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1 Mar 2007 : Column 333WH—continued
The event showcased our most talented young athletes, who could become medallists on the podiums
in 2012—I hope that they will. The important part of the four-day event, which I was privileged to attend, was that it tried to replicate what happens in the Olympics. The Olympics are not just about a sporting event; they are about athletes coming together and living together in the village, and sharing their experiences across the different disciplines. Anyone who was in Glasgow last year will have seen that happening among a lot of young people. Kids from the east end of London were mixing with kids from Northern Ireland, Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom. I am convinced that they will remember that experience for the rest of their lives.
We want to hold such an event each year as we approach 2012. I hope that we will be able to sustain that effort well beyond that, but who knows. Next year, the games will be held in Coventry and will be bigger and better. There will be more events and more competitors. I take this opportunity to acknowledge the excellent work of UK Sport and the national governing bodies of sport in the delivery of talent identification and development.
Besides the mass participation that has been attained, we now have in place a structure to identify talented young people, and not by chance as happened with Steve Redgrave, Kelly Holmes or Steve Cram. When asked how they got into sport, they tell us that a lot of it was down to the fact that they happened to be in the right place at the right time, and that the right person spoke to them. Through the talented athletes scholarship scheme, we have now put in place a system whereby young people from the ages of 11 to 25 can be identified and a bursary or scholarship may be awarded. For disabled people, the scheme runs from the ages of 11 to 35.
Slightly fewer than 900 people are on the talented athlete scholarship scheme, and to date it has supported slightly fewer than 3,000 athletes. The scheme is important for the development of our young people, because it takes them up to world-class performance level, where there is a major investment, both in terms of the individual athletes and the facilities. The English Institute of Sport is involved, and some of the best coaches, best sports scientists and the best sports medicine are available to those young people.
We now have 1,500 world-class athletes. We have built the infrastructure for 50 or so school sports partnerships, linked to the pathway programme, to move them into excellence and to realise the talent of any of those young people who want to get on to the podium. The investment is clear. That work is designed to enable all athletes to maximise their sporting potential and to progress through the UK’s world-class pathway programme to the pinnacle of their sport.
It is not just the most talented who will be inspired by the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games. Our presentation to the International Olympic Committee in Singapore was all about the 2012 games inspiring a generation to take part in sport. I believe that what we said about using the power of the Olympic movement and the five rings to reconnect young people with sport clinched the vote of 54:50 against Paris. We are determined to deliver that aim, and we have started on the course of persuading more young people to play more sport, but we shall also do
that internationally. In partnership with the British Council, the Commonwealth and UNICEF, we are working, first in five countries and then in 20 countries, to help them build up their sport infrastructure and to reconnect young people with sport in those countries.
I am delighted that Dame Kelly Holmes, our double gold medallist, is our national school sports champion, and I was with her on Saturday morning in Coventry. It is remarkable to see how the young kids’ faces change when she walks on to the field or into the playground. She is doing an incredible job by inspiring many young people—hundreds, if not thousands—throughout the country. That shows clearly that athletes such as Kelly Holmes and others can inspire young people, and we should use them more effectively.
I would be remiss if I did not recall one of our greatest Paralympians ever—Tanni Grey-Thompson—who has now put her wheels away. Tanni gave me some great advice when I was running a marathon. She said that she always takes a bag of raisins with her because when bashing through 26 miles of marathon, raisins are comfort food, but they also provide slow-release energy. I want to put on record our thanks to Tanni for what she has done for Paralympic sport. She has been an inspiration to many young people, and I hope that, whatever she does in future, she will continue to provide that inspiration to young people, particularly those with disabilities. She has shown that disability is no barrier and can be overcome. She has been one of our greatest athletes.
Hugh Robertson: How much time did the raisins cut off?
Another important part of our sport structure, particularly for young people, is volunteering. Sport would not exist in this country without volunteers, and we must focus on and continue to invest in that. Over the past five years, we have encouraged young people to become involved in volunteering and leadership as part of our national school sport strategy. The step into sport programme will invest £23 million up to 2008 and build on a huge amount of volunteering activity by young people in the sports sector. In addition, we are working with the Youth Sport Trust to develop a pathway for young people in the step into sport programme. That will help them to go on to become young officials in sport or to be deployed as volunteers at high-profile sports events and competitions, such as the UK school games, the world rowing championships and so on. The Olympics and Paralympics provide many opportunities for young people to become involved in different ways, including volunteering. We now have more than 800 recognised young ambassadors—outstanding young people who are helping to spread the Olympic message and ideas to their peer groups.
Sport has wider benefits. It has often been said that academically low performing schools concede that sport is a powerful tool for raising education standards. Participation in sport and recreation during the school day can assist concentration, behaviour and achievement, as Roger Black showed on his BBC programme. The percentage of pupils at sports colleges who obtained five or more good GCSE passes rose from 49 per cent.
to more than 54 per cent. in the past two years. Sport and recreation has the ability to re-engage young people who have struggled in the education system, thereby offering them a route away from exclusion. There are many examples of sport being a medium that brought young people back into society.
More active young people will help to tackle society’s major problem of obesity and type 2 diabetes. Headlines on obesity are never far from the front pages, and childhood obesity is a major cause for concern, not only for our young people, but because of the health implications. I recently supported a Sport England/MEND initiative to change the attitude of some of the capital’s children and their families to sport and exercise. I was in the east end of London last week where the results of that have been remarkable. Those who are working with young people and their families should be commended for their work.
One of my first speeches on coming into this job more than five years ago was on a National Audit Office report on obesity. It was a brilliant speech, brilliantly delivered, but not one word was reported in the media. If I made that speech today, I am sure that it would be reported, not only in the broadsheets, but in the red tops. Within five years, the matter has come on to the agenda. We must address it and we are.
The Prime Minister and the Chancellor have put money where their mouths are. As sports Minister for the past five years, I have been pleased with the support that I have received. Without such support, we would not have been able to make the advances that we have made. It has been significant. Many people throughout the world, including in Australia, come to see what we are doing not just in elite sports, but in achieving mass participation in schools and beyond, in clubs and the community. We probably have one of the most sustainable sport infrastructures anywhere in the world. If there is continued investment, it will go from strength to strength and will not only put future athletes on the podium, but will start to address issues, such as social exclusion, health and education, for the better.
3.7 pm
Hugh Robertson (Faversham and Mid-Kent) (Con): Any debate on sport and young people should start by answering the fundamental question why sport is good for young people and, indeed, people of all ages. In my view, there are six main reasons.
First, sport is clearly good for physical health. As the Minister has said, that is important, because obesity levels, particularly among children and younger people, have risen by 50 per cent. in the past decade from 12.6 per cent. in 1997 to 18.3 per cent. today, according to the health survey for England. Secondly, sport is good for young people’s mental health. Thirdly, it is also good for their education—I attended a dinner for head teachers from specialist sports colleges last night, and they spoke about the positive effect of sport on the academic attainment of young people in their care. Fourthly, it can have a profound effect in combating antisocial behaviour and crime. One has only to look at America to see the effect of the midnight basketball experiment, in which young men are taken off the streets between 10 o’clock at night and 2 o’clock in the
morning. There has been a large reduction in crime in major US cities. Fifthly, it contributes enormously to the economy. I have seen estimates as high as £22 billion. Finally and importantly, it stimulates national pride and social cohesion. I suspect that all hon. Members here this afternoon would agree that sport is indeed good for young people.
The logical way of approaching the subject is to examine the three main areas of sport—elite or high performance sport, school sport, and mass participation sport—and assess both what is currently being done and what needs to be done to help young people in all three areas. However, it would be wrong not to touch briefly on the London 2012 Olympics, which were won on a commitment to enable young people through sport.
Given the controversy about budgets, buildings, regeneration and construction, I worry that the central role of sport could be forgotten, and that worry is certainly shared by the Central Council of Physical Recreation, whose chief executive, Tim Lamb, said only yesterday:
“The Games are fundamentally about Sports—yet that is a word that’s barely been mentioned in recent months.”
I suspect that all of us here who agree that sport needs to be at the centre of the process want that to be corrected. Indeed, I would go much further and say that I hope that hosting London 2012 will lead to a much-expanded range of sporting opportunities—“opportunities” is the key word—for young people up and down the country, rather than solely to the regeneration of part of the east end. If the lottery is raided further to make up the shortfall, however, I fear that that opportunity will be diluted.
When the Minister winds up, as I assume that he will, will he give us a report on the progress that has been made in implementing the goals set out in the Chancellor’s article “My fight to get Britain fit for the Olympics”, which appeared in the Daily Mail four or five months ago? The Chancellor finished the article by saying:
“How much better we will all feel if Britain can lead the world in 2012 as one of the fittest and most sporting of nations”.
If he delivers on that, he will have my wholehearted support. I hope, therefore, that the Minister will tell us exactly what progress has been made.
I turn now to the three main areas of sport: elite, high-performance sport, school sport and mass-participation sport. On elite sport, which is almost exclusively, although not entirely, populated by young people, I can, again, start by being reasonable—this is, after all, Westminster Hall on a Thursday afternoon. I have genuinely been enormously encouraged by several of the developments that have taken place in elite sport since we won the right to host the 2012 games. First, there is no doubt that elite sport is now properly funded, although I hope that the Minister will update us on the whereabouts of the missing £100 million. That sum, which was due to be raised from the private sector, was announced in the Budget, but it has not yet appeared.
Secondly, UK Sport has now come of age and found a proper role as the lead agency in distributing money
and setting rigorous performance standards. There have been complaints about centralisation, but—perhaps curiously for a Conservative—I entirely support the Government’s approach, because a little rigour and toughness were needed to get the system up and running. The Government took that approach safe in the knowledge that they would be able to take a more hands-off approach once they were satisfied that the correct systems were in place.
Thirdly, I hope that the English Institute of Sport, which the Minister has mentioned, can be brought further into the UK Sport system. I am sure that the Minister will agree that it makes little sense to have separate organisations with individual bureaucracies, when the money used to fund them could be better spent on sport.
Fourthly, although the Minister has indicated that he is not keen to do this, I hope that he will at least consider looking again the Select Committee’s recommendations on the independence of UK Sport’s drug-testing agency. I say that in no way as a criticism of the agency’s performance—quite the reverse—but it is important to avoid any perception of a conflict of interest. With the London Olympics soon upon us, our drug-testing procedures must be seen to be entirely above reproach. Making the agency more independent would allow us to become a world leader on anti-doping issues at precisely the time when the eyes of the sporting world are upon us.
Mr. Don Foster: The hon. Gentleman’s point is critical not only for youth sport, but across sport generally. Many national governing bodies have responsibility for the integrity of their sport, and that extends to issues such as doping. Is it not the time to consider whether money from betting organisations, which, after all, rely on the integrity of the sports involved, could contribute towards helping sporting governing bodies deal with such issues?
Hugh Robertson: It is certainly a time to consider the issue, although I am not sure whether I know enough about the in-depth details to give the hon. Gentleman a firm commitment one way or another. It will be interesting to hear what the hon. Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson), with his medical background, says about the issue, if he chooses to address it, but from what I can see, the problem with anti-doping agencies is that it is almost impossible for them to keep up with the game—as soon as they develop the correct testing procedures, another way of achieving the same results appears. My point was more that the drug-testing agency should not only be independent, but be seen to be independent, thus avoiding a conflict of interest. Clearly, anything that we can do would help, although I would be nervous about giving the hon. Gentleman a commitment one way or the other without the full facts.
To finish what I was saying about elite sport, however, I hope that the Minister will take some confidence, on a cross-party basis, from the fact that I am broadly satisfied with the progress that has been made.
I now turn to the second issue, school sport, which formed the bulk of the Minister’s speech. Clearly, school sport has a profound effect on young people. Last night, the shadow Secretary of State for Education and Skills and I had dinner with a group of head teachers who had been brought together by the Youth Sport Trust. The focus of the conversation was not so much on what has been done as on what needs to be done to take the process further, and I thought that the Minister and other hon. Members would be interested to hear the feedback. Encouragingly, the good news is that there was wide support for the Youth Sport Trust, and every one of the 12 or so head teachers around the table was enormously supportive of the trust, the specialist sports college system—that is not surprising, given that all the head teachers were from that sector—and the school sports co-ordinators. Rather more worryingly, however, when the head teachers were asked what they put that success down to, they said, “Ignoring directives from the Department.” There was a feeling that rigid adherence to the national curriculum would have made it difficult for them to achieve some of the things that they had achieved.
There was considerable concern about the spiralling cost of the Olympics and the effect that it would have on the lottery and thus on sports provision for younger people. There was widespread agreement that the additional two hours of sport that the public service agreement target requires by 2010 would have to be delivered by extending school hours, rather than as part of the mainstream curriculum.
There were also worries about the impact of such provisions on rural schools, which have transport difficulties. Somebody described the situation as rather like a balloon game, because there will be a large number of pupils at four o’clock, but only three or four left by the time it gets round to half-past four. That is because they have to be picked up at the school gate at different times.
The one thing that all the head teachers said was that there should be more focus on teaching core, basic sports skills at an early age in primary schools.
Inevitably, there was concern about the number of coaches, which the Minister has already mentioned. Critically, there was also concern about the amount of sport that is included in teacher training. There was a feeling right around the table that the number of hours included in general teacher training is too small and that that does not help to deliver school sport.
Finally, there was enormous enthusiasm for legal protection for volunteers, so that those who take sport and adventure training trips are free from malicious prosecution. To be fair to the Minister, there was enormous recognition at the dinner that much has been achieved, although we probably only heard about the real success stories. Equally, however, there is clearly an appetite to do a great deal more.
The third issue to which I want to turn is community or mass-participation sport, which also has an enormous effect on young people. Having been generous to the Minister over elite and school sport, I must say that this is currently the issue of greatest concern. The reasons for that are threefold. First, the
amount of national lottery funding going into sport has fallen from £397 million in 1998 to £264 million last year, a cut of one third.
Secondly, we have had a succession of reports on this issue, including the Carter report commissioned by the Government and “Raising the Bar” by the independent sports review. Just before the last election, we also had the debate held by The Observer, in which the Minister took part and to which I listened just after I was appointed to my post. He will remember, however, that two of the four panellists, when asked what one thing they would do for sport, said, “Ensure efficient delivery mechanisms.” I am in no way convinced, however, that mass-participation sport has such delivery mechanisms.
Thirdly, there has also been a considerable increase in bureaucracy, which has affected community sports clubs. The hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Derek Wyatt) has commented on the issue in the past, but let me highlight the problem using an example from my constituency. Headcorn football club, which is a really good small community sports club, used to pay £25 every five years for its licensing fee. Following the introduction of the Licensing Act 2003, however, that has risen to £900 every five years—an increase of more than 3,000 per cent. The hon. Gentleman gave the example of one of the rugby clubs in his constituency before the last election.
What needs to be done about all that I have described? In my view, five things would help immeasurably. First, we should restore the national lottery to its four original pillars, so that sport would get at least 25 per cent. of the take. Secondly, we need to ensure that there are efficient delivery mechanisms, so that the policies set out by the Minister will be delivered at the grass roots. There is a process going on of modernisation of national governing bodies in sport—it is true that not all of them have been perfect in the past. However, they are by far the best delivery mechanism at the moment, and we should transfer to them the responsibility for bringing about increases in mass participation. Indeed, those governing bodies that have modernised are ready and keen to do that—I am thinking of the England and Wales Cricket Board, with which I was involved last year through the parliamentary sports fellowship, and the Rugby Football Union, which has a fabulous plan.
The third point is that, from the bottom up, we need to engage local authorities in the process better than we have so far, so that sport becomes more community-based. We need to strip out the bureaucracy that stifles some of the developments. A classic example is regional sports boards. I sat down with people from my regional sports board a year ago and said, “Tell me some things that you are doing in my constituency.” They looked completely blankly at me and could not tell me a thing. The boards may have more meaning in the part of the world that the Minister represents, but in Kent we think of ourselves as Kentish, not as part of a greater south-east; a regional sports board based in Reading does not have much feeling for the particular needs of Kent.
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