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Female Athletics

3. Mr. Jim Cunningham (Coventry, South) (Lab): What action her Department has taken to promote female professional athletics in the United Kingdom. [187893]

The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Tessa Jowell): I would like to begin by joining the Minister for Sport and Tourism, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Central (Mr. Caborn), in taking this opportunity to thank all our Olympians, men and women, who performed so magnificently at the Athens Olympics. They inspired and moved us all, and redoubled our determination to try to bring the Olympic games to London in 2012. In addition to thanking and congratulating our athletes, I would also like to thank Team GB and the scores of support staff who made those performances possible. My right hon. Friend and I will also be supporting our athletes at the Paralympics, which start this weekend.

The Olympics have clearly focused our pride on our women athletes, who won four of our five track and field medals in Athens. For the future, UK Athletics is fully committed to implementing what it has described as a new equality standard. In practice, that will mean ensuring that girls and boys, and men and women, have a chance to do well and to compete on an equal basis, whatever the sport.

Mr. Cunningham: I associate myself with my right hon. Friend's remarks, but I would also like to ask her what proportion of the resources allocated to the
 
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Olympics will be allocated to females athletes, so that we can maintain the high standards that we have seen at the recent Olympics?

Tessa Jowell: I thank my hon. Friend for his question. The equality standard to which I referred will be applied by the governing bodies, and will be one of the conditions against which decisions to fund governing bodies will be taken. It is a lever with which the Government can influence the behaviour of those bodies, to ensure that they take seriously the ambitions of women in sport as well as those of men.

Mr. Don Foster (Bath) (LD): May I associate the Liberal Democrats with the Secretary of State's congratulations to Team GB and all its support staff at the Olympics? We also wish our team well in the forthcoming Paralympic games. May I remind her, however, that under this Government, female participation in athletics and sport has declined? Does she agree that this is not helped when television sports coverage of women's sports is only 5 per cent. of the total coverage, and less than 3 per cent. in our tabloid newspapers? Will she therefore lobby the newspapers and broadcasting companies to ensure that they start to give our women a fair deal?

Tessa Jowell: Yes, yes and yes.

Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab): Is the Secretary of State aware that, in Crewe, we have a special team of young people who are taking part in the Paralympics, of whom we are inordinately proud and who have produced some very good results in the past? Will she make a special effort not only to encourage these children but to find ways of financing the work that they do, which is tremendously important to them and which needs to be encouraged at every level?

Tessa Jowell: I thank my hon. Friend very much for her question. This is one of the reasons why my right hon. Friend the Minister for Sport and Tourism and I want to go to Athens, to provide the support that our Paralympic athletes deserve.

Mr. Andy Reed (Loughborough) (Lab/Co-op): I am sure that all hon. Members here would like to congratulate the British Olympic team and the Paralympians, and, if so, that they would also like to sign my early-day motion 1602. I hope that they will do so, to double the number who have already signed it. The problem for women's sport in particular is the massive drop-off rate during the teenage years. By the time young women get to the age of 17, the number participating in sport has reduced dramatically. What work is my right hon. Friend doing with the Department for Education and Skills to ensure that girls continue with sports at school, and what role models can those girls look up to when, as the hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Foster) rightly said, there is inadequate media coverage of women's sports? Let us hope that we can use Kelly Holmes and others to ensure that in future more women will want to participate.
 
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Tessa Jowell: I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. Many of our female athletes—Kelly Holmes in particular—take their responsibilities as role models very seriously. Long before their recent Olympic fame, they were in schools providing exactly the kind of leadership that my hon. Friend is talking about. We are very concerned to address the issue that he describes, and the school sport partnerships that are now covering nearly 50 per cent. of schools place a special focus on presenting sport to girls in a way that they can engage with. We recognise the issue, we are determined to tackle it, and we will be judged by our success in doing so.

Millennium Commission Projects

4. Kevin Brennan (Cardiff, West) (Lab): If she will allow sponsors' names to be used in the titles of Millennium Commission projects. [187895]

The Minister for the Arts (Estelle Morris): The Government do not control the identity of projects supported by the national lottery. The Millennium Commission's grant agreements specify that any change in the name of a project that it funds must be agreed by the commission.

Kevin Brennan: I thank the Minister for that answer. But is it not crazy to fetter the future of some wonderful projects such as the Millennium stadium in Cardiff, which many Members have had the opportunity to visit, and which many more may visit in future, particularly when Wales play England at football next year, by not allowing them to maximise the commercial opportunities in the long term by having a sponsor's name in the title of the project? Will she and her colleagues consider this issue with a view to assisting the long-term future of those important projects?

Estelle Morris: First, may I share my hon. Friend's enthusiasm for the Millennium stadium? I reiterate, however, that this is a matter not for the Government but for the Millennium Commission. I know, however, that the Millennium Commission is in discussions, and has made it clear that it will consider any proposal that is put to it. That is right. It has also said that when there is lottery money involved a project, that must be made clear to the public and to people who buy lottery tickets. That is why, whatever the title is, it must continue to use the word "Millennium". If my hon. Friend looks a bit further, he will see that the Millennium Commission has allowed naming rights in other projects, such as the Donald Gordon theatre, as part of a much wider project. I do not know what the commission will decide, but it has certainly not said no to considering naming rights. That will be a matter for it and the stadium in the weeks and months to come.

Mr. Patrick McLoughlin (West Derbyshire) (Con): Bearing in mind the fact that the Millennium Commission gets its money from the lottery, what action are the Government taking to ensure that undesirable people are not allowed to buy lottery tickets? The Secretary of State referred to one such case during the summer recess.
 
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Estelle Morris: First, I understand the hon. Gentleman's comments. Over the summer, people were aghast at the fact that someone who was not able to repay money to victims suddenly came into millions of pounds. To state the obvious, one of the elements of the lottery is chance: there are no criteria in relation to worthy, deserving or non-deserving winners of the lottery. As far as what might happen in the future is concerned, we have no intention of introducing criteria on who should win. If it is legal for someone to buy a ticket, it must be legal for them to take the winnings. The Home Office is considering further what action it may need to take as to the criteria that it decides to impose on who may or may not buy lottery tickets. The gatekeeper is the person who buys the lottery ticket, and there cannot be decisions taken retrospectively when people have bought tickets and won prizes.

Gambling Laws

5. Mr Andrew Mackay (Bracknell) (Con): When she intends to introduce legislation to reform gambling laws. [187896]

The Minister for Sport and Tourism (Mr. Richard Caborn): We plan to introduce the gambling Bill as soon as parliamentary time allows. The Bill will modernise the law and provide stronger safeguards. We are considering the second report of the Joint Scrutiny Committee that examined our draft Bill. It made 24 recommendations on regional casinos, and we will consider all those and give our views in the near future.

Mr. Mackay: "As time allows" is very vague, and I am delighted at that. Is the Minister aware that many of us believe that the American-style hard-gambling sheds that will be placed on the edge of towns will adversely affect our communities? We would be strongly opposed to that element of the legislation.

Mr. Caborn: That means that we have cross-party support on that issue. Let me make it perfectly clear: we have been driven into this review, which, as many Members know, goes back to Budd, because of the development of new technology in relation to gambling. Many people are being exposed to online gambling who were not exposed to gambling previously. Let us make no mistake about it: the priority of the Bill is "protection, protection, protection." The world has moved on since the 1960s.

May I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway), who chaired the Joint Scrutiny Committee? He and his colleagues took a realistic view, with deregulation and modernisation on the one hand, and protection on the other. Having examined the impact of gambling in Australia, I note that in a very short period, once the cap had been taken off, it was very difficult to put it back on. All those whom I spoke to in Australia said that they wished that they had moved more proportionately and carefully in their deregulation. We learned a lot from that, and we will make sure that this Bill is informed by some of their experiences.
 
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Mr. Peter Pike (Burnley) (Lab): My right hon. Friend, who visited Burnley football club last week, will know that we all think the gambling laws need to be reformed. We have no problem with casinos in places like Blackpool, but as my right hon. Friend will appreciate, there is some anxiety about football clubs, churches and other organisations for which lotteries and other forms of gambling are the main source of income. Does my right hon. Friend think that the reformed laws will ensure that those sources of income are protected for worthy causes?

Mr. Caborn: We have been increasing the limits on charitable lotteries, and have done everything we can for the community. Some of the relaxations in the laws that have already taken place are intended to ensure that any surpluses and profits from that type of gambling are returned to the community. We have just been discussing the protection of the lottery. It is ring-fenced, and in that sense it is a private monopoly; but it is ring-fenced in order to help good causes.

It seems from what I read in the papers that every football club in the country is to have a casino. We shall have to wait for the Bill, but I can assure my hon. Friend that casinos will not be springing up at every corner as they did in the 1960s. At that time they were commonly used for purposes of crime and money-laundering, but in this instance there will be protection and strong adherence to the law.

Mr. John Greenway (Ryedale) (Con): I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his earlier remarks, but does he agree with the Joint Scrutiny Committee's recommendation that without a reforming Bill, gambling of doubtful legality would continue to increase?

Does the right hon. Gentleman welcome the code of practice jointly adopted last week by his Department and the betting exchanges? That area of gambling is currently not regulated. Is it not the case that without reform we shall not be able to introduce strong new powers through a new gambling commission, strengthen consumer interests, or reinforce the fight against problem gambling by means of greater social responsibility?

Mr. Caborn: Obviously I welcome all the steps that have been taken, including what has happened with the Jockey Club and the exchanges on the memorandum of understanding that was signed only a few weeks ago. It appears that in the last few weeks cheating has been looked at very carefully in that part of the industry. We need to go much further, though, and I think that the new gambling commission—which will have far more teeth than the Gaming Board currently has—will ensure that the police and other authorities can move in, in a concerted and effective way, to control problem gambling. We want to prevent crime, and also to ensure that vulnerable people, including children, are protected.

Mr. Kelvin Hopkins (Luton, North) (Lab): My right hon. Friend will know of the research that was presented to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, which concluded that 2 per cent. of the British population are already addicted to gambling and that
 
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simply liberalising the laws will make things worse. Will he take account of that research in pursuing his legislation?

Mr. Caborn: A good many reports have been produced, and I do not accept the findings of that one. In fact, the figure is 2 per cent. in Australia and marginally under 1 per cent. here. Nevertheless, the issue is important, which is why Budd recommended the setting up of the Gambling Trust. He wanted us to think not just about how we could mitigate the worst effects, but about some of the causes, and he therefore asked for the establishment of a £3 million fund. The industry has responded effectively to date, and I hope that we shall continue to look at both cause and effect.

As with any other deregulation, there are some who will behave sensibly. People should be able to gamble sensibly, just as they should be able to drink sensibly without indulging in binge drinking. We must introduce laws that protect without stifling.

Mr. Malcolm Moss (North-East Cambridgeshire) (Con): Few Bills could have undergone greater or closer scrutiny than the Gambling Bill, under the expert chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway). I am grateful to the Minister for mentioning that. The Government's report has elicited almost universal support for the Committee's findings. Given the desire of more or less all involved in the industry for the Bill to be introduced as soon as possible, what reasons can the Government have for delaying it?

Mr. Caborn: The reason is parliamentary time. As a seasoned Member of Parliament, the hon. Gentleman will know that such matters are within the gift not of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport but of those who order the business of the House—in which regard, I look to the Whips to my left. However, I can assure you, Mr. Speaker, that we have been pressing very hard on this issue.

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