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Mr. William Cash (Stone) (Con): Other Members want to speak so I shall be brief and move rapidly to the point. I believe that sport is a fundamental ingredient of education. Recently, however, successive generations in both political parties have failed to recognise that, so I very much welcome the debate.

The question is, does the sportsman or the person who can excel in sports acquire his sense of achievement and his sense of competition, which is essential to most sports, from his character or from the sport? I think the two interact. It is apparent that people such as Don Bradman or some of the great West Indian cricketers lived in extremely deprived circumstances but became brilliant merely because they wanted to excel. They did that without any facilities or resources to speak of, yet I could not for a moment imagine that it is not essential to try to provide the best-quality sporting facilities in schools if it is possible to do so.
 
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A point has been made about private schools. On the whole, they have extremely good facilities. It is utterly disgraceful that state schools have found themselves selling off playing fields. Indeed, the Staffordshire Playing Fields Association is still concerned about the extent to which school playing fields have been sold off. It is a disgrace. However, without incentives for teachers, it is not practical to imagine that the quality of sport that is required to give satisfaction and fulfilment to those children will be achieved. Those children must be taught by people who are sufficiently skilled to enable them to do well.

I have clubs in my constituency that work with schools, including Eccleshall cricket and rugby clubs, Cheadle cricket club and Blythe Bridge. There are so many of them. One of the reasons why Staffordshire was top of the minor counties cricket league for so long was the interaction between Stone cricket club and local children as they grew up and got into clubs.

There is an interaction between the human spirit and the facilities that are available in a school to generate that competitiveness and a desire to excel. The latter is an essential ingredient and is as important as intellectual achievement. Of course, there are some who manage both—I think of Mike Brearley, who got a double first and a double blue. In a slightly different context, my son played cricket for the Middlesex second XI when he was 16. I heard what the hon. Member for Pudsey (Mr. Truswell) said. Look at Richard Hutton and Len Hutton. It is a fact that, in a competitive environment, people can take enormous steps.

In relation to swimming, life-saving is also an important skill that needs to be cultivated and on which training needs to be provided. Sport gives confidence and builds self-esteem. Those who are not intellectually gifted must be given the opportunity to excel. That is of fundamental importance to the nature of our education. I have already mentioned the excellence of Christ Church middle school's performance in getting to Headingley earlier this year.

For me, sport has always been fundamental. In fact, at Oxford, I read cricket and history in that order. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to do that and I know that that combination has had an enormous effect on my life, not least on my sense of competition, which is visible in some of my political activities, particularly on the European front. I do not understand how it is possible to be beaten.

Andy Burnham: One question intrigues me. When the Ryder cup is on, whom does the hon. Gentleman support?

Mr. Cash: Jointly and severally.

There is an element of adventure and risk in sport that needs to be cultivated. This is about human nature, the soul, the way in which people interact with their fellow beings. It is so important. I do not believe that two hours a week is anything like enough. In the 1980s, during my first years in Parliament, I tabled an amendment to the Education Bill calling for the compulsory provision of sport, in consultation with the Central Council of Physical Recreation. There was a lot of correspondence in The Times about it afterwards.
 
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For the reasons that I have given about the interaction between sport and human nature and the importance of giving people opportunity, sport should be a compulsory provision at school. That is not to say that every person should be driven to do whatever is prescribed but schools must have the necessary facilities. Furthermore, they must have the staff who can teach. If the money has to be found, find it. For the nation, as well as for schools, it is as important that pupils should be able to participate in sport and do well as it is for them to achieve intellectually.

5.19 pm

Mr. Derek Wyatt (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Lab): First, I congratulate the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Hugh Robertson) on taking up his position. In case the House thinks that peace has broken out, let me explain that our constituencies are coterminous and we often work together.

Hon. Members have mentioned the Women's Sports Foundation. I am proud to say that I was its founder in 1985, but after the first three meetings I was asked to leave as I was a man. It was an interesting time and I was inspired to do that by Billie Jean King and Donna Verona in America. I am pleased to see how well it is doing.

Before talking about school sport, one must talk about sport in society. The one weakness in the whole sport debate is that we do not have a think tank for sport. Every other Secretary of State has a think tank. We do not have a Royal Academy for sport. Nearly every other science—chemical, engineering—architecture, theatre and art has a royal body, but sport does not. In this House we can become a fellow for business, a fellow in charity, a policeman and an Army fellow, but we cannot become anything to do with sport. I am pleased to say that we will be announcing a change to that in the new year when we introduce a sports fellowship programme for MPs and peers. Sport is at a disadvantage because it is not in the core culture and it is certainly not in the core culture of politics.

Time is short, so I shall ask a series of questions. For 20 years, there was a debate inside the Foreign Office about the Department for International Development. Finally, in 1997, we brought it out. That Department now prospers, with a bigger budget than that of the Foreign Office. It is now time that we had our own sport and health education Department because until we have a Secretary of State for sport and health education covering sport education at school, sport in the wider community, the business of sport and the policing of sport, society will not give us the credibility that we need.

Yesterday, a report on BBC 3 and BBC 4 was published. The £148 million that has been spent on them would buy about 600 primary school swimming pools, yet no one is watching. Could we persuade Ofcom not to provide the three-hour new public sector service, but to create a broadband channel for sport education? We want from the BBC a 24-hour channel on sport education, sport psychology, sport science, sport motivation, sport history—everything to do with sport. That is what we want from a public sector broadcaster and tomorrow is not quick enough. It is appalling to see the lack of interest inside the BBC to service the public need for sport and sport education.
 
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My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, North (Mr. Henderson) has left the Chamber. Some premier league rugby and football clubs do the most astonishing work. I am a shareholder and season ticket holder at Charlton Athletic. We do more work than any other professional club in Britain with the disadvantaged, with women, with homework clubs and on race issues. We do not work just in Woolwich or Greenwich; our work extends all the way to the A2. We are starting in Dover and coming up to Sittingbourne.

People want to rub shoulders with the famous. We need a memorandum of understanding between the great football, rugby league, rugby union and cricket clubs and our county councils to create a sport charter mark that is second to none and covers the areas that I have mentioned. We have to grab sport out of schools. Kelly Holmes is one of Kent's heroes. What are we going to do with her? We should give her a hundred grand for a three-year contract to run round schools. We need a leadership campaign that takes gold, silver and bronze medallists around our schools as part of the scheme. They should form part of the memorandum of understanding and should focus on that.

We tell our children on their school report cards how bright they are. Could we not also tell them how physically advantaged or disadvantaged they are? Could the report cover step-ups and body fat, how fast the children are over 20 yards? Is there some way that we can tell parents, "The national average is this; your child is minus one. We must try to improve on that"? What about encouraging some sort of affinity card so that we can say, "Look, that gap gets you salsa dancing, quad biking or rifle shooting"? We need to provide incentives to get children back into the system, rather than just saying, "You're fat and awful and you do no exercise."

For 30 years we have been talking about opening up schools. It is time to stop just talking about it. Let us appoint an overall director of each school and separate head teachers for daytime and for after school, so that schools are not just open from 8 am to 6 pm. I want all my local secondary schools to open until 10, 11 or 12. In Washington DC, where floodlit basketball is the most successful school sport, it starts at 2 in the morning—and it does so in schools that used to close at 5 pm. We have to foster a different mentality about school buildings. The heads are holding things back; they will not let their school building go. Until we appoint a director, and a headmaster or headmistress for the daytime and someone else for the evening, nothing will change.

Groundsmen are essential. These days, cricket fields have all-weather wickets. That is because, sadly, we got rid of groundsmen and librarians: they were the two categories that fell off school staff. Can the the lottery or the Secretary of State be persuaded to bring back groundsman training in further education colleges? We have hairdressers and plumbers, but we have no groundsmen. We could sponsor something that would change overnight the quality of fields in our secondary schools, which are a disgrace, and which get closed down by health and safety people because they are unsafe. That cycle will go round and round unless we grab it and get the further education people to come round.
 
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I could go on, but I shall make just two more points. This summer, my local police, Swale police, did something amazing. With their own funds they created an excess energy club for 150 of the poorest in the community, so that every day, at a cost of £3, they could do exactly what they liked to do—exciting, dangerous things. And guess what? Crime is down. But why should the police pay for that, and why did they have to rent the land off a farm? What the hell were the schools doing? We need these partnerships to ensure that the Home Office and schools do this together.

May I make a radical suggestion? Who knows whether we shall all be here in five years, but if we have this debate then, and if by that time we have not increased the activity of schoolchildren by more than 2 per cent. or 5 per cent., so that 25 per cent. are still not taking activity, why do we not take PE and games out of schools altogether? Why do we not set up pilots, giving the money to rugby, cricket and football clubs to teach schoolchildren? I bet we could get 95 per cent. participation by adopting that very different approach.

5.27 pm


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