MPs warned over 'shameful' lack of funding for deaf athletes

It is shameful and discriminatory that deaf people are the only disabled community that does not receive any government funding to help them to compete in elite sport, MPs have been told.

- Sean Ingle

Although UK Sport will invest £330m of government and national lottery funding into British Olympic and Paralympic sport over the Los Angeles 2028 cycle, the GB team for the Deaflympics in Tokyo next month are having to raise most of the £450,000 costs themselves.

That is despite the Deaflympics having been established in 1924 and been recognised by the International Olympic Committee in 1955, more than three decades before the Paralympics, the culture, media and sport select committee was told.

Chris Ratcliffe, the chief executive of UK Deaf Sport, said to MPs: “When it comes to elite sport, we are the only disabled elite sports group that have no access to funding whatsoever. I think that’s shameful.