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1 Mar 2007 : Column 346WH—continued

Normally, at the beginning of these Adjournment debates, we know why we are here and we congratulate the relevant Member on securing the debate. There is
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some confusion in the minds of some of us about why we are here, so I suppose I ought to begin by congratulating the Minister on securing this debate. I have no doubt that he was hoping that this would be an opportunity for everyone to give him paeans of praise for his great success in being the longest continuously serving Minister for Sport. Since no one else has done that, I would like to place it on record that I genuinely congratulate him on that achievement.

I am sure that he read with interest, if he was not there, the speech that the Prime Minister gave to the Youth Sports Trust conference in Telford on 1 February. The Prime Minister gave a huge list of all of the successes in school sport that had taken place, but sadly made no reference whatever to the right hon. Gentleman, who deserves credit for many of the successes announced at that conference.

Whatever the reasons are for us being here, this is an important debate. It is an excellent opportunity to discuss the positive role that sport can play in young people’s lives and the way in which we can improve upon the successes that we already have. The hon. Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Hugh Robertson) was right to say that we should make it clear why it is so important. After all, 29 million people in this country regularly take part in sport or some form of regular physical activity. People are interested in it and it is right that politicians, who represent them, are equally interested and have comments to make about it.

We have already heard why we should be interested. Sport provides solutions to the issue of obesity in society and shows young people how they can live fulfilled and healthy lives. It can help with educational achievement and can help those who feel excluded and isolated by developing teamwork, leadership skills and social interaction. It helps to reduce crime and antisocial behaviour, it improves behaviour in school and contributes to the economy. Perhaps above all, it can inspire each and every one of us, whether through the achievements of an elite athlete or someone in the local community who successfully completes a half-marathon for charity—in the Minister’s case a full one—with a personal best. We can all be inspired by such things, and that is important.

The Minister, who secured the debate, rightly pointed to a number of successes, which I acknowledge. They include the success of the national school sport strategy, which went live on 1 April 2003. We heard from the Minister about the fantastic increase in the number of children doing two hours of PE a week, which has now reached 6 million. We should have realised that increase much earlier, but we have got there nevertheless and now there is talk of extending it further.

There is a lot of talk about the decline of competitive sport in schools, but the latest figures demonstrate that that is simply nonsense: 97 per cent. of schools now hold a sports day and 37 per cent. of pupils take part in inter-school sport. We should welcome that and the fact that increasingly we have a sustainable structure for sport at all of the different levels referred to by the hon. Gentleman.

We have seen growth in the important area of coaching, with more money going in, but a lot more work needs to be done. I cannot help but mention the other great
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innovation that the Minister rightly takes personal responsibility for—the introduction of the UK school games. I would like to put on record that we are waiting for an announcement from the Minister about where the games will go during the next few years. I commend the excellent Bath-Bristol bid to him. Not only would it bring fantastic opportunities for thousands of young elite sportsmen and women to use the excellent facilities we have on offer, but our bid would ensure that everyone in our community in the sub-region of the west of England would have the opportunity to try their hand at sports that they might not otherwise have tried, and it would be backed by a full cultural programme. We look forward with anticipation and anxiety to the Minister’s announcement in the near future.

Having said all that, everybody accepts that there is still a huge amount to do. I will not repeat what has been said by others about the problem of obesity, other than to say that that problem has not remained static or got less problematic. Obesity problems are getting worse year on year despite all of the successes. The figures for the past 10 years show that the proportion of boys and girls aged 12 to 15 who were obese in 1995 was 10.9 per cent. and that it had risen to 18 per cent. by just over a year ago. The figures for girls show a rise from 12 per cent. to 18.1 per cent. Those figures are staggering and show why obesity costs the nation billions of pounds every year. That is why it is crucial that we take action in the areas that have already been talked about, and it is why we are using the Olympics as a springboard to improve the general health of our nation, particularly that of young people.

There are problems. A staggering number of people drop out of sport when they leave school. The figures vary, but roughly speaking, 70 per cent. of young people drop out of doing any sport whatever the minute that they leave school. We need to address why that happens. I think that the hon. Member for Norwich, North put his finger on the reason: we simply do not offer a wide enough range of sporting activities for young people in schools so that they can find a sport that they want to do—one which will become a passion that they can take into later life. I welcome the link between school and sports that is being developed by the Government. It is the way forward and we need to ensure it progresses much more quickly.

We need to ensure that we provide appropriate sporting facilities. The Minister talked about the wonderful work he has done in preventing the sale of larger playing fields, but told me that we will have to wait until next year even for consultation on the smaller ones. I remind him that the fields he is preventing from being given away are the equivalent size of 15 tennis courts or more. I am interested in the smaller ones—those from 0.2 hectares.

Mr. Caborn: To return to the hon. Gentleman’s point about offering young people a range of sports, as I said, 16 sports on average are offered in the school sports partnerships. However, we are offering 22 different sports in the club links work strand. It is also interesting that dance, which my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North mentioned, is now the second most popular sport offered in schools and is being offered in a creative way. Five years ago the hon. Gentleman would probably have been right, but the whole scene has moved dramatically in the recent past.
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Mr. Foster: The Minister is right, but his own figures show that only 27 per cent. of young people—roughly a quarter—are involved in a scheme that is linked with a club. We need to build on the undoubted success that has been achieved, for the very reasons that I have given. There would be clear support for any moves by the Minister on that.

We also need to ensure that the money that has been made available is being spent. The Minister knows that I am a frequent critic of the Government’s failure to spend on time. The £750 million of New Opportunities Fund money allocated for physical education and sports that the Prime Minister announced ought to have been spent by March last year, but at that time, and even subsequently, only 50 per cent. had been spent. Where money is allocated, we need to get on and spend it.

We also need to ensure that we do not waste money. The £6 million that Sport England spent on the active people research was undoubtedly a complete waste of money because all the information that was gathered had already been gathered. If we are going to do something that we think is helpful, we also ought to do it on time. The Domesday project to gather information about where all the sporting facilities in the UK were—what became known as active places—actually took longer to compile than the Domesday Book itself. So, we need to get on with things.

We need to be careful. The Minister was proud to announce that some of the targets had been met and surpassed, but it is easy to be picky about which targets to mention. I remind him that we have an activity target, to get 70 per cent. of the nation active by 2020. We are years behind on achieving that target, which is based on mistranslations of Finnish documentation anyway. The vast majority of sporting bodies say that the target is complete nonsense and the Wanless report described it as aspiration and unlikely to be achieved. We are failing on that largely because the wrong target was chosen in the first place.

There are things that we could do better, including getting people more active in a way that the hon. Member for Norwich, North mentioned. Far too many school pupils are driven distances of 1 mile or less to school. Research that I conducted a few years ago showed that if we could get all those who are driven 1 mile or less to school to walk or cycle, we would save the equivalent in weight of 30,000 John Prescotts, which would be a good move.

We should not expect the Government to do everything. We should welcome those many firms and organisations that are involved in promoting sport. We could mention many of them, such as B and Q, and its work with the Olympics, and even the banks. They have been heavily criticised for their large profits, but we should certainly praise Barclays bank for its wonderful spaces for sport programme; indeed, I was delighted to open one such facility in my constituency recently. There are many others we should congratulate on the work that they do, such as the sports governing bodies, including the Football Association, which does wonderful work in partnership with clubs, such as Chelsea, to launch positive community initiatives. Yesterday my attention was drawn to Gibbs Green
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special school in west London, where children with emotional and behavioural problems, and children from five other primary schools in the area are given opportunities to be involved in football, with all the benefits that it brings. We also ought to praise the Central Council for Physical Recreation for its work with those 150,000 voluntary sports clubs and its work to promote the CASCs tax reliefs, as well as the RFU, which has already been mentioned, and the other sports governing bodies.

In answer to a point made in discussions about the regional bodies, it is absolutely right to praise the work of the sub-regional bodies and the county sports partnerships that are now under way. Wesport in my area, which is led by the wonderfully charismatic Steve Nelson, is doing fantastic work in the Bath-Bristol area. I congratulate him on his work. One of Wesport’s schemes is about recognising the national schemes that the Minister and the governing bodies have put in place to provide pathways up to elite sport for young people and all the way to high coaching level for coaches. All those national schemes are little use, however, unless work is done on the ground locally to identify those people, whether through the talented athlete scheme or whatever else. That is one of the key things that Steve and his team in Wesport are doing, and they deserve to be praised for it.

Mr. Andy Reed: The hon. Gentleman will be aware that even at county sports partnerships level, the idea is that the final delivery mechanism is the community sport networks, or as they are called in Leicestershire, local sporting alliances. The hon. Gentleman criticised the active people survey, but those data and statistics allow people at grass-roots level to find out why specific groups in geographical areas are not participating. Does he not agree that delivery will happen through those sorts of mechanisms, not—with all due respect to the Minister—through handing out massive targets?

Mr. Foster: I agree with everything that the hon. Gentleman has said, other than his point about active people. The vast majority of the data collected nationally by the active people survey were already available locally, where that information is needed, for the reasons that he has given. However, I entirely agree that work at local level is critical.

Briefly, the other group of people whom we should praise are our current elite athletes, who do so much good work. We have heard about Tanni Grey-Thompson and the many other sporting heroes, such as Dame Kelly Holmes and Sir Steve Redgrave, who is doing fantastic work with his proposed Olympics “X-Factor” for tall athletes. We ought to thank all our current sporting heroes for their work to enthuse young people and get them involved.

More can be done. We could do more about school playing fields, which are critical, and more to promote the benefits of the CASCs tax reliefs schemes. There could be a fund of £150 million being spent, but in truth the figure is currently less than 10 per cent. of that. We need to encourage more clubs to become involved. We need to do more to develop the school-club links. I congratulate the Minister on what he is doing, although I hope that he does not go down
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the route that the Conservative party has proposed and say that we should never dictate how lottery money should be used. The Conservatives’ proposal for a club-to-school link is that the £750 million be taken from the lottery. I am sure that the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent will regret the fact that they have made that proposal just when they are saying that the Government should not take money from the lottery.

I end, however, by echoing something that the hon. Gentleman said about the lottery. Among the various lottery good causes, there are some fantastic schemes that are related to the very topic that we are debating. Taking any additional money away from those lottery good causes to pay for any increased cost in the Olympics would do huge damage not only to people’s support for the Olympics, but to the very thing that we have said the Olympic games are all about—using them as a springboard to get people engaged. I have looked with interest at some of the Big Lottery Fund schemes, but I draw the Minister’s attention in particular to an exciting scheme in his constituency put forward by the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders. The scheme will involve young people aged 13 to 19 in his constituency living in disadvantaged areas in terms of work, and health and fitness, and will involve sport and sports work staff. It is crucial schemes such as those which could be cut if there is a further top-slicing of money from the lottery good causes to pay for Olympics overspend.

The Minister deserves congratulations. He is the longest continuously serving Minister for Sport and has achieved a great deal. We welcome that. I hope that he will acknowledge that, nevertheless there are further things to be done. I hope that I have suggested one or two of the areas in which that work can be done.

3.59 pm

Barbara Keeley (Worsley) (Lab): I want to talk about the falling-off in levels of physical activity at age 16, which other hon. Members have mentioned, and the consequent lessening of the willingness to take strenuous exercise and participate in sport as we get older. I shall move on to talk about how the StreetGames initiative is helping to overcome such issues in Salford and the rest of the north-west.

My constituency of Worsley covers the local authorities of Salford and Wigan. The Sport England active people survey was bad news for us locally, because it showed that Salford has one of the lowest percentages of 16 to 19-year-olds who do 30 minutes of exercise three times a week—less than 20 per cent., compared with the national average of 35 per cent. Not surprisingly, the other side of that was that 31 per cent. of our 16 to 19-year-olds are doing no exercise sessions at all. Wigan had a slightly higher level of inactivity, with almost 33 per cent. of its 16 to 19-year-olds doing no exercise. When we consider the focus on rugby in Wigan, it is a little disappointing that a third of its young people do no exercise at all.

Does that matter? Coupled with that level of inactivity, we have high levels of health inequalities and concern about health, so I guess it does. We also have very high levels of long-term illness and incapacity and consequent reduced life expectancy. In fact, in the ward
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of Little Hulton in my constituency, life expectancy is seven years less than that of another ward just 10 minutes down the road. It has the highest level of stroke and heart disease in Salford, and a nearby ward, Walkden North, has the highest rate of cancerous disease in Salford. We have some way to go.

The Sport England survey shows that inactivity among 16 to 19-year-olds follows through to adulthood. So how inactive are our adults? Nationally, as has been referred to, 21 per cent. of adults take part in three exercise sessions a week, but the figure is only 18 per cent. among adults in Salford. Whereas the national figure for adults who take no part in sport is just over 50 per cent., the figures for Wigan and Salford are 54 per cent. and 55 per cent. respectively.

I do not want to be hypocritical; if I talk about other people not doing sport, I have to consider what I do myself. I have thought about my own experience of sport. As a child, I was not particularly competitive, although I got quite proficient at swimming. I was lucky enough to go to a secondary girls’ school with its own modern swimming pool, and we also played netball and tennis. At age 14, I and most other girls just stopped doing all those activities. The main reason was simple: the school did not have any hair dryers. At the time, I had very long, straight hair and there was no way that I was going to undertake any gym, swimming or other sport—although I liked them—and mess up my fabulous hairstyle. So that was that.

Such things may seem trivial; I notice that I am the only woman MP in the Chamber. However, I was listening to Kelly Holmes, the national school sports champion, who has been considering why girls do not take part in sport. She has been reporting back this week, and the issues that I have mentioned are involved. She was talking about facilities and about communal showers, which girls do not like—they have no curtains and probably no hair dryers, although Dame Kelly did not refer to those. Most of us would not go to a private gym that did not provide private showers and, for women, hair dryers. We have to ask ourselves why our municipal sports and leisure facilities and schools are still far behind on that issue. If such things are stopping girls and young women—and young men, given that they have concerns about their appearances—we should take them into account.

There has been progress; I am not saying that facilities in schools and municipal leisure centres are as bad as in the days when the question was whether there was one sink or three. On the issue of local facilities, however, the aquatic centre in Manchester, which was built for the Commonwealth games, has mixed-gender showers. There are people—women and people from different ethnic minority groups—who will not use that centre or will not take a shower there. That magnificent new sports facility has mixed-gender showers, and we have to address such issues.

Luckily, I was saved from the inactivity into which I had slumped in my teens and early 20s by colleagues at work who had taken up squash and encouraged me to do the same. We were so appallingly bad that we took up running to improve our fitness on the court so that we could win the competitions that we kept losing. I then met the man who became my husband, who was involved in orienteering and really enjoyed running. Running got me back into activity. We started doing
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fun runs and half-marathons—once I even did a full marathon. I was encouraged in that by the support of people who ran with me, which is very important. It is very hard to keep up a commitment on your own, so it is great if people can find others to support them.

Young people who have become or are becoming inactive need encouragement and support. As other hon. Members have mentioned, we also need better and more accessible facilities in our communities. I was delighted to find out about the StreetGames initiative, which is developing strongly in the north-west. I attended the launch event, which took place in the House in January this year, where I met the north-west StreetGames team. As I discovered, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson) has mentioned, StreetGames is a new charity established to bring sport to the doorsteps of those who most need it. It complements activities in schools, of which we have heard a lot in this debate. It is important that StreetGames should focus on activity out of school time.

Some schools in the Worsley constituency have already benefited substantially from the Government’s commitment to improving sport in schools, and more will do so in the coming years as a result of the building schools for the future programme. St. Mary’s high school, Astley and Bedford high school are on the Wigan side and have both recently established multi-purpose astroturf pitches. It has been insisted that the facilities should be used for the community by people other than those who go to the schools. Many estates and deprived communities still do not have such facilities or sports clubs. As I have mentioned, even when such clubs and facilities exist, we have to acknowledge that, as I have touched on, girls are significantly less likely to belong to clubs and use their facilities than boys.

I shall not go into great depth, but I have a concern, which I will follow up, about the cost of participation in sport or exercise, which is a key factor. Even if a person wants to get involved in running or some other group activity, they start to need sportswear, which needs to be washed, and shoes. In certain sizes of family, that puts a significant extra into the budget every week. There are also entrance fees, bus fares or other transport costs. For some families in my constituency, meeting those costs would be very difficult. There are some very low-income families, and the cost of such things must be a factor for them. It is significant that when Wigan local authority offered free swimming to children and young people, the numbers participating rose dramatically. Even entrance fees play a key part; although I have not checked whether the swimming pool involved has hair dryers.


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