Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
DAME
SUE STREET
DCB, LIZ NICHOLL
MBE, MR PETER
KEEN OBE,
MONDAY
6 FEBRUARY 2006
Q40 Mr Bacon: Let me re-phrase the
question: 72.5% of the £83.5 million went to national governing
bodies. What did the rest go on, the 27.5%?
Ms Nicholl: In our investment
in Summer Olympic sports, for example, we have money going directly
to the governing bodies, which is their World Class Performance
Programme funding and then we have money going directly to the
athlete, which is the athlete personal awards. The same on the
Paralympic side. The average budget for athlete personal awards
was about £5 or £6 million a year. There are administration
costs, of course.
Q41 Mr Bacon: I saw a figure of £6.2
million in a recent NAO update. Is that accurate?
Ms Nicholl: That is the figure
for the cycle.
Q42 Mr Bacon: That is for UK Sport
as a whole, for the cycle? So that is four years' worth of administration
costs?
Ms Nicholl: On the lottery side
of it, on the World Class Performance Programme side of our work,
yes.
Q43 Mr Bacon: So it does not sound
quite as bad, if it is four years' worth.
Ms Nicholl: Yes, it is for four
years.
Q44 Mr Bacon: Is it possible you
could write to the Committee with a note about the breakdown of
those administration costs and the number of people employed by
UK Sport and the things that they do and how much they cost?
Ms Nicholl: Yes, absolutely; not
a problem.[2]
Q45 Mr Bacon: That would be very kind
of you. Is it possible we could have some information? I know
this is not strictly your responsibility, but what I am interested
in is getting some feeling for what other countries are doing
in terms of their expenditure. If you take the 2004 Athens Olympics
and you rank them by the numbers of medals won, the United States
comes top, Russia is second, China is third and so on, but if
you rank them by the number of people per medal, Australia comes
top by a long way. Mr Khan referred earlier to Australia's performance:
they got 49 medals in the 2004 Olympics. They have a population
of 20 million people, which works out at just over 400,000 people
per medal. Most of the other big countries like Germany and Italy,
France as well, are on 1.7, 1.8 million people per medal. We are
on just over two million people per medal. Australia, a large
country with 20 million people does five times better.
Ms Nicholl: Yes, they are punching
above their weight and that is because of the investment in elite
sport over a considerable period of time through a very systematic
approach to institutes.
Q46 Mr Bacon: What I am trying to
do is to compare this £83 million, or this £68 million,
with what is spent in Australia, with what is spent in the United
States, with what is spent in other countries.
Ms Nicholl: We have tried to do
some international comparisons. We are working closely with our
European counterparts to put together some real comparators from
a research perspective. The difficulty internationally is that
you are rarely comparing like with like.
Q47 Mr Bacon: I knew you were going
to say that because in the United States, of course, famously
there is college sport and so on. It does not mean you cannot
do it, it means you have to strip it out, work it out differently,
but it would be very helpful to know. What are your best estimates?
Dame Sue Street: May I assist
a bit on Europe where we have done some work and we are pitched
where this Committee might want us, which is not over-spending
and quite well ranked relative to our spend. Italy, which is above
us, spends about 46% of its total expenditure on elite sport;
of its expenditure on sport as a whole it spends about 46% on
elite sport and it is above us and that is about €2.2 per
head of the population. Others like the Netherlands, Canada and
Belgium spend proportionately higher: 45%, 47% and 32% than we
do.
Q48 Mr Bacon: I am more interested
in the total quantum of money going into elite sport in these
countries.
Dame Sue Street: Per head?
Q49 Mr Bacon: No, the total quantum
going in in these countries. It is very easy to work out per head;
you just go onto the internet and you look on the CIA world fact
book and you find out how many people live in that country, as
my researcher did in about 20 minutes this afternoon, which is
why I have got this table. What I am interested in is if we are
spending £68 million how much—
Dame Sue Street: Italy is spending
€125 million.
Q50 Mr Bacon: On elite?
Dame Sue Street: On elite.
Q51 Mr Bacon: So it is double us.
Dame Sue Street: Euros.
Q52 Mr Bacon: So about £90 to
£100 million sterling.
Dame Sue Street: Yes.
Q53 Mr Bacon: Significantly more
than us. Germany, France?
Dame Sue Street: France, €196
million.
Q54 Mr Bacon: What is your best estimate
for the United States?
Dame Sue Street: We do not have
that.
Q55 Mr Bacon: Have you done no work
on that? I know it is difficult but I should have thought that
you, as the national body, would have thought about doing some
work on this.
Ms Nicholl: It is tremendously
difficult because the system in the United States does not actually—
Q56 Mr Bacon: There must be some
guestimate of the amount of the US GDP which goes into promoting
elite sport. I cannot believe there is not.
Dame Sue Street: I do not have
that available. If we can actually find some information on that
subject, I am happy to provide it.
Mr Bacon: If either you or the NAO could,
I should be very interested to see it. Thank you very much indeed.[3]
Q57 Chairman: Ms Nicholl, what is it
about these Australians? Is it just down to money? I take it that
however much they spent on culture, they would not do very well,
or was that a racist remark?
Ms Nicholl: I could not possibly
comment. They have a very effective institute network, a very
well established institute network which has moved from a centralised
vision of the Australian Institute of Sport to a decentralised
model across each of the states and they have been in existence
for some time, for nearly 25 years now of actual investment in
a system compared with our system which only started in 1997.
It is early days for us, but we are catching up. Australia is
within our sights. If we keep up the momentum in terms of the
development of the performance system here in the UK, we think
we can actually overtake the Australians.
Q58 Greg Clark: Ms Nicholl, how many
people work in UK Sport?
Ms Nicholl: We have between 80
and 85 members of staff.
Q59 Greg Clark: So it is not a huge
organisation.
Ms Nicholl: No, it is very small.
2 Ev 21 Back
3
Note by witness: This information is available in: Patrick
Carter, Review of National Sport Effort and Resources, London,
March 2005 Back
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