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11.36 am
Mr. Peter Bottomley (Eltham): The House is indebted to the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Miss Hoey) for introducing the debate and for paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Mrs. Winterton), who has also been involved in Swim for Life. The hon. Member for Vauxhall referred to the benefits of research and the importance of enthusiasm. She made the sensible suggestion that we should debate the matter again in a year to see whether the situation had improved.
There are one or two ways to monitor progress. First, we should examine the number of applications for new swimming pools, not just from the independent sector--where, as the hon. Lady said, swimming is considered to be important--but from private leisure companies, which make their facilities available to schools, and for lottery funding. It is clear that one of the tasks of the millennium fund should be to ensure that, within three or four years, all children can expect to have access to a swimming pool that is located a convenient distance from their school. That will not necessarily apply to the children on Rathlin island, but at least their families will introduce them to swimming. In every conurbation--whether it is a large village, small town, London borough or municipal district--people should say, "We deserve to have, and we shall work to make, a swimming pool available to us--preferably within walking distance."
In addition to the points raised by the hon. Lady, there is the question of providing worthwhile activities for young people. More adults are swimming today because they learned to swim while they were young. Imagine what it must be like for 10-year-olds or 12-year-olds who
live in an inner-city or suburban area. What are their worthwhile activities after school, at weekends or during the holidays?
I know that hon. Members too often fall into reminiscences, but swimming was almost the only thing that I was any good at when I was that age. I used to walk around the corner to the swimming pool in Chelsea Manor street. When our children were young, they were fortunate to attend a primary school whose headmaster, Mr. Mudge, was very keen on swimming and where every child learned to swim as a matter of course.
The hon. Member for Vauxhall paid tribute to the London Schools Swimming Association. Inter-school swimming galas, which involved primary schools in the local area, meant that there was an expectation that people would not just learn to swim but would participate in competitions and lose--as in politics--and their parents would be involved with after-school swimming in addition to, rather than in substitution for, what happened during the school day. The primary school had a small and overcrowded playground, and swimming was the one way the children could participate in an activity, have fun and do well.
When I lived in the hon. Lady's constituency, I used the swimming pools at Stockwell Manor and at Clapham Manor on the weekends, but they were not sufficient, and Elephant and Castle was quite a journey--it was necessary to go by bus or by train. Young people deserve to have a way of letting off steam, at a cost they can afford and within a distance that it is safe for them to travel. They are the challenges. In a year's time, I would like the Minister who responds then to say how it will move forward.
In my view, it is not only the responsibility of central Government to make it all happen; parents and teachers associations, and residents and tenants groups should put it on their agendas as well. People should be saying with pride, in public, what they have managed to achieve or what they take for granted for themselves. There is an old Malaysian poem--which I can now only remember in English--which goes like this:
Swimming is an activity where, in effect, people become equal--the water has the same effect on bodies whether they are fully able or disabled, whether they are elderly, young or somewhere in between. Swimming is not like a game of squash--if one is slightly better than someone else, one does not have a game and one does not have much fun. Everyone can share in swimming and it is not always competitive or for toning up one's body; it provides a whole range of activities, from the incidental to the purposeful.
The hon. Lady will agree that swimming is the key to other sports. For example, people cannot go canoeing, rowing or sailing without being able to swim. Swimming
is the key in the growth of water-based sports. One need only go to the Westminster boating base at Plimlico, opposite Dolphin square, to see how young people in an inner-city area get the benefit of the leadership of Robin Turner and his team and get involved in activities that develop confidence and competence and are likely to be the key to other worthwhile activities.
Our problem in this country is not about the people who fail in any way--they may get into trouble once or twice with the law or they may fail an examination; those things are fairly normal. Our problem is about people who never experience success--they do not start to accumulate the badges saying that they have gone from the bronze, to the silver, to the gold, from this standard to the next standard in life saving or in swimming. People who are involved in the organised chaos of youth activities--such as the woodcraft folk, the scouts, the brownies, the boys' brigade, et cetera--take it for granted that they will start to accumulate recognition for short-term achievements that become cumulative.
Virtually all hon. Members participated in worthwhile activities when they were young and they thought it was normal to do things, whether they were paid for it or not, that lead to association with others and to the feeling that they could contribute more.
I join the hon. Lady in paying tribute to all the teachers who take the swimming instructors' qualifications. She is right in saying that the swimming instructors organisation should have some public funding and should conduct a survey to find out what is being achieved, what proportion of schools have the required number of teachers with the qualifications and what could be done--not just in teacher training courses but in various ways--to encourage people to develop themselves and achieve the extra qualifications. Perhaps teachers should receive extra financial recognition if they go beyond the normal school day in providing leadership and training to young people.
A number of hon. Members wish to contribute to the debate--I am glad to see that there is able representation on both Front Benches. There is much to be said about other pastimes and other sports, but swimming provides an easy opportunity for people to do something--whether organised, with friends or alone--that is healthy, gregarious and stops them from becoming couch potatoes. There is a lot to be said about video games and skills with interactive media, but it ought to be combined with swimming--which many hon. Members have taken up, whether it be at 4 Millbank or elsewhere.
I conclude by making a positive suggestion to people around the country: they should invite their Member of Parliament and their councillors to come to their primary school and spend half a day going out with a swimming class or hearing why swimming is not possible in that school. Once Members of Parliament are exposed to that--perhaps once a year--the level of support in the House will drive forward and others will be able to share in what many of us have enjoyed, which is what the Government and the sports authorities want to achieve.
Mr. Tim Devlin (Stockton, South):
My contribution to the debate will have to be brief as I am serving on a Committee upstairs--I ran down to the Chamber when I saw the debate on the monitor. This is an important subject. I declare an interest--following on from the interesting contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham(Mr. Bottomley)--in that I am one of those people who started off with the bronze swimming award when I was about nine, and I then got the silver and the gold; I became an instructor for the Amateur Swimming Association; and I became an instructor and then an examiner for the Royal Life Saving Society.
Swimming is an important part of my life now and it always has been. At one time, I swam at county level--sadly, not for Yorkshire where I now live, but for what was part of the Greater London council. The boys with whom I swam throughout my childhood enjoyed the activity. I then went on to work for the Thames rescue service in the school holidays. I have also worked as a lifeguard in the borough of Stockton-on-Tees at Thornaby swimming pool, which is in my constituency, and at Stockton swimming pool, which is just outside my constituency boundary. They are both good facilities for swimming--and they have recently been refurbished.
Many hon. Members campaigned for swimming to be part of the national curriculum. We recognise just how important it is that every child learns to swim, not just from the point of view of personal safety--although that is critical--but from the point of view of giving young people the ability to express themselves in another way, to develop their bodies and their physiques, and to enjoy themselves. I have always found swimming to be a tremendously enjoyable experience. I still enjoy swimming and I very much enjoy taking my young nephews and nieces swimming and teaching them to do it properly, which their parents have not done--I hope that they do not read Hansard.
It is important that children learn to swim properly. The school competitions, which were mentioned earlier, are important in developing swimming as a sport. Like everyone else in the country, I enjoy it when our athletes come back from the Olympic games with a handful of gold, silver and bronze medals--and I hope that in due course they come back from the Olympic games with some swimming medals.
Given that swimming is in the national curriculum, it is critical that we ensure--and we have a national strategy to ensure--that it is properly taught in schools and that every child has access to a proper swimming pool.
The hon. Member for Vauxhall (Miss Hoey) made a forceful and persuasive speech, much of which I agreed with whole-heartedly. The Government should introduce a proper strategy for the provision of swimming pools across the country so that they are within easy reach of all our schools. The Government should use more of the national lottery funds which have become available for that project. At the moment, we divide national lottery money into chunks for national heritage, the millennium, and so on, and then offer it around to various organisations. Unfortunately, because the amount raised from the national lottery has grossly exceeded our expectations, there is a significant problem throughout the country of matching funding.
In my constituency, we are requesting a national lottery grant to build a swimming pool at Yarm and we are having the devil's own job to assemble the money from other sources to meet the matching funding requirement. That is not just a problem for swimming pools and sports facilities; it is a problem everywhere. Another isolated example--as some London Members of Parliament are aware--is that of Sadler's Wells. The large redevelopment of the Sadler's Wells theatre in Islington will not happen unless it is able to raise some £19 million privately. The Royal Opera house has the same problem, as do all the other arts and sports facilities. They are now beating a path to the doors of the major corporate donors--the large oil companies, insurance companies, chemical companies and the banks. The same people are always being asked to hand out money on a private basis to swimming pools, theatres, playhouses, activity and outdoor centres and the whole run of worthwhile facilities that could be funded by the national lottery except that we insist that 50 per cent. of the funds have to come from the local community.
In the northern region, we have had applications for millennium funds for all sorts of daft schemes. Last week, I was sent something called "Bridging the Millennium". Some genius had come up with the idea of building a footbridge over every river in the northern region and calling it a millennium bridge, to soak up some millennium money. That would be paid for by 50 per cent. from the lottery and 50 per cent. from local authorities, which already have great problems with their spending requirements. The suggestion is ludicrous. If we have the sort of money that means that people have to think up daft schemes to soak it up, perhaps we should return to the originating legislation and reconsider.
Perhaps we should have a strategy for the whole country to have a swimming pool within a certain distance of so many people in the local population. That project could be funded by, say, 75 or 80 per cent. from national lottery funds. We could also consider endowing those facilities for the long term. It is no good giving a large dollop of capital to a local authority to build a swimming pool and then not giving it the money to run the facility. In Stockton-on-Tees now, we have a newly refurbished swimming pool at Thornaby in my constituency and we have recently switched over to the unitary authority of Stockton borough council, which is trying to find ways to reduce expenditure. It has turned immediately to leisure facilities as something that it is not statutorily forced to deliver; therefore, it has discussed the possibility of closing our newly refurbished swimming pool. That is absolutely crazy.
If we are serious about delivering swimming to every part of the population, especially our young people--I hope that we are serious--we will have to rethink. I have to tell my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment that the system is not working well at the moment.
"The turtle lays a thousand eggs
If people can be as proud of their development of swimming as they are of their local theatre or their local sports stadium, swimming will get the prominence that it deserves, which will lead to progress. Obviously, the pinnacle of swimming is the Olympic games. I was glad to hear the hon. Lady refer to the selection for the Paralympics as well as for the able-bodied Olympics.
and no one is the wiser;
The hen lays a single one
but is a worldwide advertiser."
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