Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-70)
MRS BRIGID
SIMMONDS, MR
JAMES MACDOUGALL
AND MS
SUE TIBBALLS
19 FEBRUARY 2008
Chairman: We now move on to the CCPR
and Brigid Simmonds and James MacDougall; and for the Women's
Sport and Fitness Foundation their Chief Executive Ms Sue Tibballs.
Thank you for your patience in waiting for us. Adrian Sanders
is going to start.
Q60 Mr Sanders: In very general terms
is the White Paper a step forward or a step back for sport in
the UK?
Mrs Simmonds: We very much welcome
the White Paper. We would specifically welcome the issue around
specificity and, if anything, here I might disagree with the Premier
League in what they said about that issue. It is all very well
if you are the Premier League with the sort of resources that
the Premier League has to deal with European issues. It is different
if you are, as the CCPR represents, smaller governing bodies of
sport who are constantly fighting against directives where sport
is included and we need to get sport excluded and we have to work
very hard on that and indeed the number of European issues that
are coming up around sport. We need some clarification and we
see the White Paper as a step forward in that direction.
Ms Tibballs: The Women's Sport
and Fitness Foundation, as the name suggests, is about understanding
how to promote sport and physical activity to women and, as such,
the White Paper makes reference to women and minority groups (as
women sometimes get called) but in a rather random and ad hoc
way, so an over-arching point for us would be we know that women
have a completely different relationship to sport than men, not
just in terms of participation where there is a gap but actually
in terms of what women do, so for example in the White Paper where
it talks about through sport increasing physical activity, there
are completely different opportunities to do that through sport
for women than there are for men. Only two of the top ten things
women do to keep fit are sports; it is six out of ten for men.
So an over-arching point would be that sport has to gender disaggregate
its strategies top to bottom. You cannot just add it in after
having come up with an approach and a set of policies and think,
"Oh and, by the way, we must not forget about how this might
impact on women." Sport is a man's world and in the UK more
so than other European states, and that is anachronistic in a
society that is equalising. I would not argue this in all sectors
but I think in sport it needs to look at gender from the beginning
and right through the piece. There are particular groups of women,
like ethnic minority women, who do get mentioned. Yes, they face
double or triple disadvantage and, yes, we need to make sure that
we have particular strategies for them but let us not forget the
51 per cent of the marketplace that sport needs to deliver to.
That also then brings us to the issue of definition of sport and
what the White Paper thinks sport is, because, depending on how
wide you define it, you pick up women if it includes running and
if it includes gym. It is a debate that is very live here and
now but it is not clear in the White Paper what it understands
sport to be, and that obviously would have quite a big bearing
on the gender implications of the Paper.
Q61 Mr Sanders: Back to the Central
Council, you have been following the progress of this White Paper
very closely right from the beginning. Do you believe the end
product matches the original intentions?
Mrs Simmonds: I think that is
quite difficult to say. I think there are things that have been
ignored and they have come up in the evidence that you have already
heard this morning that have not been included that we might wish
to have seen included, so I think in that sense there is a certain
fudge aspect to it, but there is also an element going forward
that, as long as the Lisbon Treaty is ratified (which I think
we would expect it to be) that this opens up opportunities for
sport and it opens up opportunities for funding of sport in the
UK where it has always had difficulty in the past. I can give
you an example of Tavistock Swimming Pool which was funded by
European grant. It was funded by European grant because Tavistock
was considered to be in a tourist area. It was not funded because
it provided sport and health and fitness for the local people
of Tavistock. I think one of the benefits of this paper in moving
it forward is that we could see funding for sport and clubs per
se which would be very much a central theme for the CCPR in
going forward.
Q62 Chairman: It has been suggested
to us that actually there are some dangers, particularly to small
voluntary sports clubs, that European intervention might start
to impose burdens on them. Is that something that you have been
aware of? Have you had any concerns expressed by the smaller members
of the CCPR?
Mrs Simmonds: If I could give
you two examples where we have had real problems in the past.
There were two EU Directives. The first was on Working At Heights
which we had to fight for some two years. Originally this was
about safety in scaffolding and it ended up with the suggestion
that you would have to put signs on Snowdon to warn instructors
in mountaineering that it was dangerous to go climbing on Snowdon.
We took two years of working with the Health and Safety Executive
to work out that climbing and the sorts of ropes that were used
in climbing by the British Mountaineering Council were perfectly
safe. Another example was the EU Bathing Directive which, if it
had covered sport, would have meant that the Boat Race between
Cambridge and Oxford could not have gone ahead because the Thames
would not have been considered clean enough. There are plenty
of examples where if we had specificity, if sport had some form
of exemption, we would be enormously helped and that would help
the smaller sports. James, I do not know if have any examples
of the smaller sports?
Mr MacDougall: Certainly in terms
of what we are looking at, the first question was a point about
non-profit sports organisations and voluntary sport, and we are
very pleased to be helping the Commission with the research they
are doing into non-profit sports organisations. I think it is
also worth mentioning that some of the points that we have heard
earlier are not just necessarily affecting the big sports. We
have talked about home-grown players at length in football, cricket
and so on, but you should look at some of the smaller sports like
ice hockey and handball in the UK. For ice hockey, for example,
there will be an influx of players from Scandinavia and North
America as well and that will prevent young talent here. So it
is not always about the large economic areas and you have to look
at some of the smaller areas, and this is why there should be
a White Paper on Sport.
Q63 Mr Hall: In terms of voluntary
sport, what are the major difficulties you are facing at the moment
and what is it that the Commission could do in response to those
problems?
Mrs Simmonds: A lot of issues
are, as ever, to do with funding and we have now the diversion
of Lottery funds for 2012. We hugely support 2012 but it is going
to mean that there is a lack of grassroots funding and in fact
the CCPR is pressing very hard for something that we hope will
appear in the Budget on 12 March which is around Community Amateur
Sports Clubs enhancement, so gift aid could be available from
children's subscriptions and we could remove the problems that
stop some sports clubs from signing up to the scheme (deemed disposal).
One of the areas where Europe could help this is by providing
funding but also by stopping the issue that we constantly find
when we go to the Government of being told that the help they
might offer to sport might constitute State Aid. We are aware
when you look across a lot of other European countries that they
provide a lot of help to the governing bodies of sport which is
not seen to constitute State Aid. That seems to be a problem here,
and if I could give you an example: a lot of the big sports are
paying corporation tax on money that they actually spend on grassroots
sport development. When we had discussions with the Treasury about
that they raised the issue of State Aid? If we could get over
that, one of the benefits of the White Paper is about sharing
best practice, about looking across countries, whether that be
in Finland and how hard they have worked to reduce the issues
to do with cardiac arrest and the numbers of people who have that
problem, or whether it is looking at what other countries do in
terms of tax treatment, that would be hugely helpful.
Mr MacDougall: The very first
question we had was whether it was important and whether the White
Paper was a step forward, and the fact is it is excellent, and
the reason is because we are sitting here and talking about it,
they are talking about it in Holland, they are talking about it
in Belgium, and they are talking about it in Italy. They are talking
about it all over Europe. I have been in the Faroe Islands talking
about it this year. Sport is the biggest social movement in Europe.
It affects 500 million people in Europe and 60% are regularly
active in sport. That means 300 million people are regularly playing
sport, so it is very important that we discuss this and we get
some of the issues that have been missed in the White Paper—section
4.0 on specificity and autonomy and 4.1 on betting and intellectual
property rights. As we have said before, it is very important
that we get it on the table and we can start talking about it.
The European Commission is at the moment creating their sports
policy for next year ready for when the Treaty is ratified, and
it is important that we are part of this discussion now and we
can put these points forward, and that is the really vital part
of the White Paper .
Q64 Mr Hall: Is it fair to say then
that the White Paper has had a positive impact on grassroots sport?
Mrs Simmonds: I think it could
have a positive impact on grassroots sport. It could also help
to remove some of the bureaucracy that we face at the moment.
It seems often to be an uphill battle. The UK has led Europe around
child protection issues but it is also a very bureaucratic system
which for volunteers at a very local level is quite difficult.
The issue that is being consulted on at the moment is to do with
migration into the UK from people outside the EU. The idea is
that to be allowed to come here you have to earn around £23,000
and be able to speak English. That is not suitable for sport.
There is a consultation around there being a sports tourism visa
which would allow people who want to compete at Wimbledon or the
World Rowing Championships or the London Marathon to come in on
that sort of visa, but we constantly have to argue for that sort
of help. Sport, as ever, is not always at the top of the political
agenda and there is a tendency, possibly because DCMS are quite
a small department, for other departments to impose things on
us, as indeed happens across the EU. That again is where volunteers
really could benefit in the long term.
Q65 Mr Hall: Is the community sports
sector geared up to take advantage of the White Paper? What has
it got to do to reap the benefits of it?
Mrs Simmonds: If I am honest,
when I first read the White Paper I thought what on earth is all
this about; you needed to be an expert in Europe, as James obviously
is, in European speak almost, to understand it. The CCPR has had
a presence in the EU Sports Office now for many years. We regularly
provide a European update to all our members. We have James who
is purely concentrating on European issues. It is up to us to
communicate with our members the parts of the White Paper that
they really need to look at, how it moves forward, and to be influencing
now how that White Paper might move forward on their behalf at
a European level to ensure that when the Treaty is ratified and
sport became an EU competency that we are in a position for it
to move in the right way.
Q66 Chairman: You have expressed
generally positive sentiments towards the White Paper. Can I quote
to you the evidence we received from the British Olympic Association
and see whether you would agree with that. They said: "Sport
is built on the work of volunteers and those coaches, clubs, governing
bodies and international federations who protect and promote their
interests. The BOA believes that sports federations and governing
bodies should be given the freedom to govern and regulate their
sport without undue interference from governments. The absence
of a specific reference to the autonomy of sports organisations
within the White Paper could potentially have far-reaching implications
for sports organisations." They go on and say that they "are
disappointed that the White Paper has not gone far enough to define
the specificity of sport and thus ensure the protection of sport
from aspects of EU law by allowing regulatory discretion for governing
bodies." Those concerns suggest that this could represent
quite a significant threat to governing bodies in sports. Do you
not share that concern?
Mrs Simmonds: I think we share
that concern if there is an understanding that specificity is
not going to be taken forward. That is absolutely crucial and
you have heard from all your witnesses this morning that autonomy
is a crucial issue. Sports are different and they should be allowed
to run their sports in their own way. Under freedom of movement
within the EU you could find you had a Danish British champion
if you followed the letter of EU law. So, yes, we would share
very much the BOA's concerns, but we believe there is enough in
the White Paper to help us move forward in terms of specificity,
and we would hope that autonomy within individual sports to make
their own decisions about how they work would follow.
Mr MacDougall: A further point
from that, because of the White Paper and because we have all
been talking about it, and because the BOA and the IOC and the
EOC and ENGSO, the European Non-Governmental Sports Organisation,
which I am on the working committee for as well, have talked about
specificity and autonomy and how important it is, this summer
the Council of Europe in the French Presidency are going to do
a study on autonomy. So it is exactly this sort of discussion
that we are encouraging to try and move this forward so we do
have firm conclusions for autonomy, specificity and the other
things that are lacking in the White Paper.
Q67 Chairman: We have the same experience
that when we talked to the Commissioner he absolutely endorsed
the idea of autonomy and specificity and all these things, but
would you not feel rather more reassured if it had said so in
black and white in the paper?
Mrs Simmonds: Yes we would.
Ms Tibballs: Can I come in here,
because if the question is about should governing bodies be free
from any intervention by governments, if you look at the performance
of governing bodies in relation to their investment in women's
sport I do not think, left to their own devices, they are rising
to the challenge. One of the key challenges for sport at the moment
is that investment reaches women, and it often does not. That
is a challenge for public investment, incidentally, as well, but
one of the questions I would put to the Premier League and the
FA and a lot of the big sports is their CSR. Their community investment
is not mature; it is not at a standard that is commensurate with
other sectors; they are not investing enough. As you all know—and
I know you took a keen interest in this—in women's football
there is no paid professional woman player in any team and women's
football has no successful competitive upper league. That is shameful
in a sport that has so much money. Similarly in governance terms,
there is one woman out of 47 people in the FA's senior governance
structure and there are no women in cricket, so my recommendation
at the moment to the Secretary of State is with the Government
reviewing in this country how it invests in sport, it is a great
opportunity to say, yes, we are going to put public money in but
these are the outcomes that we desire, and of course it has to
be the role of government to say these are the social outcomes
we require. I think you need to do it because the sports sector
as it is is becoming embarrassing dealing with what I would argue
are some normal social standards of our day.
Q68 Chairman: But would you want
Europe to get involved?
Ms Tibballs: There are other European
states that have got far more progressive in these terms so I
think there are good opportunities to share experiences. In terms
of the detail of the legislation, I am not sure. We have six staff;
we do not have a European lobbyist who I can call on to keep close
to the legislation. I think the White Paper is quite muddle-headed
but it is a first draft and I am sure that it will become clearer.
It seems to me that there is quite a lot in there about protecting
certain things and making sure that the thing is not corrupt and
there is no cheating and so on. I would like a stronger, clearer
vision for what the role of government in Europe should be, and
I guess I am just pointing at some of the areas that we would
want to see reflected if you were looking at a European-wide responsibility
for government.
Q69 Helen Southworth: You have begun
to raise the question that I was going to be asking you around
which is how well does the UK perform in terms of women's involvement
in sport against other European countries?
Ms Tibballs: We have got some
international data but it is difficult to compare because there
is not a lot of data collected. Again, a very simple point is
that there needs to be better collection of gender disaggregated
data across the piece in sport. We certainly know that in some
European countries, the Nordic states, as ever, they have a far
greater participation profile of women across all life stages,
and in other countries sports do much better as well. There is
new research that has shown that we are somewhere along with Russia
in terms of how girls think of sport, which you might say is not
the level that we would like to be setting ourselves. The UK seems
to have a unique bias to its sports sector which I think is true
across Europe, but we seem to have particularly championed that
aspect in this country. I know it is something that the sector
as a whole feels strongly about and I think it is our challenge
as an organisation to be helpful in finding the solutions. I do
think that is a positive thing about the White Paper, that it
allows us to talk to European colleagues and try and understand
why we are at the Russian level.
Q70 Helen Southworth: In terms of
coaching and refereeing in sport, you will be aware that people
will often come back to us and say that women cannot compete against
men, but that cannot conceivably explain why there are so few
women who are coaches and referees in sport. Do you think there
are opportunities here for shifting that and do you think that
they are made clear enough in the White Paper currently or whether
that needs to be extended?
Ms Tibballs: Yes and no. I guess
that speaks to my point that at the moment we need a market analysis
and an understanding of the market that sport serves. It is piecemeal
in the report and it needs to be more consistent in recognising
up-front that different groups have different relationships to
sport and women, as half the population, should be treated differently
from other "minorities". The capacity of women in the
coaching sector is very under-developed. We run a Women into Coaching
programme in London that has trained 400 women into coaching but
it is just a tiny drop. We know that we need to encourage many,
many more. I guess I see that as a subset of the bigger challenge
in sport to understand more about women's lives. Often you do
need to design things differently to enable women to benefit from
the training and resources that are available. I do think there
is a high level of recognition of the problem, however, and actually
I would say that my organisation has not at times been clear enough
about what it wants to happen. It is very easy to point to the
problems all the time. A lot of the governing bodies we work with
very closely now look in much more detail about what can you do
to make sure we reach more. For example talking to rugby, they
have something like 274 sports development officers working with
men and boys and five that do women and girls, so we have started
a conversation about why do they not all do everybody? There are
some quite simple things that can be done. I do not know if CCPR
has a view.
Mrs Simmonds: CCPR would very
much support what Sue is saying. I think what we have to watch
carefully is how the Government develops the Obesity White Paper
and the role that the Department of Health has, because in many
ways many of the areas the Department of Health is looking at—health
and fitness, aerobics—would fall under physical activity
rather than sport, and at the moment we see lots of politicians
saying lots of good things; we see very little evidence of officials
on the ground actually talking to us about how they are going
to make that into a reality. I think that is very important going
forward.
Chairman: May I thank you very much for
today.
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