Sir Keir Starmer: Transparency crucial amid Christian Horner saga

Sir Keir Starmer has spoken out about the need for “transparency” when dealing with accusations such as those made against Christian Horner.

The Labour leader became the first major political figure to comment on the escalating crisis at Red Bull after the Formula One world champions suspended Horner’s accuser.

Speaking after announcing Labour’s plans to get more girls active as part of International Women’s Day, Starmer addressed calls by the likes of Horner’s arch-rivals Toto Wolff and Zak Brown for greater transparency about an independent investigation that cleared Red Bull’s team principal of controlling behaviour towards a female colleague.

It emerged on Thursday that the woman had been suspended on full pay, with her team refusing to confirm why action had been taken against her.

Starmer, a KC who was director of public prosecutions before becoming a politician, told Telegraph Sport: “I obviously don’t know the details of precisely what’s happened. So I’m not in a position to make comment on the specifics in this Red Bull case. They need to sort it out.

“But the general proposition of transparency, the general proposition of when allegations are made, they should be taken seriously, I absolutely adhere to.”

Starmer was speaking on a visit to a school in his Holborn and St Pancras constituency, during which he pledged to give every girl the chance to play and be active after a report published this week by the Women and Equalities Committee slammed the ‘gender play gap’.

To that end, he disclosed that, if he became prime minister, he would bring back mandatory physical education lessons, something controversially scrapped by David Cameron’s government in the build-up to the 2012 Olympics.

Since then, the number of taught PE hours in secondary schools has fallen by 40,000 (12 per cent) and the number of PE teachers has dropped by 2,000 (seven per cent).

The Department for Education now rewards schools that ensure children take part in at least 90 minutes of PE a week but that stops short of targets imposed during the last Labour administration.

“I want it not only to be mandatory but also assessed so that it’s part of the assessment for schools,” Starmer said.

“The problem at the moment is not so much that it’s not mandatory because, actually, schools are supposed to do it. The problem is it’s not part of the assessment that they go through and, therefore, it’s too easy not to happen.

“What I would drive at is why it’s important. Because, yes, it’s about sport and being part of a team, and being healthy, which is very important, obviously, for young people.

“So that is very important for our health strategy because we’ve got a mission to ensure the NHS is not just picked up and put back on its feet but is fit for the next 75 years. That only happens if you do preventative work, particularly with young children.

“But I would go much further than that. Because what sport gives you is that ability to work with other people.”

He added: “When I talk to businesses about the skills they need for young people coming to them when they finish school or college, universally, they pretty much say to me, ‘Technical skills we want for our sector, we can teach. But what we can’t teach is the eye contact, the speaking out, the knowing how to work in a team’.

“This is not an add-on to the curriculum, as far as I’m concerned. It’s integral to the skills that people need for work and for life.”