Select committee: Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee
Conclusion 7
Third Report - Concussion in sport
Published 22 Jul 2021
Paragraph 37
Addressed to Department for Culture, Media and Sport
Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee Concussion in sport All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Conclusion (the committee's words)
The current organisational structures in sport mean that there is no overall responsibility to mandate minimum standards for concussion and head trauma or to assess whether protocols are followed. The system allows sports to be funded as long as their protocols look good on paper with no effort put into assessing how those protocols work in practice. The fact that concussion does not occur at high frequency within the elite sport community means that little effort is made to drive numbers down even further. This means that, some preventable brain injuries are suffered, with the potential for long-term consequences for individuals.
From: Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Third Report - Concussion in sport (HC 46), paragraph 37, 22 July 2021
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 10 December 2021 (deadline 3 December 2021).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government states that the Committee's recommendations "largely align with the Government's own ambitions", agreeing with some in full and in part, and setting out its own action plan.
- On a UK-wide concussion protocol, the government "agrees with this recommendation", saying the four home nations have "agreed in principle" to develop shared protocols based on the Scotland model, with completion expected by the end of 2022.
- On a single research fund, it agrees with the intention but does not "believe it is necessary" because medical research funds already exist; it will instead convene a "sports concussion research forum".
- On a national injury reporting framework run by the Health and Safety Executive, it "agrees in part", saying other organisations are "better placed" to collate the information, and that it "will look into the feasibility of a national register of concussion incidents".
- It sets timed actions: the research forum to be convened "by the end of January 2022", Oxford study findings "by the end of March 2022", and shared protocols completed with communication started "by summer 2022".