Examination of Witnesses (Questions 380
- 399)
TUESDAY 22 JANUARY 2008
MR GERRY
SUTCLIFFE MP AND
MR JONATHAN
STEPHENS
Chairman: Can I welcome Gerry Sutcliffe,
the Minister for Sport. I hope that you will convey to the Minister
for the Olympics our best wishes for a speedy recovery, but I
am sure you will do an excellent job on your own.
Q380 Mr Hall:
The Prime Minister has put great store in getting more people
to participate in sport and he has said that there is going to
be a lot of money spent on that and extending sport in schools
and various other things. I approve of that as I am a former PE
teacher myself and I know that you are a superb goalkeeper for
your part in football! What are the barriers to adults participating
in sport? What does the Department see as the major problems and
the obstacles preventing adults getting into sport?
Mr Sutcliffe: Thank you very much
for the kind introduction. I will pass on my best wishes to my
hon friend. She has asked me to say that she was due to announce
today that she was publishing the Annual Report for the Olympics
and a copy of that will be available from the Library. It will
be placed in the Libraries of both Houses. Let me just respond
on participation. I was interested in the earlier debate. There
are barriers. We are a nation of sports watchers but not a nation
of sports participants and there are many and varied reasons for
that. People get involved at school and then at 16 drop off for
whatever reason. What was important to us in the new ministerial
team was to look at all the areas where we could stop the barriers
to people participating. There are target groups that we want
to aim at. We are particularly concerned about the number of women
that drop out of sports after being involved. We are concerned
about the elderly, but thanks to healthier lifestyles and medical
science those people are living longer. We want to encourage people
into a wider range of sports than perhaps is available at the
moment and that is why the investment in school sport is going
to be significant, because we want to increase the two hours to
five hours and we want to offer a wider range of choice in terms
of the sports that are available.
Q381 Mr Hall:
Part of what you said is it is about lifestyles. People are engaged
in sport at a young age and then as they get older they stop doing
it for whatever reason. Is it possible to change adult lifestyles
to get them to re-engage in sport after they have given it up
for whatever reason?
Mr Sutcliffe: I think it is. I
still play because I enjoy playing. If we can make sport fun people
will continue. We can have sport at all levels, we can have elite
sport and competition sport at the highest level, but we can have
sport for fun in terms of activity and physical fitness, which
clearly is a benefit to the nation in terms of the improvement
it makes to healthier lifestyles and the reduction in costs in
terms of the economic cost of people being unfit and unhealthy.
Q382 Mr Hall:
Are there any international comparators about where countries
have been successful in getting adults back into sport? If there
are, which are the countries that have been most successful?
Mr Sutcliffe: I have been very
interested in this and clearly there is the Canadian model that
Jennie Price talked about. There is a different attitude around
the world. In Australia and New Zealand sport is key in terms
of the lifestyle and the culture of individuals and we want to
learn from the rest of the world, but we do believe that the investment
that we have put into sport in the UK is showing dividends and
will continue to show dividends as we move into what the Prime
Minister calls the "decade of sport". Yes, we have the
Olympics in 2012, we have the Beijing Olympics starting this summer,
but every year from now there is a major sporting event taking
place in the UK. We hope that the combination of those events
together with the investment that we are putting in at all levels—at
elite level through UK Sport, at grassroots level through Sport
England and through school sports through the Youth Sports Trust—will
be the right infrastructure so that we can encourage people to
get involved in sport. I think this issue about making sport fun
is a key element as well as returning to competition. We had a
period of time when competition was seen as a dirty word and we
want to try and make sure that we bring that back with competition
between schools and in schools and making sure that people compete
at all levels.
Q383 Philip Davies:
Everybody can see why it is important to encourage schoolchildren
to play sport and get the opportunities to play sport and enjoy
it, but if people have played sport at school and then they decide
afterwards that they do not want to play sport anymore, they are
quite happy watching it, why is it that we have got to force everybody
to play sport? If they do not want to play sport, they are quite
happy watching it, why is that a problem?
Mr Sutcliffe: We want to encourage
people to become more active. If you look at the obesity figures
in particular, which are growing alarmingly, we want to encourage
people into sport and physical activity, but I am happy if people
want to watch sport, that is fine. Our target is to increase participation
by two million by 2012. I think that is a good thing to do. I
think that will benefit the health of the nation.
Q384 Philip Davies:
People have only got so much leisure time on their hands and the
lower league football teams want more people to go and watch them
play on a Saturday afternoon. Some people want more people to
go horseracing. I do not think anybody is going to become a jockey
on the back of it. So much sport depends on lots of people watching.
Why are we trying to convert those people into participating when
they are doing an awful lot of good for sport simply by watching
the sports?
Mr Sutcliffe: You can do both,
you can watch and you can play. I think it is this thing about
choice and diversity. I agree with you that there are opportunities
for people to do other things. Participation in sport can be fun
but it can also be something that enhances people's lives. I have
seen people's lives changed through the power of sport.
Q385 Philip Davies:
For me there is a distinction. There are people who are not particularly
bothered about participating in sport for whatever reason but
who enjoy watching it and there are those people who might wish
to carry on playing sport but find that there is nowhere to play.
Have we got a problem with the latter, that people want to carry
on playing sport but find that there are not the relevant clubs
or facilities available to them, or is it simply that people have
just decided that, even though the facilities are there, they
just do not want to carry on playing?
Mr Sutcliffe: It is a bit of all
of that. What we are trying to do with the individual sports governing
bodies—Rugby Union is a good example where players retire
when they come to the end of their careers in terms of professional
or semiprofessional games. What Rugby Union is trying to do now
is encourage people back into the game to offer support to younger
players and just enjoy the game. Many of the governing bodies
are looking at how they can deal with their individual sports
in a different way to make the game easier perhaps for older people
or make it easier for younger people to get into. I was interested
in the comments about netball. Netball and some of the other sports
are looking at how they can encourage youngsters into the game
so they then can get an understanding of the rules and what those
games are about. I believe it is important to encourage a person
to participate, that is for the benefit of the nation and I do
believe that sports can offer alternatives to those people who
think that they have gone as far as they can go in a particular
sport.
Q386 Adam Price:
The Government says that one of the legacies you are hoping for
is to raise levels of physical activity and to combat obesity,
but, from what Jennie Price told us, is the responsibility for
delivering that within government now shifting from DCMS to presumably
the Department of Health? Does that make sense when we have got
so many agencies and departments already involved in the Olympics?
Surely bringing one more in does not make any sense.
Mr Sutcliffe: I think it is vital.
I think part of the problem, and one of the reasons why the Secretary
of State and I felt that there needed to be a review of what Sport
England do, is that there was the possibility, if you like, that
the other programmes that the Government wanted to introduce to
help with the health of the nation or the achievements of the
nation through education were being missed because it was being
left to Sport England to deliver. What we looked at was a review
of Sport England with the Health and Wellbeing Committee, which
is a Cabinet sub-committee chaired by the Chief Secretary, looking
at what contribution other government departments can make to
health, well-being and activity, and I am confident that the resources
will be there and that we will be able to integrate the structures
that exist, whether it is through primary care trusts or through
a variety of bodies that will be able to work with Sport England
at a regional level and work with local authorities. What I am
pleased to see is that sport is now very much higher on the agenda
of local government.
Q387 Adam Price:
But you were just making a strong case for the close connection
between sport and physical activity on the one hand and, on the
other hand, the Government is actually making a distinction and
shifting the responsibility over to another department. I do not
see the logic in that.
Mr Sutcliffe: I do not think it
is shifting the responsibility. I am still responsible for making
sure that two million people participate in sport by 2012, but
I do not want that to be a narrow focus on just what we do in
the DCMS through Sport England, UK Sport or the Youth Sport Trust.
I want the whole of the Government's agenda to be delivered and
we know that contributions from health and education and other
government departments can help and, if you like, what I want
to see, and we will have to see what the review throws up, is
very much a sporting attitude, if you like, in terms of departments
contributing to that overall objective of getting more people
engaged which delivers programmes for health and which delivers
programmes for education as well. I actually see it being joined-up
government, if you like, in terms of delivering right across government
to beat the agenda of increased participation.
Q388 Rosemary McKenna:
As a former council leader, I sometimes struggled with my colleagues
to persuade them of the importance of participation in sport,
so I am glad to hear you say that local authorities seem to be
taking it on board, but how far do you rely on them to drive the
increase in participation by adults and young people and do you
have the right level of leverage over local authorities?
Mr Sutcliffe: I think it is improving
and, again as a former local authority leader myself, I understand
that there are problems around budgets and resources and the political
agenda. What I am happy to say is that, through the local area
agreements, we are seeing sport graded higher in that level and
that we are working with local government through the community
sport partnerships, making sure that local government is represented
there. What we are seeing, and I think this is why the regional
structure of Sport England is important as well, are the opportunities
to see what is going on in a particular region, and local government
then can play its part about its priorities that it sees within
that regional context.
Q389 Rosemary McKenna:
What about the oft-reported sale of green, open spaces, school
playing fields, et cetera? Is there anything you can do about
that and have you done anything?
Mr Sutcliffe: Very much so and
I have the opportunity this morning, thank you very much, for
saying that the myth that the Government is keen to sell off playing
fields is wrong, and we will be publishing very shortly the up-to-date
picture from Sport England in relation to playing fields, but
playing fields alone is not the issue. It is about the provision
of proper sports infrastructure, which is all-weather pitches,
it is about indoor sports centres, making sure that the provision
is there because we very much want to see world-class facilities
for community sport in addition to elite sport. What we have been
able to do is make sure, before playing fields are sold off, that
Sport England are involved in the planning process and the Secretary
of State has to sign off the sale of sports fields and, unless
there is equal or additional value, those sports fields will not
be sold off.
Q390 Rosemary McKenna:
I am sure everybody though would be glad to see the disappearance
of the ash pitches and the red, glazed pitches that children had
to play on in the past, so that is part of the Government's agenda,
is it?
Mr Sutcliffe: Very much so. The
Olympics 2012 is going to be a fantastic inspiration, I believe,
to the whole of the country. I am pleased to see, on the whole,
that there is cross-party consensus that that is the case and
it is right and proper that we scrutinise all aspects of that,
but we are in this Decade of Sport, as I say, over the next ten
years and we have the opportunity to inspire people at all levels
in terms of sports participation and I do not want us to miss
that opportunity and I want really to get it to every corner.
Personally, I have been speaking to business about how business
can help in terms of not only through the sponsorship mechanisms,
but also how they can assist their workforce to become involved
in sports, and I am looking at talking to business about whether
or not it is possible to allow people time off for sporting activities,
whether that is participation in sport or becoming officials or
administrators of sport, as part of their corporate social responsibility.
Q391 Mr Sanders:
Are you happy with the degree of co-ordination that exists between
your Department and, say, the education ministry?
Mr Sutcliffe: Very much so. The
Education and Sports Minister, Kevin Brennan, and I meet on a
regular basis looking at the relationship between our portfolios,
making sure that there is consistency there, and we are particularly
pleased with the investment now in increasing the two-hour offer
to five hours. We know that that is a gigantic task and it will
be important for schools, but it will also be important for clubs
and coaches and we know that we are going to need a substantial
increase in the number of coaches that we have, so I am working
with Kevin and with other ministers, David Lammy in the Skills
Department, looking at coaching and the skills required for coaching,
so I am quite happy with the co-ordination across government on
the issue of sports.
Q392 Mr Sanders:
Would you accept though that it is actually more difficult for
the Government to encourage what happens in schools, given the
number of schools that bear now foundation status or that have
become detached or semi-detached from their local education authorities?
Mr Sutcliffe: Well, I have seen
no evidence of that and, through the sports partnerships that
we have and through the school sports co-ordinators, there are
opportunities for schools to be involved and I want to encourage
that, so I believe it is up to parents and it is up to teachers
too that want to participate in sport to make sure that they get
through those routes and through the bodies that I have just mentioned.
Q393 Mr Sanders:
But you have no control over that detached school that decides
that it has control over its own asset base and, therefore, will
sell off the playing field? You have no control over that at all?
Mr Sutcliffe: We have. We have
control over whether that school can sell its playing fields through
the points that I made in answer to earlier questions, that those
would still have to go through the various planning authorities
with the constraints which I have already mentioned, but I would
encourage all schools, regardless of their status, that sport
can enhance academic achievement and that they ought to be involved
in sport. One of the things again that I want to see is this wider
range of sports being available and I think the vision is going
to be that we need to have regional centres and then maybe universities
or colleges of further education that can employ coaches across
a range of sports that schools then can buy into in terms of the
different types of sports that they want to provide within their
schools.
Q394 Mr Sanders:
What practical steps are you taking to recreate what was around
when I was at school and probably when you were at school which
was teachers taking time out at the weekend for school teams to
take on other school teams at different sports? It seems they
have just evaporated over if not the last ten then probably over
the last 20 years, so what practical measures are you taking to
try and bring that back up?
Mr Sutcliffe: Well, that is the
investment in school sport that I talked about which the Prime
Minister announced in July of last year, the £100 million
investment, where we want to see school sport, so we want sport
within schools and between schools. We already have a large number
of teachers that are involved, we have lots, 3,000, community
coaches and we have got lots of investment in people that want
to support school sport. We are working with the national governing
bodies so that there is no confusion between the governing bodies
and the schools' associations, so where elite sportspeople are
involved, you do not have other competition, so I think that you
will see over the next few years a return to those days where
there is competition within schools. Where teachers can provide
it, that is great, but, if it is not teachers, then it can be
community coaches and it can be people brought in to provide those
school competitions.
Q395 Chairman:
Can I turn to your view about the purpose and remit of Sport England
which we explored a little bit earlier. First of all, perhaps
you can tell us about how fast you have to walk in order for it
to become a sport.
Mr Sutcliffe: I think that is
the dilemma that Sport England got into in terms of its funding
arrangements without the ability to look across government about
whether it might be appropriate for other departments to contribute
to those. I certainly would not want to get into the definition
of a fast walker being a sportsperson or a slow walker being a
sportsperson. I want people to be active, but I want Sport England
to be very clear where they fit in the strategy, along with the
Youth Sport Trust and UK Sport, and it is important that they
know where they fit in the support that they give to governing
bodies, so I personally would not want to get into the detail
of the definition and I think it is quite legitimate and in the
discussion around cycling, I think it is important. I want to
sit down with governing bodies and I want Sport England to sit
down with the governing bodies to try and work out where they
believe recreation stops and sport starts.
Q396 Chairman:
But you clearly felt that Sport England had become unfocused though
in drifting away from their prime focus which was focusing on
what everybody would recognise as sport, and you have talked about
giving them a tighter focus. How do you see that actually affecting
Sport England? What do you look to them to do now which they were
not doing before and what should they be doing which previously
they were not?
Mr Sutcliffe: I think they were
funding projects where a governing body would argue that it was
not within the definition of sport and it was not directed to
a sporting activity, and I think those funds were taking place.
What do we want to see? We want to see that focus being tightened,
we want some closer work with the governing bodies about how the
governing bodies are going to deliver their whole sport plans,
and we are approaching the next funding phase of that, so it is
key that Sport England's definition is tight so that it works
with those sports governing bodies at how we can increase community
sport within those sporting areas. I do believe that there had
started to be antagonism between Sport England and the governing
bodies about the direction of travel, and I thought that that
was detrimental to what we wanted to try and achieve, so I will
be looking forward to the review and we hope that it will be ready
by March because it is important that we do it very quickly. Whether
that leads to restructures or not, I am not sure, but we want
to see what is said. The people who are leading the review, Jennie
Price, Richard Lewis, Ged Roddy and Steve Grainger are all experts,
if you like, in terms of what has happened and what needs to happen
in the future.
Q397 Chairman:
Plainly you see the principal responsibility lying more in the
future with the governing bodies than with Sport England directly,
so will Sport England become essentially just a vehicle for providing
sport to governing bodies?
Mr Sutcliffe: No, I think it is
more than that, and they focus on community sport and the various
programmes that they can adopt, but it will mean a closer working
relationship with the governing bodies and I think that can only
be to the good. The governing bodies have got responsibility to
their sports, they have got responsibility to that wider agenda
of community sports and activity and school sports, and it is
important that we have a clear relationship
Q398 Chairman:
Obviously Sport England, as we have explored, is going to look
at quite a significant reduction in the money available to it
in the next few years. How is that going to allow you to achieve
the ambitions which you set for community sport?
Mr Sutcliffe: I hope that the
resources will come from other government departments, and I am
confident that that will be the case. If I look at my own area
in Bradford, we have just seen the transfer of the obesity workers
in the PCT to the local sports and recreation division, so we
are seeing these partnerships develop where resources from other
government departments will come in and help us achieve our agenda
for that wider participation.
Q399 Chairman:
So you are suggesting that the reduction in funding from Sport
England might be made up out of budgets of the Department of Health,
education and elsewhere?
Mr Sutcliffe: That is what I hope
to achieve.
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