Lotte Wubben-Moy: Why I came up with Lionesses letter demanding football be made open to girls in PE

So she approached Leah Williamson, the England captain, and Sue Campbell, the director of women’s football at the Football Association, and told them of her plan: to write an open letter to Tory leadership hopefuls Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, demanding they make football available to girls in school PE – a luxury afforded to only 63 per cent of schoolgirls. Their European Championship triumph, the team would warn, must be “only the beginning” of inspiring the next generation.

‘It’s an inequality that should be illegal’

“I’d had the idea before and I’d been thinking about it a lot, so I went to the team and was like, ‘We need to do something about this’,” Wubben-Moy says. “I’m a London girl, I don’t know whether being in London, feeling the energy of the city, feeling the energy of the people that we’d been celebrating and dancing in front of [helped]. I was like, ‘Let’s go’.

“Everyone was fully on board. It’s an inequality which should be illegal. But we’re at a stage where we’re having to put it in a letter to address the Government about it.”

Truss and Sunak have acknowledged the Lionesses’ letter, although the pair are yet to formally commit to meeting the team’s plea. Truss has vowed to “investigate what prevents schools from delivering the recommended minimum two hours of PE per week” while Sunak pledged to “tighten accountability”.

In a more encouraging sign that they are being taken seriously, James Cleverly, the Education Secretary, has invited Wubben-Moy to Downing Street to discuss the next steps.