is that we aren’t seeing the representation we should do at the top levels of sport.”

Among the witnesses will be Eni Aluko, who gave explosive evidence to the committee almost three years ago about how she was racially abused by England Women manager Mark Sampson and how the Football Association had failed to investigate it properly.

The former Chelsea striker was appointed Aston Villa’s first-ever sporting director for women’s football in January after announcing her retirement, becoming one of the few black women in a senior position in the English game.

She will be joined on Tuesday by Huw Edwards, chief executive of UK Active and Paul Cleal, a black board member of Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, Kingston University and the National Citizen Service Trust.

The Telegraph’s investigation followed Raheem Sterling calling out the lack of black leaders in football in the wake of the alleged murder in the United States of George Floyd and prompted demands for the entire industry to be forced to diversify its boardrooms.

The Government’s existing Code for Sports Governance, published in 2015, mandated funded NGBs to ensure at least 30 per cent of their directors were women but controversially did not set targets for BAME representation.

Sports minister Nigel Huddleston, who announced the review, last month admitted British sport was “woefully behind” on Black And Minority Ethnic representation in leadership roles.