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House of Commons

Friday 27 October 1995

The House met at half-past Nine o'clock

PRAYERS

[ Madam Speaker-- in the Chair ]

Sport

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.-- [Mr. McLoughlin.]

9.35 am

The Minister of State, Department of National Heritage (Mr. Iain Sproat): The House will remember that on 14 July, the Government published their consultation paper "Raising the Game". As the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. Pendry) will recall, we had hoped to debate that document before the House rose for the summer recess, but the tragedy of Bosnia intervened and the House, understandably, had an emergency debate on Bosnia instead. Perhaps that was a good thing, because the intervening months have given everybody the chance to study our proposals from a greater perspective than would have been available had we debated the consultation paper in the immediate aftermath of its publication. This morning, I shall lay out two matters as clearly as I can. First, I shall go into some detail on the contents of the consultation paper. Secondly, I shall put the policies that the paper contains in the context of sports administration.

All of us who are involved in sport in the community experience seminal moments when something strikes home, which itself may not be of tremendous importance but which sets alight one's determination to take action on something that is wrong. My mind was set alight at a seemingly casual occasion--a coffee morning in the village of Great Holland in my constituency, of the kind that we all attend on Saturdays. One couple said to me, "We've just had our grandson staying with us. He is mad keen on sport, but his school does not play it. He is particularly keen on cricket, but does not play any cricket at all." Another couple, on overhearing those remarks, said, "It is exactly the same for our grandson. He is mad about football, but at his school he does not play it for more than 40 minutes every fortnight."

We have all heard such anecdotal evidence, but it struck me that I should question whether those accounts were true. If they were, something was badly wrong that needed putting right.

Mr. Nick Hawkins (Blackpool, South): Does my hon. Friend agree that the sort of conversation that he has just described is the result of a great deal of unwise and, misguided political correctness of the sort that crept into education over many years? There are, to be sure, some honourable exceptions on the Opposition Benches, but the real problem has been the doctrinaire socialist view, beloved of so many left-wing teachers, that there is

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something politically incorrect about competitive sport. I pay tribute to the Minister for laying that bad old socialist idea to rest.

Mr. Sproat: I thank my hon. Friend and pay tribute to him for leading the field in that respect. I believe that he wrote a paper about competitive sport in schools a couple of years ago; it was extremely valuable to me for the research that I was doing at the time. I also know how hard he has worked for schools such as Roseacres in his constituency-- no one has done more from the Conservative Back Benches to help put sport back in schools. There was another problem that set me thinking that something was deeply wrong. When I was beginning to research how much sport was played in schools, I had a meeting with officials at the Department for Education and Employment to try to find out what was going on. I asked an official to give me some idea of how much sport is undertaken in a week by the average 14-year-old. I know that average figures can be misleading--it all depends on the school--but the answer was: one hour a week of PE. It should be remembered that children watch television 25 hours a week. This morning I heard an interesting interview with the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett), who paid a generous tribute to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment. He also said that children watch two and a half hours a day of television. What a generation we are helping to bring up! They watch more television in one day than they do PE in a week.

The House will know, furthermore, that PE is not necessarily sport, since it includes dancing, aerobics and lessons in the history of diet. Those are all very important, of course, and I would not downgrade them--but they are not sport. I remember on one occasion--mine is a wonderful job--going to see Great Britain play rugby league against the Kiwis at Wembley, and then coming back for a performance at Covent Garden. I can assure anyone who entertains any doubts that rugby league is not the same as ballet. They are both important, but they should not be lumped together. That is why I want to get sport back to the heart of school life.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for National Heritage, who has been kind enough to come in and sit beside me this morning, will know that the single most important thing that I can do in this Department is to ensure that young people play proper games at school and get proper exercise--particularly but not exclusively in competitive team games.

The reason I am so keen on sport in schools is that I do not regard sport as a mere add-on to education--as an optional extra. The real importance of sport lies in the fact that it is an essential part of education. Certainly, it is valuable because it is so healthy too. Perhaps some of my hon. Friends will have seen the report from the British Heart Foundation stating that this generation of young people is the most unfit ever--they are a generation of couch potatoes. I know that the armed forces are encountering difficulties with new recruits, who cannot march more than a couple of miles in heavy boots because they have not had enough exercise at school. The same goes for the fire service. At a fire station in my constituency I was told that new recruits do not have enough upper body strength when they arrive, so a great deal of their induction period has to be spent building it up.

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Sport also provides great pleasure and enjoyment for young people. There is not so much pleasure and enjoyment around that we should deny it to young people. I shall never forget visiting Consett county junior school and watching the children being let out and rushing into the playground. That day a special demonstration of rugby for young people had been laid on by the chap who runs the Consett rugby team. I also remember visiting a school in Melton Mowbray that was involved in "top play", and hearing the screams of delight of the young people as they ran around.

So sport is not just healthy; it is a pleasure. Above all, however, it develops social values and character, including an understanding of team spirit, of good sportsmanship and of playing and living within the rules. A primary school teacher can go on until she is blue in the face about how we should stick to the rules in life, but that may not seem very important to a 10-year-old--until he is playing his first game for the school and is about to score a goal when some little thug trips him up from behind, which of course is against the rules. Then he will begin to understand the value of playing within the rules. All sorts of lessons can be learnt about courage, commitment, discipline and self-discipline.

Besides discovering the inadequacies of sport in schools, I looked at the other side of the spectrum. At the time, the soccer World cup was about to be played in the United States, and not a single British team had reached the finals. Yet we gave the world the game, and most other games as well. And those we did not invent, we popularised. That is why I want sport back in the heart of schools, for every child. Obviously, a small number of children are physically unable to participate, but most can. At the other end, I want this country back where it belongs--on the international stage.

The measures that we have introduced have been designed to help to develop opportunities for people of all standards in sport. They are contained, mainly but not entirely, in the consultation paper "Raising the Game", published on 14 July. It contained three main sections: sport in schools, including further and higher education; the role of local sports clubs; and centres of excellence for our top athletes, would-be gold medallists and would-be international players.

The wonderful thing about a Friday morning is that there is enough time for most hon. Members to speak in rather more detail than would be possible usually in the House, and I want to take this opportunity to ensure that everyone, inside and outside the House, understands the strategy that we are seeking to adopt. No doubt some criticisms will be levelled at me, but I want first to pay tribute to the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde, although not in an attempt to embarrass him. I know that he does not like everything that I have done, but in general the House has supported our initiative, and that is most welcome. It has greatly assisted its momentum throughout the country.

The consultation paper makes about 40 points, and I do not propose to go through every one, but I shall pick out some of the crucial ones. I shall deal first with the amount of time that we want devoted to sport in schools. I have already referred to the average of one hour a week for 14- year-olds. By definition, some schools do more than the average, and there are certainly some wonderful state

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schools. One of my greatest pleasures while helping to put together the strategy has been visiting some of those schools. My constituency is blessed with exceptionally good schools. I pay tribute to Colbayns school and Cann Hall primary school in Clacton, and to their head teachers, Messrs Holt and Williamson, who were terrifically helpful when showing me their curricula. I am not making a constituency point, however. Schools such as Windsor boys school, a comprehensive with just under 1,000 pupils, have shown just what can be done. Many people would say, "Minister, you are asking for the moon. Schools cannot possibly do what you ask of them." The best and truthful response is, "Don't say that, because it is being done by Windsor boys school, Barclay school, Stevenage and Gilberd school, Colchester." That is the proof. In a sense I am saying, "Here is the best practice, copy it." Different schools will wish to place different emphases, but it should be understood that everything to which we draw attention in our consultation paper is being done somewhere. Well, not everything, because the paper contains new proposals as opposed to proposed changes in curricula. It is more accurate to say that everything that comes within the sporting curriculum is already being done somewhere.

We want schools to aim for two hours a week of sport within curriculum time and another four hours a week outside it. At some schools, teachers and pupils will appear long before breakfast. I do not advocate the example that I am about to give to everybody and to all schools, but I know that at Windsor boys school the pupils arrive at 7 o'clock in the morning to practise their rowing. There is a dedicated teacher and extremely keen pupils. Many other schools have pre-breakfast work. In addition, lunchtime is available and the period from 3.30 pm onwards. There are also weekends and holidays. I have discovered that everything is possible if a head teacher and the teaching staff really want to achieve something.

Mr. Harry Greenway (Ealing, North): Will my hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Sproat: I give way to a former head teacher.

Mr. Greenway: Even now, I regularly undertake training and sporting activity in the early morning. I always did that with my school pupils. Does my hon. Friend agree that what he says about children getting up early and arriving at school early for training or for practising their sports gets them into the right culture? Does he further agree that that is the only way to overcome the body flab and flabby bodies of the present generation, of which he has spoken so dismissively and so rightly?

Mr. Sproat: I would certainly agree with my hon. Friend. Truisms--

Mr. Menzies Campbell (Fife, North-East): What does the Government Whip say about that?

Mr. Sproat: My hon. Friend is extremely fit. He is just solidly made.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway) made an extremely good point. To risk a cliche , truisms are truisms because they are true. Mens sana in corpore sano was true 1,000 years ago and it is still true. We are trying to ensure that we do not forget the old wisdoms while we seek new ones.

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We want parents to know exactly what schools are offering. We are aware, of course, that some parents are not as keen as others on sport for their children. Some parents will want schools where a greater emphasis is placed on the academic side. Other parents will want a balance between the academic and sporting sides. I understand also that some parents will want a greater emphasis on the arts. I am proposing that from now on every school in its annual report or prospectus should set out clearly--not in education jargon but in terms that every mother and father can understand--its sporting aims and the games that are played by it, especially team games. Every school should state how much time a week is given to individual games and the sporting facilities that it has. The statement should make clear the physical education and sporting qualifications that teachers have, with which other schools the particular school plays, the games played and the results of those games.

Winning is not, of course, all-important. I believe that most Members would accept that playing the game in a proper spirit is far more important than winning. None the less, we want schools to make it clear what games are played with other schools, how they have got on, what local business sponsorship they have and whether they have a governor who is responsible for sport, for example. We are consulting to determine exactly what questions should be answered in annual reports and prospectuses. We believe that it is an extremely important point of principle that parents should know exactly what a school does about sport before they decide whether they want to send their child to it.

We shall set up two new schemes to judge the sporting merits of schools. There will be a sports mark scheme. Schools will be able to say that they have met that mark with so many hours of sport each week and decent facilities, or that they are trying to improve their facilities. Of course, there are many schools with poor facilities that still do tremendously well because they are working hard to improve their facilities. To meet the requirements of the sports mark scheme will be a pretty good achievement. There will be a gold star scheme--if any hon. Member can think of a better name, I shall be obliged to him or her. The gold star scheme is, however, a working title.

Mr. Menzies Campbell: The Pendry memorial award?

Mr. Sproat: I shall demonstrate my generosity. I should be happy with that suggestion, given the support that the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde has given me on so many occasions.

I have been surprised and disappointed by the lack of information about what sport is played in our schools. It is extremely difficult to ascertain which schools do what. In future, the Office of Standards in Education will inspect the quality and range of games offered as part of the PE curriculum, which is the absolute "must be", as it were. It will also inspect what goes on outside that curriculum--for example, before school starts, at lunchtime, after 3.30 pm or whatever. Ofsted will inspect and report. It will also conduct a survey of good practice.

As I said, many wonderful schools throughout the country have had and implemented good ideas. We want to see those ideas spread even more widely. We shall place a requirement upon the chief inspector of schools to report annually on the state of PE in schools, so that we are not faced with a decline in sport about which no one

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knows until it becomes obvious. We have anecdotal evidence, but it is difficult to ascertain exactly what is happening. I am not the Secretary of State for Education and Employment, but I should like the inspector's report to be laid before the House every year. A genuine problem that many schools face is that many teachers do not have training and coaching qualifications. About 85 per cent. of teachers in primary schools are women. I know that the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Miss Hoey) is terrific at football.

Mr. Anthony Coombs (Wyre Forest): I would not say that.

Mr. Sproat: Well, the hon. Lady is very interested and has a great knowledge of the game. There is a problem, because many women primary school teachers do not have that interest and knowledge. Every primary and secondary school teacher will be encouraged to take a subsidiary qualification in a sporting or PE subject. That will apply also to the arts. We are talking about sport, but my imagination is not bounded by playing fields.

We want teacher training colleges strongly to encourage would-be teachers to gain subsidiary qualifications. The Sports Council will put approximately another £1 million into the schemes for which the National Coaching Foundation is responsible, and there will be additional schemes. There will be modules. Would-be teachers at training colleges will be able to obtain coaching qualifications in the sport of their choice.

Sport is not solely about enjoyment, health and getting rid of youthful high spirits, although it is a marvellous way of doing so. We all want to see those high spirits, but they should be channelled into socially helpful behaviour and not into the dreadful anti-social behaviour that we too often see exhibited by young people. We want to build on the work to encourage young people to understand the ethical lessons that can be learnt from sport. A tremendous amount is already being done on that. Mr. Michael Parker, who was himself an Olympic athlete, started the idea within the Sports Council. In the new year, we shall set up a group to look at the Football Association, rugby, tennis, cricket and so on, to see how good ethics are taught in those sports, to get the best practices there and to spread them throughout the school world.

Mr. Michael Lord (Suffolk, Central): My hon. Friend mentioned ethics. Does he not think that one of the best ways to teach our young sportsmen and women how to behave is to ensure that their role models are of the right kind?

Mr. Sproat: Yes, I certainly do. I was interested to see how the great England fast bowler, Devon Malcolm, is already being taken as a role model in South Africa. I listened to Mike Atherton on the radio this morning, saying that of course they wanted to win all the test matches, but that they were strongly aware of their responsibilities in helping to encourage the healing benefits that sport is bringing to South Africa. I agree entirely with my hon. Friend that sportsmen should be role models, but there are too many examples of sportsmen who are not.

Mr. Menzies Campbell: It appears that the Minister is about to turn to other matters than education. I should like to raise an issue that seems to me to be of possible significance. Apart from school facilities, many colleges

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and universities have extensive sports facilities that are provided in the first instance for the use of students, although for a substantial period of the year, they lie empty and unused, when they could be put to the advantage of the community as a whole. Is that an issue that the Government think is worth pursuing?

Mr. Sproat: Yes, the Government certainly do. I thank the hon. and learned Gentleman, who will remember that he came to see me with the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde and my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Mr. Coe) to discuss what universities and further education colleges should do. I shall come back to that later, as it is an important matter. We have set up a committee under Sir Roger Bannister, and part of his remit will be just what the hon. and learned Gentleman was saying. I had not quite left education; it was just the break in my voice that gave that false impression. The Sports Council will establish a working group to analyse existing coaching schemes and ensure effective use of resources. We have a shortage of information. What are the good coaching schemes? Indeed, what coaching schemes are there to start with? How good are they? How relevant are they to teachers? I pay tribute to the work of the Sports Council and the wonderful work that it has done and is doing. I pay particular tribute to the chairman of the Sports Council, Mr. Rodney Walker, and his chief executive, Mr. Derek Casey. I cannot speak too highly of the work that they have been doing. Had the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe) been here today, I would have told him how much I owe him for a remarkable speech that he made in the early part of 1993, about rugby league. It opened my eyes to the injustices that had been suffered by rugby league. I shall not go into them now, as the House has heard me on that subject before. As a result of his speech, I became very interested in rugby league, went along and met Mr. Rodney Walker, the chairman of rugby league, was extremely impressed with him and then got him appointed as chairman of the Sports Council. Among the many other things that I owe the hon. Gentleman is certainly an introduction to Mr. Rodney Walker.

On schools, Ofsted will also be asked to report on teacher training colleges, because there is thought to be--I do not put it any stronger than that--a lack of dynamic enthusiasm for sport in teacher training colleges. Given the problems that we have identified of whether teachers are capable of imparting to their pupils how to play sport, of training and enthusing them, it is very important that teacher training colleges play their part. I am sure that the lack of enthusiasm is not typical of all of them, but some evidence has been put before me that they could be keener, so Ofsted will look at them and see what they can do to improve the training of teachers in that area.

I am talking about sport because it is a sporting debate, but, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for National Heritage has said, we are extremely keen to use what we have learnt in trying to do something for sport, to do something for the arts. We should like to transfer this template of sport--in schools, local sporting clubs and centres of excellence--to the arts and look at how the arts can be better in schools; how we can link local art galleries, local musical groups, local drama groups and local orchestras and integrate them more with schools; and how we can then smooth the way up to the centres of

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excellence: the great dance and drama academies, the Royal Opera House, the great regional orchestras and so on. I shall not go into that in great detail, but I just lay it before the House as perhaps a way of raising the game.

Miss Kate Hoey (Vauxhall): I welcome the fact that Ofsted will be looking at schools in my borough, but is the Minister confident that he will be able to get the resources for Ofsted to be able to do all those things, which are very welcome?

Mr. Sproat: I thank the hon. Lady for her general support, for which I am sincerely grateful. I want to keep this, as much as possible, an all- party matter, but no doubt the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde will have a biff-bang at me in a few minutes' time.

As far as the money is concerned, I think that we have cracked it. There is the extra £1 million for training. The Sports Council is putting up another £2 million to be bid for to improve the links between sporting clubs and schools, and we have the lottery. The lottery can certainly help schools in so far as school facilities are being used by the wider community, which comes back to the point raised by the hon. and learned Member for Fife, North-East (Mr. Campbell).

That can be done--not just because of the reasons that I have just given. The biggest single reason why I am confident that it can be done is that the greatest single power to do good lies with the head teacher, the staff and governors of the school. Barclay school, in Stevenage, has a terrific head teacher, Mr. Russell Ball. I remember walking round the school with him recently and talking to the PE staff. The question of money came up. I do not want to put words into their mouths and so will not attempt to quote them directly, although I think I remember the words pretty vividly. They said, "We are not thinking of money. We are here as professionals. We love our job. We want to impart our enthusiasm to our pupils." Every Saturday, they are out with their teams. They are not asking for extra money. Money obviously is an important part, but it is certainly not the whole part. I think that we have the money bit right, but time will tell. If we have got it wrong, we shall come back. I am not saying that it is a perfect document in every way.

Mr. Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (Cirencester and Tewkesbury): Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the great successes of our education policy-- local management of schools and grant-maintained schools--is the greater dissemination of information to parents, in the form of the annual report and the prospectus to parents? Does he further agree that one of the great sea changes arising from this policy paper, when parents are considering the choice of school, will be the choice not only of academic excellence but, from now on, of sporting excellence and sporting facilities that are available in the school?

Mr. Sproat: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The principle of parents being as well informed as possible should be extended into sport. As he knows, that is why we shall put it in the annual reports and prospectuses. No doubt that can be extended to the arts, so that parents can have a real choice and will not be directed by county council bureaucrats, of whatever political persuasion, who tell them, "You must do this." Give them the choice.

The second part of the consultation paper involves local sports clubs, which are very important. Too often in the past, young people who have been terrific at sport at

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school have left at 16 and fallen into a black hole; they have not continued with sport and so miss the pleasure, healthiness and good discipline that they had before. It is important to try to get schools and local sports clubs to work more closely together. When the governing bodies of sport apply for grants from the Sports Council, the council will want to see included in the business plan the governing bodies' ideas to link local clubs with schools. I do not want to put too much weight on that aspect--it is a good thing: it has connotations of apple pie and motherhood. I understand that many governing bodies do not have tremendous power over their local clubs, such as the Melchester tennis club. We shall give extra encouragement to the Sports Council's branches in the regions so that they do their best to encourage the links between clubs and schools. I shall return to the increasingly important role of the Sports Council's branches in the regions later. I want them to focus on sport for young people and to ensure that the clubs and schools work together.

No one will know better than the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde that many clubs have terrific schemes. Arsenal contracts its players to spend so many hours a week in schools and communities. I believe that West Ham has a scheme called the Young Hammers, whereby everyone contracted to West Ham has to attend the birthday party of a member of the Young Hammers. That is a great practical way of knitting together the community and schools, which we want to encourage.

Clubs are also thinking of other schemes. One such proposal is that, every Wednesday from 6 to 8 pm during July, clubs will allow anybody from schools to come and play freely and be given coaching, tennis rackets and balls. Enthusiasts from the clubs will also visit schools to help with training and coaching. That shows how, at a low, but important and practical level, we can extend the sporting links in the community.

The national lottery plays an important part in providing money for the sports schemes, as the hon. Member for Vauxhall said. A vital use of the lottery fund, as distributed by the Sports Council, is to ensure that clubs and schools get together to devise schemes with their local authority and local businesses to provide facilities for joint use.

I remember reading the Labour party's White Paper that was published some time in the mid-1970s--I think that it was 1976--

Mr. Tom Pendry (Stalybridge and Hyde): It was 1975.

Mr. Sproat: It was 1975--I stand corrected.

I was struck by much of the valuable content of the White Paper, but nothing has happened. Both major parties have been in power since, so I am not making a party political point. One aspect emphasised time and again in the 1975 White Paper was the dual use of schools for local communities. Talking off the top of my head, I believe that only 12 per cent. of outdoor school pitches are used by the community and less than 50 per cent.--I think that it is 49 per cent.--of indoor school facilities are used by the community.

The hon. and learned Member for Fife, North-East raised the issue with reference to further education colleges and universities, where it is just as relevant. I want the FE colleges, schools, local sports clubs, local authorities and businesses to get together to make

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applications to the Sports Council so that we can positively improve our sporting facilities through the lottery.

There are other ways of injecting money into youth sport, including the sportsmatch scheme, of which the House will be well aware. The Government provide about £3.7 million a year, which is roughly matched by the private sector for sport at grass roots level. From now on, the sportsmatch scheme will earmark £1 million of its funds specifically for schemes for young people. In a way, that re-answers the question asked by the hon. Member for Vauxhall about money. I am considering every legitimate way to channel money into sport, whether it be through Sports Council grants, Sports Council lottery funds, the sportsmatch scheme, the Foundation for Sport and the Arts or the Sports Aid Foundation. Having mentioned the sportsmatch scheme, I should like to say how much I admire the work of Stuart Errington and Mike Scott who run it and who concentrate on grass roots sports; they keep a lean machine and do a terrific job.

One of the great things about sport is that so many organisations contain volunteers who want to get stuck in. The Foundation for Sport and the Arts, run by Grattan Endicott, does a terrific job. It complements the Sports Council and the Sports Aid Foundation. I have seen a lot of Paul Zetter recently--what a great man he is. He gives his time and money generously, and is a good friend and wise counsellor.

Mr. Peter Lawson of the Central Council of Physical Recreation has done valuable work over the years and shown great dedication. Keith Smith is a member of the CCPR and a former head teacher who has done much work on how to get schools more involved. Much wonderful voluntary work has been done.

Mr. Tim Devlin (Stockton, South): One of the central problems that I should like my hon. Friend to consider is the strategic provision of resources throughout the country. I am sure that he will agree that the provision of facilities throughout the different parts of the country is uneven--that is particularly true of the provision of swimming pools. Many communities of 10,000 or even 20,000 people do not have adequate access to a swimming pool. Are there any plans to make a study across the country to see where swimming facilities are in short supply and to see what can be done to rectify that?

Mr. Sproat: Yes, there are. Mr. Rodney Walker and Mr. Derek Casey of the Sports Council are conscious of the need for an even spread of facilities. One point that I did not raise in my reply to the lottery debate the day before yesterday was that the former Secretary of State for National Heritage, my right hon. Friend the Member for City of London and Westminster, South (Mr. Brooke), sent a letter on--from memory--20 June 1994 to the Sports Council. In it he said that the council should take into account the geographic spread of all the grants that it gives. Obviously, that is difficult because it has to respond to the projects from the grass roots. My right hon. Friend specifically told the Sports Council that it should take the geographic spread into account, whether in relation to swimming pools or any other sporting facility. My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, South (Mr. Devlin) raises an extremely important point. I did not mean to thank a catalogue of people, but we have received terrific support from Craig Reedie and Dick Palmer of the British Olympic Association. I do not know

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whether it is right for me to thank my officials in the House--you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, will pull me up if I am out of order. I should thank my officials for all the work that they have done: it has been a terrible battle to get the proposals through the treacle of Whitehall. I should like to make special mention, for their extraordinary work, of Mr. Niall Mackenzie in my private office, of the sport and active recreation department under Miss Alex Stewart and of the permanent secretary.

One of the reasons for having a Department of National Heritage is that we have the clout within Whitehall to drive through a paper that--dare I say it--trespasses on other Departments. It was not always in line with what those Departments had originally thought, but they eventually saw the wisdom of our ways. I should like to pay great tribute to the Department of National Heritage.

My last point on the issue of what the consultation paper naffly describes as extending sporting culture is an important aim, on which my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was keen. My right hon. Friend's policy aid, Mr. Nicholas True, gave us tremendous help and was of unique importance; he is a great man. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said:

"By the year 2000 our aim is that all young people will have access to quality facilities, including playing fields."

That is a very important proposal in a rather bland sentence, but in the context of the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, South, it means using lottery funds to encourage local communities to suggest projects for sporting and recreational facilities involving young people, schools and local businesses. We want to encourage that and in the new year I hope that we shall be able to announce or encourage more publicity about what we want to see done and how to do it.

I mentioned local business, and business sponsorship is important. Coca- Cola already sponsors a football competition between schools. The hon. Member for Neath (Mr. Hain) will know that the Daily Mail sponsors rugby for young people, the Midland bank sponsors tennis and The Cricketer sponsors cricket. Business spends hundreds of thousands of pounds on sport and I want to encourage that. The hon. and learned Member for Fife, North- East spoke about further and higher education, and I shall add one or two details to what I said about the importance that we attach to that. The Further Education Funding Council intends to carry out an audit of existing sports provisions, to report on trends and causes and to make recommendations to the Government. Amazingly, we found that we knew hardly anything about what happens in FE colleges. I do not claim that an audit is a world-shaking announcement, but one cannot make policy until one knows the current situation, so at least we shall put that right.

The Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals and the Standing Conference of Principals will carry out an audit for higher education. We intend to invite and encourage--we cannot

command--further education colleges and universities to state what sporting facilities they provide and their sporting aims so that teachers and students will know exactly what to expect from the FE colleges.

I spoke about the committee that we have set up under Sir Roger Bannister. Sir Roger is terrifically keen and calls the Department three or four times a day. He is not

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just a figurehead, but is keen to find out what we can do to make sure that sport is entrenched in universities because, just as there has been a trend in recent years for sport in schools to go down, there has been a similar trend in universities. Obviously, some universities are much better than others.

I thank the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde, the hon. and learned Member for Fife, North-East and my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne for coming to see me shortly after I became a Minister. I remember them saying, "We must do something about Wednesday afternoons. They used to be sacrosanct for sport, but that is no longer the case." We put together the committee under Sir Roger and it contains not only the dons and professors who are involved in running sporting departments but students, so that the matter is looked at not just de haut en bas. The committee also contains Eric Peters, and I am sure that the hon. and learned Member for Fife, North-East will remember Mr. Peters scoring a great try against Wales in the Five Nations championship last year. I am sorry to note the melancholy look on the face of the hon. Member for Neath at the recollection of that marvellous moment. If people have any further thoughts on such matters, we shall be happy to hear them, because we want the right people to come up with the right answers about sport in universities.

I have taken rather longer on that subject than I intended, so I shall move swiftly to the third part of the consultation paper, which is about centres of excellence. We have moved in a continuum--a word beloved by the Sports Council--from sport in schools through local sports clubs to centres of excellence. At the end of last year or the beginning of this year, the hon. Member for Neath asked about my visit to Australia. Its purpose was to see exactly what that country had done. The Australians were rather melancholy about the fact that they returned from the 1976 Olympics in Montreal with hardly any medals. There may have been the odd bronze but, basically, they had won no medals and they were horrified.

Australians believed that sport was a tremendous binding and intrinsic part of their national identity, yet they could not win medals on the international stage. They looked at the idea of an Australian institute of sport centred in Canberra, with each state having its own institute for sport. There was the New South Wales institute, the South Australia institute and so on. I looked at the Australian institute of sport, at different state institutes and at various academies of individual sports. My hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Central (Mr. Lord) will be horrified to know that I looked at the rugby league one, but only because there was not a rugby union one on show.

While I was in Australia, I also looked at the cricket academy, which is run by that tremendous Australian test player Rodney Marsh. I came back with ideas, because I think it was Samuel Butler who said that appropriate ideas were there to be appropriated. I thought that the Australians had done rather well and I intended to take the best of what they had to offer, to see whether it could be transplanted here. Of course, much of what the Australians do is based on what our Sports Council has been doing for many years. I emphasise that we are not copying in every detail what the Australians have done, but we are copying their central principle of a place of excellence.

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Within the next few days, the Sports Council will publish its ideas on a British academy of sport. My ideas are roughly the same and I shall shortly outline them. Those Sports Council ideas will be looked at by anyone who wants to do so and people will submit bids to run a British academy of sport. They will be assessed by the Sports Council, which will announce its decision next summer. I cannot promise, but I hope that before the House rises we shall have a fair idea of the plan for the academy, and there is no reason why the foundation stone should not be placed next year.

I shall give the House a quick idea of how I see such an academy. It will be on a campus of about 200 or 300 acres, and it could be on a green-field site or on one that is already used. It will have residential accommodation for about 500 people on some kind of sports scholarships--a matter that is dear to the heart of the hon. and learned Member for Fife, North-East. We need to make sure that, in an increasingly competitive world, our athletes are properly supported financially, and we are determined to do that.

The academy could be anywhere in the United Kingdom, but I imagine that it will be reasonably central. It will have the world's highest standards of coaching, training facilities, sports science and sports medicine. That is what I should like to see and if any person, group or charitable trust would like to run it, I should like them to come forward. The Sports Council will make money available from the national lottery funds to cover the capital cost of building. I think that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister mentioned an amount of up to £100 million but, obviously, different groups will come forward with different ideas. The money is there for the capital building and there will almost certainly be endowment funding and revenue funding for the academy. As I said, the Sports Council will put its ideas in writing and people can respond to them.

Mr. Peter Hain (Neath): Does the Minister envisage one of those centres of excellence in Wales and one in Scotland, apart from regional arrangements in England?

Mr. Sproat: Yes, I certainly do. I am conscious of the time and do not want to go into that in too much detail. What I envisage is not necessarily what will happen, but I see the British academy of sport at the top and it will be a centre of excellence, the best in the world, for our athletes. Underneath that, Scotland and Wales and the regions of England will have their own institutes of sport, which will be attended by people who do not want to go full time to the academy although, of course, not everyone at the academy will need to go full time but, basically, there will be full-time residence there.

The Cardiff institute of sport is terrific. I went round it with Nigel Walker; I know that we are all extremely disappointed that injury has kept him out of rugby. The institute is the sort of thing that I envisage for institutes of sport underneath the British academy.

After the British academy of sport at the top, and then the regional institutes and the national institutes of Wales and Scotland, if they want it, the third tier will be the academies of individual sports such as cricket, rugby and rowing, run not by the Government, but by the individual sports, and of course they will be eligible for lottery funds and responsible for putting forward their plans. Lottery funds will be available for all those things.

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On the structure of the sports councils, within weeks of arriving in the Department, I came to the conclusion that the idea for a new sports commission was rubbish. Apart from anything else, it was going to have about 200 bureaucrats, so I scrapped that. I then considered the Great Britain Sports Council. I found that there was little logical consistency about it. Its individuals were terrific, but it had members from Wales and Scotland, even though Scotland and Wales had their own Sports Council. Northern Ireland had its own Sports Council, but was not represented on the GB Sports Council. Its chairman, Mr. Don Allen, used to sit on it, but could not vote. The whole thing was a grotesque and illogical inconsistency, so I scrapped it.

From 1 January next, for the first time, we shall have a United Kingdom Sports Council, whose main job will be to consider sports policy, to find out where it has a British application and whether there is too much overlapping, duplicating and waste of resources in our bodies--perhaps not, and there is no presumption that we do. As one of its major duties, the council will have to attract to this country international sporting events of first-class quality. An Olympic games has not been held here since 1948. That will therefore be among its prime duties.

The chairman of the UK Sports Council will be Sir Ian MacLaurin, chairman of Tesco. He was a first-class cricketer, a man of dynamism, imagination and business experience. It will have the four chairmen of the national sports councils of Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales, so that nothing that the UK Sports Council thinks about, says or does shall be apart from the national councils.

For the first time, I was keen that someone from a professional sporting background should be a member of a body--we have Trevor Brooking on the GB Sports Council, but he is there because he is Trevor Brooking--so I have appointed Gary Lineker to the new UK Sports Council. I also appointed Rob Andrew, who was supposed to be a representative of the amateur game when he was appointed. However, the aim was to have not just professional and amateur people on the council, but young people. The aim was to have not just people whose sporting days were long past, but people who knew what sport was like today.

The UK Sports Council also has Craig Reedie, chairman of the British Olympic Association, not so much as chairman of the BOA and as a corporate member, but on his own merits, and Sarah Springman, a don at Cambridge and an international triathlete. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for National Heritage is rightly keen on ensuring that women's sport has its proper place in all this, which is important. It also has Clive Lloyd, the great ex-West Indian captain who has made his home in this country. I hope therefore that we have a balanced UK Sports Council of 10.

We have a new English Sports Council of 15, of which Mr. Rodney Walker will become chairman. It includes some names that the world will know, such as Ian Botham, a cricket legend, but a man of strong and independent mind and strong character, just the sort of chap who, I hope, will go in there and say, "We are here as board members to make policies; they will not be made by the bureaucrats." Members of the old GB Sports Council have not perhaps taken enough of a lead in making policy, which has been a problem.

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I want to get five members from the regional sports councils, the ministerial nominees, on the English Sports Council. Too often, the Sports Council at the centre did not know too much of what was going on in the regions and the regions did not know too much of what was going on at the centre. Now, on a changing rota, five out of the 10 chairmen of the sports councils in the regions--chairmen and ministerial nominees--will be members of the English Sports Council. That is my intention. We have new vision, new structures and new money in sport. It is a great opportunity for sport in this country. I commend our paper to the House and to the country.

10.34 am

Mr. Tom Pendry (Stalybridge and Hyde): I think that the whole House will be grateful to that Tory coffee morning meeting that the Minister attended because he certainly had a flash of inspiration on that occasion. Of course, he is not listening, but I am trying to say that it is good that he went to that coffee morning.

I begin by congratulating the Minister on his elevation to the status of Minister of State. This is the first opportunity that I have had to do so on the Floor of the House as this is the first debate on sport that we have had since then. Equally, it is good to see that the Secretary of State for National Heritage is sitting in on probably her first sports debate in the House.

Anything that elevates the position of sport in the House and therefore in the country gets my nod of approval. In any case, the Minister is deserving of his new status and I genuinely wish him well, up until the general election. Nothing I say from now on, I can tell the House, is a criticism of him personally, but enough of praise. The main reason for the debate is the document "Raising the Game", which is laughingly called the Prime Minister's sporting initiative. I will return to the reason for my mirth at that description later. Before I do so, I must chide the Minister for the fact that we are having this debate on the Government's so-called sports policy only today, almost four months after the publication of the document. In the first instance, the Government promised us a Green Paper. Despite what the Minister has said today about this being a consultation document, it says here clearly that it is a policy document. Of course, the Government have abandoned any pretence of consultation. Nevertheless we waited with bated breath for the White Paper, promised as it was in early summer--that promise appears at column 316 of the Official Report of 23 March. In truth, the Minister's Department was still referring to it as a White Paper just days before the announcement itself, right up to the publication date. In the event, it came to be called a "press conference document", and it was released not in the hurly-burly of the House, but in the tranquil setting of New Den, home of Millwall football club. How unlike Labour. In 1975, when it was in office, it produced its White Paper, which was already been referred to, entitled "Sport and Recreation" and it was properly debated in the House. By way of compensation, we were promised a debate before the recess, as the Minister has said, but, naturally, because of the emergency in Bosnia, that debate was delayed until today.

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