| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Chaytor: I take that point completely, but we should consider the opportunities that could be made available to older people. One of the striking things about people in their 70s and 80s is the enormous discrepancy in their levels of activity and mental agility. There is no question but that physical activity is related to longevity and good health. I make a special plea for more encouragement for older people.
In my constituency, the most rapidly growing sport is line dancing among the over-65s--perhaps that is the first reference to line dancing in the House. Perhaps we should redefine the nature of sport, when aerobics is considered a sport and line dancing is not. Perhaps the new ministerial team could consider encouraging sports such as bowls and cycling for older people.
One of the most staggering statistics to emerge in the debate was that relating to participation in sport by adults from professional and low-skill backgrounds. The enormous discrepancy between middle-class and working-class participation cannot be ignored.
The issue is related to the economy and the nature of the labour market, because it is indisputable that, if people's lives are dominated by the struggle to eke out a living, by the move from one short-term, part-time, temporary, low-paid job to another, they will not have the energy, inclination and motivation or the money to enjoy fully the benefits of participation in sport.
We need to reconsider the concept of the flexible labour market, because as long as we have an enormous pool of low-paid, part-time workers, they will be excluded from the opportunities that sport can bring, and our policy of sport for all will be deficient.
Mr. Neil Gerrard (Walthamstow):
I welcome what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said about allowing as many people as possible to participate in
I welcome what my right hon. Friend said about rights of access to open country, about the academy, about widening access and about involving people from ethnic minority communities. It is true that a lot has been done in the past few years, especially in football, to get rid of some of the racism. The campaign that was run by the Commission for Racial Equality, the Professional Footballers Association and many clubs has had some positive effects.
That is true of smaller clubs, as well as the big ones. My local club, Leyton Orient, was very much involved in the campaign, and produced a play with a local theatre group that went nationally to schools to explain to children from 12 to 15 what was going on and what they could do to stand up against it.
I echo what my hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) said about the contribution of smaller clubs. I noted that he did not mention Swinton rugby league club, which shares the Bury ground. If he is going to Bury, perhaps he should watch Swinton as well. Rugby league has spread south of Watford, and civilisation has been brought here with the Broncos playing professionally in London.
Before leaving small clubs and the involvement of ethnic minority groups, I must add that we should not be complacent. There are still no, or very few, Asian professional footballers. Asian leagues play to quite a high standard, but there are definite barriers of access.
There has been some pleading of special cases in the debate, so I will not be shy about joining in. Anyone asked what is the most popular spectator sport would answer correctly that it is football, but how many people, in the House or outside, know immediately that the second most popular spectator sport is greyhound racing? As Walthamstow is the country's premier dog track, it would be expected that I should take an interest. Greyhound racing is not a minority occupation. Last year, it involved 4 million people, including 50,000 dog owners and 10,000 employees, some of whom are very skilled: trainers, kennel hands, groundsmen and the like.
Greyhound racing has had an image of seediness, but tracks such as Walthamstow and Wimbledon show that it is not so seedy any more. There has been an unfortunate association with sports such as coursing. Most people who support greyhound racing want nothing to do with such activities. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North mentioned so-called country sports. The way that the Opposition spokesman talked about the popularity of sports that involve killing things made me think that he was about to remind us that it was not so long ago that public hangings were a popular spectator sport and suggest that we bring them back. Dog racing has had an unjustified seedy image. It works closely now with animal welfare organisations.
However, greyhound racing faces problems, some of which result from the anomalous way in which it is treated. I was interested that my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Garston (Maria Eagle) mentioned the recognition of chess as a sport, because greyhound racing is recognised as one in some ways. People who go to watch it
think that they are going to a sport. The press certainly thinks that it is a sport: it is covered in the sports pages. It is represented on the major spectator sports panel of the Central Council of Physical Recreation. It is subject to the Safety of Sports Grounds Act 1975. In all those ways, greyhound racing has recognition as a sport, but because it is not recognised as one by the Sports Council, there are problems. It gets no access to lottery funds. Although its tracks have to do exactly the same things as football and rugby grounds in respect of spectator safety, the sport gets no help. I know that this is not directly a Department of National Heritage problem, but it is an anomaly. I hope that Ministers will discuss it with their colleagues in other Departments.
I guess that, because of the gambling associated with greyhound racing, it has always been regarded as a Home Office responsibility. It is far from the only sport that involves gambling. If the national lottery is not gambling, I do not know what it is. That is directly a National Heritage Department matter. There are also anomalies in the way in which the sport gets its income. There is a compulsory levy on bookmakers to pay money to horse racing, but in greyhound racing it is voluntary. One can guess the result: out of 2,000 bookmakers, 200 pay the levy, while the rest pocket it. That is neutral to the Treasury, but because the levy is voluntary, the sport does not get the money.
Mr. Patrick Nicholls (Teignbridge):
I add my congratulations to the Under-Secretary of State for National Heritage, the hon. Member for West Ham (Mr. Banks), on his appointment as Minister for sport. I am not sure whether he remembers, but this is not the first occasion on which he and I have met across the Dispatch Boxes. I well remember some of our most enjoyable exchanges when the Dock Work Bill was being considered in Standing Committee. In one extraordinary debate, he seemed to think that I and some of my hon. Friends were responsible for a collective attack on an Anglican bishop and other related activities. He also gave us an insight into why he thought that it would be good to be a Minister. I have not been able to trace one of his most enjoyable remarks, but if he and I can extend our careers long enough, I should be able to bring it to the House on a subsequent occasion. It was about his desire to drive around in a ministerial Montego.
Although I have not been able to find that reference, on another occasion the hon. Gentleman said:
The debate has been remarkable for the lack of rancour and the degree of consensus that has been achieved--that will possibly still be so even at the end of my remarks--and for the quality of the speeches. No fewer than 16 speeches have been made from the Back Benches, of which no fewer than five were maiden speeches. The hon. Member for Southport (Mr. Fearn) cannot be described as only slightly maiden, so he comes as a retread. I shall say a word about that in a moment. We really have been fortunate today in the quality of the maiden speeches.
The first maiden speech was by the hon. Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Mr. Fitzpatrick). He told us that, for him, sport for all was about involving the whole community, not simply the elite. He spoke passionately and eloquently about the concept of fairness for all. He referred to some of his illustrious predecessors, some of whom we have known in the House. It was a speech of great passion and eloquence and both he and his constituents can be pleased with that speech. I certainly look forward, as I am sure other hon. Members do, to hearing further speeches from him. He was especially generous--this applied to all the maiden speakers--to his Tory predecessor. Still smarting somewhat from the last election, we take well and gratefully receive those remarks.
The hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Mr. Wyatt) told us about his long involvement with sport. I, too, was unable to bring my maiden speech to the crisp conclusion that I had in mind, such are the disciplines of the House, but his was a remarkable performance, in which he can take great pride. I know how he feels about the inventing of ideas. The right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) will remember that he invented the policy of selling off council houses, but ultimately it is those who put these things into operation who claim the credit.
For a lawyer, the hon. Member for Watford (Ms Ward) made a particularly good speech. I can get away with remarks like that because I, too, am a lawyer. She spoke with commendable brevity and great wit. She said that Tristan Garel-Jones had gone back to Spain. I have to say that some of us suspected that he had never left it. She was generous in her remarks about him. She reminded us properly of the devastation that drugs can cause to young lives and the role that sport can play in rescuing young people from that fate. I am sure that we shall be hearing other speeches from her.
The hon. Member for Portsmouth, North (Mr. Rapson) seemed to regret that, on this occasion, he was not able to get stuck into the Opposition. Well, we are all here and there will be other occasions when the hon. Gentleman will be able to do so. I welcome the generosity of his remarks about Peter Griffiths, who was particularly interested in the role of disabled people in sport. That is a matter to which I shall return in the substance of my remarks.
I also enjoyed the speech of the hon. Member for Liverpool, Garston (Maria Eagle). My task has been made slightly easier by the fact that her sister is now on the
Front Bench, so I know that the hon. Lady must be the other twin. I have no doubt that, in due course, I shall be faced with the confusion of having both hon. Ladies on the Front Bench and then, obviously, my task will be made slightly harder.
The hon. Lady made a fair point about chess as a sport. That responsibility will not fall to me, but I can see the problems in deciding whether it could be a sport. To an extent, time is with her, however, because if I recall the position--I stand to be corrected if I am wrong--the International Olympic Committee has now designated chess as a sport of the mind. The same could be said of bridge. If my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Sir P. Emery) had been able to be with us, he, too, would have expressed that hope about bridge. Obviously, one wonders about the degree of athleticism in chess other than running to give a press conference if one succeeds. It was well worth hearing the hon. Lady raise that worthwhile point.
The concept of sport for all is an interesting one, which has been around for some little while. It first emerged in a Council of Europe declaration in 1966. At that time, the English Sports Council felt that it had played a significant part in the adoption of that slogan. Because politicians especially use language in the way in which they want to use it, the meaning of that slogan has changed over the years. There was a time when that concept of sport for all was so wide and all-embracing that it almost became a health slogan. The idea of elitism in sport and ensuring that those with a soaring talent can soar disappeared to an extent. The fashion has now changed, and changed for the better.
Sport for all is now about excellence at all levels. The hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey said that all of us have a gold medal standard within us. In some of us it is lower than in others, but the hon. Gentleman properly summed up that one's personal excellence is a goal worth achieving. If the concept of sport for all means excellence at the highest levels, participation and access for women, the disabled and ethnic minorities, that is the right way in which to use that slogan.
On a subject like sport, we can be relatively uncontroversial. Members of the public who look at our debates and who tolerate us tearing the guts out of each other on most occasions do not expect such rampant controversy in a debate on sport. Let me pick up on something that the Secretary of State said. Although I accept that sport for all is a wide concept, I do not believe that it can encompass trespass for all. There is a debate to be had in the House about the right to roam and access to the countryside. That is a debate for another day because there are some tough issues to talk about.
The issue of hunting also raised its profile slightly in today's debate. The last thing I want to do on my first outing at the Dispatch Box is to fall out totally with the Minister for sport. To be fair to him, I know that he is keen on foxes, but I do not know quite what he has against fish. The hon. Member for Bury, North (Mr. Chaytor) argued that at least in sport the quarry should have a chance of survival. That is a fair point, but if I could be presumptuous enough to speak for fish, I doubt that they would see it that way. There is a debate to be had about that on another occasion and I am not sure that one on sport for all could include it.
If it is possible to achieve a reasonable consensus in the House about sport, it is necessary to say that development is something of a continuum. The Government will inevitably face the same problems as those that confronted the previous Government. They will never have enough money to do everything that they will reasonably want to do. Let us look at the figures for the mainstream funding for sport from the Department of National Heritage. It is projected to fall from £55 million, as at 1993-94, to £45 million in 1998-99. That is a 22 per cent. cut. If that were the end of the story, it would be an appalling one, and, far from being uncontroversial, people would be lynched about it.
However, there is rather more to say than that and we should look at some of the achievements of the not too distant past. For example, there is the work of the Foundation for Sport and the Arts, which was established in August 1991 as a result of a reduction in the pools levy duty in 1990. In all, around £245 million or £250 million has been contributed toward up to 17,000 sports-related projects. Scarcely a week goes by in my constituency or in the west country without my hearing of an individual enterprise that has been funded in that way.
"I have never served on a Committee with the Secretary of State,"--
my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler)--
"so I am looking forward to this one, so that I can study in closer detail the way in which he works and pick up a few tips that will be useful one day when I am a Secretary of State. I suspect that that will not be for a considerable time, not because I do not believe that we shall have a Labour Government after the next election"--
27 Jun 1997 : Column 1120
this was in 1989--
I for one am delighted that, if it has not yet been pushed to its logical conclusion, it is well under way.
"but because I do not believe that my case for preferment will be pushed to its logical conclusion."--[Official Report, Standing Committee A, 27 April 1989; c. 119.]
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |