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Mr. Peter Bottomley: If I had known of my hon. Friend's qualifications, I would have delayed my speech because he has more expertise than I have on this subject. He has referred to Yarm and Stokesley. What are their populations? I suspect that many of us who represent inner-city areas would dream of having two or three swimming pools in our constituencies, let alone in good-sized towns. Does my hon. Friend also accept that it might make sense for lottery funding to be available for a pool partly funded by a commercial partnership if a good proportion of the pool's availability were dedicated to schools and other community groups?
Mr. Devlin: The population of the borough of Stockton is about 175,000. It has three swimming pools--at Billingham, Stockton and Thornaby. The population of Yarm is about 12,000 and it is a large and affluent community. It also has a large rural hinterland which it serves as a market town. It used to be the northernmost market town of north Yorkshire. In a survey that we conducted recently in my constituency, one message came back loud and clear about leisure facilities--if we were to build anything for the population, they wanted more swimming pools.
I am aware of the problems of swimming in urban areas such as Eltham and Vauxhall. I went to prep school in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham and we swam at the Ladywell baths in Lewisham. I do not know if that facility still exists, but we certainly enjoyed it at the time.
We must have a strategy. As the hon. Member for Vauxhall said, we should have a formula so that everyone has a swimming pool somewhere in the vicinity. People should not have to travel large distances just to go swimming. There are private examples of just how popular an initiative that would be. I do not know if it is the same in London, but in the north of England many new leisure clubs--privately funded and developed--have sprung up. They include swimming pools, saunas, gymnasiums and jacuzzis, and people pay a subscription to use the facilities. Those clubs are usually quite expensive, but they are heavily patronised and many have waiting lists. If that is what people will use when they can afford it, we can be absolutely sure that they would use it if they could not afford it.
We should be providing such facilities on a publicly funded basis. That would be something useful we could do with lottery money instead of looking around for schemes that people do not want. There is no demand in Teesside for either of the millennium bids that have been put forward by the borough council and the Teesside development corporation. We must identify what people want and try to provide that, rather than think up some whizzo scheme and tell people that that is what they want.
Mr. Tom Pendry (Stalybridge and Hyde):
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Miss Hoey) on winning the ballot and raising this important subject--a topic in which she and many other hon. Members take a great interest. Those who have spoken since she made her speech will agree that she talked a great deal of common sense and asked the Minister some informed questions. I hope that he will respond to them and to the points made in the excellent speeches by the hon. Members for Eltham (Mr. Bottomley) and for Stockton, South (Mr. Devlin)--particularly the latter's point about matching lottery funding. I hope that the Minister will be sympathetic. [Interruption.] We fully understand why the hon. Member for Stockton, South must now return to his duties upstairs; I just wanted to let him know that his speech was appreciated.
It will not require much effort to convince hon. Members who are present of the value to health of swimming. In my book it is of greater importance to physical development than almost any other sport. It exercises the whole body and is virtually free of the risks of injury. The hon. Member for Eltham eloquently stressed that point.
One of our greatest international swimmers, Sharron Davies, drew attention to the importance of swimming when she said:
Those were wise words. It is only a pity that the Government have not been as keen in this respect as Sharron Davies or the hon. Member for Eltham.
Many hon. Members will remember only too well the last time this issue was seriously addressed in this place. That was in 1991, when the House was considering the position of swimming in the national curriculum. For hon. Members who were not here at the time, I shall briefly outline the events that led to its statutory inclusion in the curriculum for children up to the age of 11. At the beginning of 1991 the interim report of the national curriculum working group on physical education recommended that all 11-year-olds should be able to swim 25 m and have a sound knowledge of basic water safety skills. The report concluded:
The group reached this decision after some startling research by the Swim for Life campaign. It showed that, in the preceding three years, 200 children under the age of 15 had drowned; 80 per cent. of them could not swim. At the time, it was estimated that, with proper targeting of existing facilities and resources, it would cost the Government a paltry £5 million to teach all 10-year-olds to swim. Surely that was a small price to pay when counted against hundreds of schoolchildren's lives.
The Government, however, were not convinced. So there began a long campaign by hon. Members of all parties--this is truly an all-party issue, as the debate has
shown--and a number of us tabled questions and motions. We introduced ten-minute Bills; we took delegations to see Ministers. Finally, the Government agreed to our minimum demands, but they also stipulated that there was no point in placing a requirement on schools which they could not meet because of financial shortcomings.
The Government appeared to accept the need for more funding when the then sports Minister, the right hon. Member for South Ribble (Mr. Atkins), said:
Unfortunately, this is another promise on which the Government have reneged. We are left with the classic Catch-22 paradox: schools are required by law to teach swimming to a certain standard but are prevented from doing so by a lack of central funding.
The most comprehensive research carried out since then is damning in its criticism of the state of swimming in schools. In 1994, the Institute of Swimming Teachers and Coaches published a survey of swimming in 741 primary schools. The survey found that the average time primary school children spent in the water was less than 27 minutes a week. In addition, the report found that, in almost 40 per cent. of schools, parents paid all the costs of swimming--pool hire, entrance fees, instructors' fees and so on--and that only 20 per cent. of instructors possessed a recognised swimming teaching qualification. That is a scandalous state of affairs.
The report reached four conclusions. First, the
Secondly,
Thirdly,
Finally,
This is a damning indictment of the Government's record on swimming in schools. Learning to swim is, in effect, being privatised. Whereas once this necessary and social activity was provided free in schools by local education authorities, parents now increasingly pay for their children's swimming education out of school hours.
I obtained my one mile certificate at school at the age of 12 or so as part of my general physical education. It is a great shame that, because of the Government's cuts, youngsters nowadays have less opportunity to complete such achievements at school.
The Government say that they are concerned about the state of sport in schools, but where are the references to the vital role of swimming in the school curriculum in their policy statement "Raising the Game"? I could find no mention of it even though I have scoured the document many times. Labour would like more support given to swimming for children of all ages. At the moment, the statutory requirement is only to teach 11-year-olds to swim 25 m. After that, swimming becomes an optional extra. Increasingly, however, schools are treating this as a maximum requirement, so once youngsters have met the target they are under pressure to give up swimming and to concentrate on other, less costly, activities.
I recognise that there is now an opportunity to use lottery funds to build and improve swimming facilities. Like the hon. Member for Stockton, South, however, I am concerned that there is no strategic national planning of such facilities. I also echo the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall in this regard. This lack has meant that certain parts of the country are well catered for, while others have no pool for miles on end.
I would also urge the Minister to adopt a more flexible approach to lottery funding. The requirement is that a pool must be used for 40 hours a week by the local community outside school hours. I have often advocated the dual use of school facilities for the wider community, but 40 hours is a tough target to meet. Again, I urge the Minister to be more flexible.
It will come as no surprise to hon. Members to learn that entrances to local authority pools have declined a great deal in recent years. Between 1993 and 1994 they fell by 4 per cent., the equivalent of 7 million visits. I am particularly worried that the ratio of junior to adult attendances has decreased markedly. A few years ago, it stood at about 2.5:1; now it is down to 1:1. I hope that the Minister will pay heed to what my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall said about that.
The contrast with Europe could not be greater. It attaches greater priority to swimming than we do. In France, there has been an ambitious programme to build hundreds of pools. The French currently have 8,400 pools compared with our 1,200. German children leave school after receiving at least three years' swimming tuition, directly funded by the Government. Holland has a nationally applied qualification for swimming teachers and a standard test to enable teachers to assess the ability of their school children.
The programmes run in each of these more enlightened countries are clearly paying dividends in terms of better standards, because they have adopted an integrated approach to swimming provision and national strategies of the sort for which we are calling.
I join my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and others in congratulating those who did well at Sheffield last week. I also pay tribute to the Amateur Swimming Association for all its work. It is true that there were some good performances at the Olympic trials. What came through most clearly was how far we are falling behind the rest of the world. Take James Hickman, for example. He shattered the British record for 200 m butterfly by more than 1.5 seconds, but that still leaves him ranked about sixth in the world, trailing well behind his other international competitors. In the women's section, increasingly we have to rely on more experienced swimmers to provide the backbone of our possible Olympic team. Just three of the team are under 20. If we are to nurture potential talent, we must invest in better facilities in which our young stars can train.
"Swimming is one of the best sports for promoting all-round fitness, suppleness and endurance. So if you are going to start with developing some sports then maybe swimming is one that you should always put in the forefront."
"Swimming was too important to leave to chance and should be an entitlement for all young people under the national curriculum."
"We simply cannot impose a duty on schools which they are unable to deliver."
"time allocation is gradually being reduced".
"current funding levels are inadequate".
"a serious lack of suitably qualified personnel are involved in the teaching of swimming".
"there is significant over-reliance on parental financing of existing provision".
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