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Hugh Robertson: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. A perfect illustration of that came a month or so ago when I turned out for the Lords and Commons cricket side against a Hackney community college side, a smashing institution that was set up to try to encourage young people to play sport and obtain a formal qualification. The problem is that there is not a single local authority cricket pitch on which they can play in the London borough of Hackney.

Mr. Truswell: Given the time available, I should not allow myself to be diverted on to that issue, but the historical problem was the choking off of resources, especially capital resources, in the 1980s and the early 1990s. That made it very difficult for schools to maintain cricket pitches. The school that I attended—it feels like it was 101 years ago—no longer has a cricket pitch. It has been subsumed into the general parkland across the road from the school. Therefore, to some extent, there is a party political response to the point that the hon. Gentleman makes.

I mentioned links with local health bodies to my hon. Friend the Minister, and I am pleased that he has agreed to take them up. Other problems include transport, especially for people with disabilities. The sports colleges in my area are trying to get people with disabilities more involved in their activities.

At least one of the colleges is experiencing a shortage of PE staff to cover all the posts that need filling because of the introduction of the liberating concept of sports colleges. I hope that we are moving away from the old Woody Allen observation, based on the wisdom of George Bernard Shaw, that "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach; and those who can't teach, teach gym." Perhaps the specialist colleges and sports partnerships are already sowing the seeds necessary to address that problem, with all the young people who are taking GCSEs, A-levels and other sport leadership initiatives.

The Central Council of Physical Recreation has campaigned vigorously to secure two hours of quality PE time in the curriculum. Specialist colleges are beginning to deliver that provision, but teachers can provide safe, high quality PE only if they are appropriately trained. I would welcome the view of my hon. Friend the Minister on the CCPR recommendation that a minimum of 30 hours should be devoted to PE in the initial teacher training for primary school teachers.

The National Council for School Sport recognises the need for school sport and national governing bodies to align their approaches, which in my experience does not always happen. We need coaches to go into schools, but we also need to accept that teachers are in schools, day in and day out, and they are crucial to the development of sport in their schools.

The NCSS stressed the need to support and acknowledge the volunteers who run major national sports events. I give just one example: the London Schools Cricket Association, which organises four or five week-long cricket festivals for county teams,
 
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including girls, at Ampleforth college in North Yorkshire. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend two of those weeks during the summer. The fact that London should go to Yorkshire to stage such an event is refreshing.

I agree with the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent that there is a definite role for coaches in schools where the school does not have the necessary expertise. I know from the experience of my sons and their peers, who are keen and accomplished cricketers, what coaches can do in enthusing and in developing skills and thus enjoyment. They can point players towards clubs and engage parents.

My great sporting love is cricket—that great male bastion. Indeed, it is so much of a bastion that even many males find it difficult to break in, so it was uplifting when visiting a local primary school to find a cricket coach in attendance and even better to find that the coach was a woman. In later months, I was delighted when she raised an all-girl under-13 team that acquitted itself well in the Airedale and Wharfedale league, beating several all-male teams. Women in cricket and so many other sports are not there simply to make the tea, drive the transport or wash the kit; they have a valid role to play, which that team demonstrates locally.

An important point, made forcefully by the Women's Sport Foundation, is that there is consistent evidence that the conventional school sports system too often fails girls. We know from figures produced by Sport England two years ago that girls as young as seven begin to show negative attitudes to sport. From research undertaken by the Youth Sport Trust, we learn that 40 per cent. of young women have dropped out of physical activity by the age of 18. Research published by the University of Bath last week stated that 79 per cent. of girls want to be fitter, compared with 68 per cent. of boys, and that 49 per cent. of girls do not feel comfortable exercising in front of other people.

That is why I support the foundation in its request for key measurements, with an evaluation of PESSCL programmes to be broken down on a gender basis and I would welcome the Minister's view on that. The future targets for PESSCL also remain generic. There is no specific reference to the need for girls to be given the chance to catch up with boys in sport.

I also welcome the Government's gifted and talented programme. I accept that a line must be drawn between targeting talent and ensuring that resources are targeted on promoting involvement and activity for all. Indeed, those who will never aspire to the greatest heights are probably more important to sport than the stars. They are the club players, the volunteer organisers, the coaches, the parents and the fans of tomorrow, without whom sport will die.

I have an interest to declare. My 12-year-old youngest son returned from Denmark on Monday after representing England at badminton. He also plays cricket for Yorkshire schools and has been chosen for the north of England squad. Incidentally, he has been wearing a helmet since the age of 6.

Andy Burnham: Has he been run out?

Mr. Truswell: Many times, but youngsters are run out not because they wear helmets but because they cannot gauge a run. That is well known in cricket circles. That is why I think the example given earlier was farcical.
 
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For the present, my son is obviously gifted and talented, although such things are often transient in young people. Even with hindsight, how he progressed from where he was four years ago, when he was simply whacking a shuttlecock as hard as he could at his decrepit old dad, to becoming an England player is almost impossible to explain. There was certainly no clear route. We learned as we went along and made many mistakes. I hope that such routes will be better signposted under the Government strategy to which my hon. Friend the Minister alluded.

Truswell minor is an expensive and exhausting individual to run, although my hard-pressed wife, on whose shoulders most of the burdens fall, and I are not personally looking for any support—financial or otherwise. But what happens to all those young people who do not have parents who are supportive in general or are specific sport enthusiasts, or who do not have the resources to fund their children's sport?

There must be a worry about the possible clash between school and sport—not sport in school. Michael Truswell might be an outstanding sportsman at the moment, but he is no academic leviathan. Such a situation must be a worry to many parents of gifted and talented children. I know of schools in my constituency that have gone the extra mile to support talented youngsters. One school has a young woman whose international prowess demands that she train far from home during the week. It has provided her with a customised GCSE timetable, with a senior teacher acting as her mentor, so that her schoolwork does not suffer. Youngsters at other schools must take a day off a week for football or half a day for tennis and they are receiving similar support. I suspect that such good practice is the exception rather than norm, but I hope that it will become the norm as the Government roll out their gifted and talented strategy.

I shall cite an example of the benefits of not taking too idealistic a view of school playing fields. Crawshaw high school in my constituency spent years trying to persuade the local authority to sell a small section of its playing fields that was virtually unusable because of its slope. It succeeded at long last and used the money raised to install drainage to waterlogged rugby pitches, to pay for a floodlit all-weather pitch and to help to fund its new Sir Leonard Hutton sports centre, which has been named after one of Pudsey's greatest sons who attended school on that site 80 years ago. There are advantages to taking the constructive approach on school playing fields that the Minister suggested.

I realise that I have already taken up far too much of the House's time by scratching the surface of some of the challenges that we face, but I know that the Government are making a real and genuine effort to address them to a greater extent than their predecessors.

4.46 pm

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