Speeches by Taylor.

“It sounds as if there is already quite a lot in place, but do you think sports organisations could do any more to protect officials and promote a culture of respect?”

“I will disagree with you on that, Chair. I will stick to my non-contact sport. I was very pleased to be able to play tennis this morning for the parliamentary tennis team at the Cumberland club, which was an absolutely fantastic opportunity.”

“What about you, Lisa?”

“The Government recently launched a women’s sport online abuse forum to share best practice on tackling the online abuse of athletes and sportswomen. To what extent are there issues of online abuse towards officials?”

“Something that has concerned me is the pipeline of officials coming through. Is that going to be more challenging now we do not have line umpires at the major events?”

“Do you think they are better at treating female umpires more fairly in, say, France, the US or Australia than they are in the UK?”

“Do you feel that the tennis authorities deal with those situations effectively?”

“Sian and Lisa, in your respective sports, is a female referee’s authority more likely to be challenged than a man’s? If so, how frequently does that happen?”

“This might be on or off the pitch, the mat or the court, but in your view, how effective are current safeguarding and reporting mechanisms for officials who face abuse or inappropriate behaviour?”

“As you have pointed out, it is much more important when you have younger people coming.”

“Do you think that was different on the international scene? Was the first Grand Slam men’s final that you umpired in the UK?”

“I am sure you would probably agree that back then it was difficult to break through as a female umpire. You would go to a men’s tournament and never be given the same number of matches as the male umpires would.”

“Welcome to all you, and particularly Alison; we worked together as umpires and line judges, probably from when I joined in 1996 to when I stopped officiating in 2005, which was when your career really took off.”

“At that time, we may have been umpiring some of the same matches.”

“We did.”

“My first question is for you, Alison. I am not asking you to talk about any specific players or specific colleagues but we were all shocked recently by an incident at the French Open: after a match, a player made sexist comments about the female chair umpire not being up to the job and said that the match should have b…”

“Do you think that sort of thing would deter women and girls from umpiring?”

“Do you think that it would deter tournament directors or referees from giving women more men’s matches?”

“Parents across North Warwickshire and Bedworth responding to my survey told me overwhelmingly that they feel powerless to protect their children from the harms of social media, where they are told that they are not pretty enough, thin enough, cool enough or good enough at their favourite sport—or, worse still, where pi…”

“Apologies, I did not make it clear that I was not referring to sporting activities in that question.”