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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 104-iv House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE CULTURE, MEDIA AND SPORT COMMITTEE
Tuesday 22 January 2008 MS JENNIE PRICE and MR SEAN HOLT MR GERRY SUTCLIFFE MP and MR JONATHAN STEPHENS Evidence heard in Public Questions 339 - 428
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Culture, Media and Sport Committee on Tuesday 22 January 2008 Members present Mr John Whittingdale, in the Chair Philip Davies Mr Mike Hall Rosemary McKenna Adam Price Mr Adrian Sanders ________________ Memorandum submitted by Sport England
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Ms Jennie Price, Chief Executive, Sport England, and Mr Sean Holt, Director, London, Sport England, gave evidence.
Chairman: Good morning. This is a further session of the Committee's inquiry into the impact of the London 2012 Games and we are focusing this morning particularly on the effect on the wider participation in sport. We were intending to take evidence this morning from the Minister for the Olympics but sadly she is indisposed. We will be seeking to re-schedule with her in due course. However, we are still looking forward to hearing from the Minister for Sport, but before him I would like to welcome from Sport England Jennie Price, the Chief Executive and Sean Holt, the Director for London. Q339 Mr Sanders: Sport England is going through fairly turbulent times. Is it in good enough shape - in terms of skills and morale - to be able to make the most of the 2012 Olympics? Ms Price: It is absolutely true that we have had a great deal of change in Sport England recently. However, I think the most recent events, with a very clear sense of direction stated for us by the Secretary of State, a combination of sports development and participation, mean that we have a sharpness of focus that gives us a very good prospect of being able to deliver. In terms of morale, the staff morale inside the organisation is quite strong. I think that the sports development agenda is at least in part responsible for that because we have many people for whom that is their natural home and their experience and they very much welcome the change. I think we are also managing to recruit some senior people who have got good skills to help us. So I am confident that we can make an extremely good effort at delivering a strong legacy. Q340 Mr Sanders: When do you expect that a new Chair will be appointed? Ms Price: The process of appointing the chair is being done by the normal public appointments process and it is being run by the Department. There was an advertisement published just before Christmas. We are anticipating that a new permanent Chair will be in place within the next few months. Q341 Mr Sanders: Do you not think that, in comparison to the sports bodies that cover the other nations, Scotland and Wales, Sport England is actually at a disadvantage because it covers such a big area? Would it not be better if perhaps its functions, its organisation and its budgets were regionalised to be closer to the areas that they provide services for? Ms Price: I think that the link between what is going on at regional and sub-regional level is absolutely crucial, particularly when you are working on participation. As you may know, Sport England does have a regional structure with nine regional offices and the main function of those offices is to make sure they know what is going on on the ground, that they do have appropriate contacts with people like the Regional Development Agencies, the Government Offices and of course, crucially, local authorities who deliver so much sport. Without a strong sense of connectivity at regional and sub-regional level I think it would be challenging for us, but because we have that network I think we are able to do a good job. Q342 Mr Sanders: Why not just devolve the budget to that regional level? Rather than just having a presence in a region, why not actually have an organisation proper in a region that responds to that region's sporting needs? Ms Price: My view is that you need a combination. I think that you need people on the ground who really understand what is going on in the regions. I also think there are certain types of skills where when you aggregate up to national level then you can have more impact. For example, we have very senior planning advisers sitting centrally who support our regional colleagues in their day-to-day work on planning. I also think to have an overall strategic thrust is very important. It is quite easy in an area as challenging and diverse as community sport to do a lot of things without making a lot of impact. I think we need to make sure centrally that the different interventions really do add up to a substantial impact. Q343 Adam Price: Your former Chair resigned because he disagreed with the decision to downgrade the focus of Sport England on physical recreational activity. Sport England has done some important work in that area, has it not? Ms Price: Sport England certainly has done a number of projects which look specifically at physical activity and which combine sport and physical activity, that is right. Q344 Adam Price: Who is going to be responsible for that work now? Who is going to build on the work that you have done? Is it being shifted to another department? Ms Price: We have a very clear direction as an organisation from the Secretary of State that our focus is sport. At the same time the Secretary of State made the announcement about our focus he also talked about cross-government discussions and who would be responsible for physical activity and how that would be delivered. I understand that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury is leading those discussions and that they include, among others, the Department of Health. I am not party to those discussions at the moment so I am afraid I do not have a lot of detail about them. Q345 Adam Price: It sounds like a bureaucratic nightmare to me. It certainly does not sound like joined-up government. Let us take the example of cycling. How are you going to separate out cycling as a sport from cycling as a recreational activity? Ms Price: I think it is important that we do draw lines. As far as cycling is concerned, when we were concerned with both sport and physical activity we needed to distinguish between utility cycling, ie people cycling to work and people cycling for recreational sport purposes. So with some activities there will always be a very broad continuum with competitive sport at one end and very casual engagement or engagement for transport purposes at the other, and cycling and walking are the two that most definitely fall into that category. We have talked to British Cycling about how we might work with them under our current umbrella. They have responded very positively to it. They are happy with the link between sport participation and sport development that we now have. They are happy that provided there is a clear definition as to who is responsible for what they can deal with the boundary. I should perhaps also say that it is crucial we have a very good, positive and communicating relationship with whoever does deal with physical activity. Q346 Adam Price: Is not physical recreation the entry point for some people into participation in sport, and in making this distinction are you not making it more difficult to encourage your grassroots participation agenda in the long run? Ms Price: It is the entry point for many people. The governing bodies who deal with those sorts of activities and sports like cycling are extremely conscious of that. What they try and do is to identify the people for whom it will only ever be a cycle ride round the park compared to the people who are interested in doing it in a more organised or a more intensive fashion, and we need to work with them to make sure that we are working on the sport elements of that and that is the people who operate in the more organised environment. Q347 Chairman: Is it the case that previously walking and jogging were regarded by Sport England as sports but that they are now no longer regarded as sports? Ms Price: We had a definition which encompassed both sport and physical activity in terms of what we measured and so we did not have to distinguish really between sport and physical activity, it was what we counted and what we did not count. Walking was included provided it was over 30 minutes in duration and done at moderate intensity. If you went for a wander down the street that would not be classed as sport. If you do it such that you get your heartbeat raised that is moderate intensity and that would count. Jogging would count in any event. Chairman: Obviously a new Secretary of State is perfectly entitled to look at all of the activities of his Department and say that he wishes to change the focus in some areas, but it would be right to say that the previous Secretary of State set you off in one direction and now you are being sent off in a different direction, would it not? Q348 Adam Price: At a moderate pace! Ms Price: Certainly the previous Secretary of State had set us Public Service Agreement targets and we have been working with his Department to deliver specific targets that were about sport and physical activity. We now have the clearest possible direction from our current Secretary of State that Sport England is about sport and it is about a combination of participation in sport and sports development. So there is a shift there, but there is a very definite relationship between what we were previously pursuing and what we are now pursuing. Many of the interventions we would make would be similar in terms of club structure, coaches and volunteers, et cetera. Q349 Mr Hall: Let us explore the Lottery funding that Sport England are responsible for distributing. In 2006/07 you drew down £81 million less than the previous year in Lottery funds. Was that by design or by accident? Ms Price: You are absolutely right that we did draw down less. There are three components of that £80 million. The first element of it is £31.1 million, which was a transfer to UK Sport, which reflected the transfer of the elite responsibilities to them. There was a £20 million decline in the amount of money available to us from the Lottery for that year which was due to a larger decline in the amount that was available to the NLDF, to the good causes as a whole, and the balancing £30 million was not drawn down in this year but it was committed in that particular year and that was two sorts of projects. We were at that point setting up our county sports partnerships, of which there are 49. We had anticipated being able to spend rather more in setting those up that year than we were able to. They needed more help and development and so that was spent in a subsequent year. Similarly, part of the £30 million reflects community projects where we needed to work more with applicants, so the money was committed not spent. In terms of overall impact, £31 million went somewhere else, £30 million was spent but was not spent in that year and £20 million was money that was not available to us in the first place because of what had happened to the amounts available to good causes. Q350 Mr Hall: Are the figures going to be adjusted or is that explanation just the way it is? The figures are £183 million in 2005/06 and £132 million in 2006/07, but clearly that is not accurate, is it, from what you have just said? Ms Price: The events that I have described are what caused that difference. I am obviously very happy to make sure that is properly understood and well on the public record. Q351 Mr Hall: We have not got figures for 2007/08 yet. Do you have those for the Committee now? Ms Price: Yes. For 2007/08 our Lottery funding will be £126.4 million. Q352 Mr Hall: So that is a further decline? Ms Price: That is a small decline, yes. The figure for 2006/07 is £132 million. Q353 Mr Hall: Are there any examples where programmes and bodies have been receiving less funding because of a reduction in the amount of money available? Ms Price: I am not aware of any. Obviously we look at the bids that we get with the amount of overall funding that we have in mind. The significant diversion in funding due to the Olympics has not yet taken effect so that has not affected our funding decisions. I am not aware of any specific projects where we have said we will not fund them because we do not have the money available. There may be something to do with the quality of the project or timing, but it is not because we simply do not have the Lottery funding. Q354 Mr Hall: Have you not made it more difficult for organisations to bid for grants by stiffening up the criteria? Ms Price: No, we have not. I think it is really important that we are as open as we can be in terms of the organisations that do approach us for funding. One of the things I am very keen to do in the implementation of the new strategy is to make sure that the criteria are clearer and therefore easier for people to fulfil and also that we make the process they have to go through as light touch as possible. Q355 Mr Hall: What about the Comprehensive Spending Review figures, have they been announced yet? Ms Price: Yes. In terms of three-year funding over the period for the total amount we will receive, the Exchequer funding is £391.6 million, for2008/09 it is £133.2, for 2009/10 it is £130.2 and for 2010/11 it is £128.2. Q356 Mr Hall: If I understand the process properly, you are asked to submit three bids, minus 5%, baseline and plus 5%. Did you get the baseline or did you get a bit more? Ms Price: We got the baseline plus some extra money for the five hour offer specifically for young people. We also put in a specific bid for the English Institute of Sport which was met in full. Q357 Chairman: You are looking at almost a halving of the amount of money available to you over the course of the next three or four years and yet at the same time DCMS has said that they are going to ensure that the diversion of Lottery funding is not going to put at risk the community sport legacy. How are you going to go about cutting back on your programmes? Is it going to be across the board or are you going to focus more precisely on particular areas? Ms Price: I think we will focus very precisely on what we are delivering. The advantage of being able to prepare a new strategy for the three-year period that we are looking at means that we can prepare something which is proportionate to the resources we have and we can also be very clear both to our own funding streams and to the partners we work with exactly what Sport England money is for and I think that sense of direction is helpful. It is probably worth highlighting that over the full three-year period we are looking at now in this spending review period we will have total resources of just over £740 million, which although is a reduction, it is a very substantial amount of money with which we should be able to make a very significant difference if we spend it well and if we leverage other people's investments. It is worth mentioning in that context that we do, particularly with our Lottery funding, target matched funding from other sources and so the size of project with which we work can be much more substantial than just our own funding would otherwise indicate. Q358 Chairman: On the issue of whether or not you can raise money from the private sector through sponsorship and other methods of support, all the witnesses we have had in relation to the Olympics have been seeking to try and draw in private sector support, that is LOCOG and the British Olympic Association are. Presumably there is a finite amount of money out there. Do you think you can attract additional private sector money? Ms Price: I think it is a very fair question and I do think it is an ambitious target. We have a specific target of £50 million by 2012 for community sport. The reason that I have some confidence that we are able to deliver it is I think community sport is a very specific offering which is attractive to a specific type of corporate body. In my previous existence on environmental work I worked with a lot of large corporates where they knew exactly what they wanted to do on the environment but they genuinely struggled in terms of the community elements of their programmes to find good things to fund that really did connect them to local communities. So if you are a utility or a major supermarket that local community connection is absolutely crucial to you and I think that is what we can offer. I am also conscious that many of the smaller sports find it difficult to put together packages which might be attractive to sponsors. I think that is something where at the community level we can add expertise and where we can facilitate. Certainly our Commercial Director has only been in post for a short period, but he has had no shortage of people from the private sector approaching him, interestingly, as well as the amount of people he has had to go out and approach. Clearly we have to deliver on that promise, but because of those reasons I am reasonably confident we have good prospects of doing that. Q359 Rosemary McKenna: Let us move on to trying to improve participation, which is everybody's aim including the Government's. Sport England has not yet had any success in delivering against the Public Service Agreement targets to increase participation in active sports among priority groups, which is the five to 16-year olds, et cetera. Why do you think this is? Ms Price: I think inherently it is a difficult thing to do. That is no excuse for not achieving it. I do think understanding the degree of challenge is important in this. I think you are looking at quite a significant behavioural change for people. It is not one small simple action you are asking them to do like recycle or putting on a seatbelt, it is something that requires a certain amount of effort and attention. I think sustained effort is needed from us. I think we need to make sure that the overall infrastructure is in place. That is why I do welcome the bringing together of the agenda of sports development and participation because I think if you simply focus on drawing people into sport but then when they walk into a sports club they are not welcomed properly, they are not given the basic training in term of just the skills to do the job, there is not a decent competitive structure, if that is what they want, they will walk out of the door again quite quickly. I think it is very important we have a good strong structure that is welcoming. In terms of the figures, across adults in the whole of the English population we are showing 0.9% increase in the one year for which we have figures, which indicates that it is moving in the right direction, although I completely appreciate it is not yet meeting the targets. Q360 Rosemary McKenna: Have you reached any conclusions as to why adult participation in sport in England lags behind other countries within the EU? Ms Price: I think it is really difficult to pin it down to a single cause. I think there a number of factors, habit, our club structure, the facilities that are available and the range of sports which are habitually done by large numbers of the population. Some of our most popular sports are practised only by quite small numbers of people. Football has terrific participation figures, but rugby and cricket have relatively small participation figures, whereas if you look at skiing in Finland it is enormous. I think perhaps the best example we can draw is the Canadian experience where over a 20-year period they did manage to double participation from 21% to 40% and they did that by a sustained campaign combining investment in the opportunity, in facilities and their club structure together with constant stimulation of demand for sport, so PR, reminding people about sport, reminding people about the value of sport. I think it was the interlocking of those two things over sustained periods that really made the impact. We do have a good record in this country in terms of participation in sport in the school environment and I think we have got something to learn from that. The two things that really strike me about the school sport strategy are, first of all, they asked the pupils what they wanted and then they listened to the information that they were given and, secondly, they really did expand the range of sports available, so as well as more conventional school sports they did give them the opportunity to try new things. I think in our version of sports participation we need to try the same things with adults. Q361 Adam Price: Let us move on to the legacy. You have received 56 expressions of interest in re-useable facilities from the Games. Could you say a little bit about that? Do they cover, for example, all the re-useable venues? Ms Price: Mr Holt has particular experience of the facilities side. Would you mind if I asked him to answer? Q362 Adam Price: Of course. Mr Holt: We were asked to facilitate a website that would look for expressions of interest around the temporary venues and we have had a number of expressions of interest, 72, from around the country for these temporary venues. The current situation is that we are evaluating those bids with a view to having further discussions to move that forward. Q363 Adam Price: Does that include Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland? Mr Holt: Absolutely, yes. Q364 Adam Price: Including Wales? Mr Holt: Including Wales, yes. Q365 Adam Price: Who would bear the costs of relocation? Would it be the applicant in total? How is that going to work? Mr Holt: Currently, in terms of the relocation, we have to set some criteria about is it fit for purpose, where it is going to go to and the timing of it, et cetera. We are not at that stage yet of looking at the financial implications with regard to the relocation of those facilities, but clearly once we have those expressions of interest we can drill further into that detail and then look to see where the cost of that relocation actually will sit and who with. Q366 Adam Price: Could you say a little bit more about the participation programmes that you are running and planning to run which are specific to the Games and trying to use that opportunity? Ms Price: We have a number of community projects where we are either specifically using the Olympics as one of the levers or where they are closely connected with Olympic activity. For example, we have a project funded by the Royal Yachting Association called "Sailability", which is actually connected with the Paralympics, which is about giving young disabled people who would like to acquire sailing skills the ability to do so either by specifically adapting the ship or giving particular coaching and training and that has had a tremendously strong response, with 3,400 participants now regularly sailing as a result of that intervention. We are also doing a lot of work on the volunteering side. We have a specific project in the north-west of England where we are working with a Social Enterprise agency on coaching to bring in, as well as paid coaches, volunteer coaching. One of the reasons people are volunteering is because of the connection now with the Games. It is bringing forth a different sort of volunteer and also different quantities of volunteer and it is important we can receive them in the right way. Q367 Adam Price: In your earlier answer you said that introducing new sports which may not have a tradition in this country may be a good way of bringing new people in to sporting activity. Presumably you would support the decision to give £3 million to handball, for example, which does not have a widespread tradition in this country? Ms Price: Obviously I am most interested and Sport England is most concerned in sports which have got opportunities at the community level. Handball does not have a strong tradition. I am not sure where the £3 million figure comes from. I am assuming that comes from elite sport. Q368 Adam Price: It was in The Times today or yesterday so it must be right! Ms Price: Certainly I am aware that UK Sport are funding handball because it is an Olympic sport. As I understand it all of that is going into the elite side. In terms of whether it would be appropriate for community sport, that is the sort of thing that we would need to discuss with them, but obviously we would need some sort of consistent programme to make sure that handball was available, that there were coaches who understood the game and that there were proper competitive structures so it could become something that reached right down into the community, not simply something that was done at the elite level. Q369 Adam Price: So it is a bit like the famous Greek baseball team then, it is probably a waste of money when it comes to supporting sport at the grassroots level because nobody understands the rules and nobody is particularly interested in it, is it not? Ms Price: I think there certainly are examples where particularly Olympic success by a particular country can engender enormous interest in a sport. Curling is one example where I think we did rather well and a lot of people became very interested as a result. I genuinely think for some of the smaller sports that are in the Olympics this is the best showcase they will ever have and it is their best opportunity to attract new young participants to it. There are sports like fencing, for example, which traditionally have had a very small participant base but because of the build up to the Olympics they are attracting a lot of publicity. So I think it is certainly possible for a sport to reach a wider base of participation through being showcased in the Olympics. Q370 Adam Price: I understand you are considering designating paintballing a sport, is that correct? Ms Price: Paintballing has certainly applied to be recognised as a sport and, working with the other home country sports councils, has not been approved. Q371 Philip Davies: Is there not a danger that you are banking too much on the Olympics providing this upsurge in participation in sport? It seems from some of the answers you just gave my colleague that we have the Olympics coming up and so everyone will start taking it up. As far as I am aware there is very little evidence from anywhere that hosting the Olympics has led to any real increase in participation in sport afterwards. Do you not think you are banking too much on the Olympics providing this panacea of sporting activity afterwards? Ms Price: I think you highlight a really important risk. It is really important for us as Sport England to recognise the Olympics are an opportunity and not a guarantee. We need to use that opportunity and I think some small Olympic sports certainly will do that. I think our overall responsibility for participation needs to utilise the influence of the Olympics wherever that is appropriate, but we also need to recognise that growing participation in sport is something you would be doing anyway and that many of the things we will do over the next three or four years we would do to boost community sport and to boost participation in any event. What the Olympics adds is an element of momentum, it is an element of heightened aspirations and particularly for community sport, which depends so crucially on partnerships, it is a very good way of persuading people to make decisions simultaneously. Often what wrecks a partnership is the timing is not quite right for one of the key partners. What the Olympics can do if we use it intelligently is to provide a focus where people will say, "If we're not going to do it now then there's never going to be a right time to do it so let's close out the decision." I do agree with you entirely that if we were to rest entirely on the Olympics for boosting participation in sport we probably would not succeed and our strategy needs to feature strongly the Olympics, but it needs to be broader and deeper than that. Q372 Philip Davies: The Olympics is only on for a few weeks. It is a very short window. I am not entirely sure what plans there are to do something in such a short window in order to boost participation afterwards. It is like Wimbledon, is it not? All the tennis courts are full for two weeks and then after it is finished they are empty again. I am not entirely sure why the Olympics should be any different over such a short timescale. Ms Price: I think there are two issues there. One is that certainly the Olympics and the amount of press coverage and general public interest it is generating for London has started now. You do not see sport just on the back pages of the papers anymore, the Olympics puts it into the front half of the paper. You are seeing already with Beijing a tremendous amount of coverage of our athletes and of the sports that are going to be covered. There will be a profile for sport over the period between now and 2012 which it is unlikely to have in normal times. Again, that is absolutely not enough on its own but it does present an opportunity. I think the sustainability issue you raise, that it is just a short period of time, people will go and then perhaps lose interest very quickly, is where it is so important that we do build a really good community sport infrastructure because if people are stimulated, be it by a press report in advance or the event itself, to try something or to visit somewhere, if they are received well, if they do have a good experience that first time, if somebody does take care and encourages them to come back, then it may well be a way of building participation habits in that individual. If we do not invest in our club structures, in the quality of our coaches, particularly at that basic participation level, in the volunteers that are the oil and the engine of community sport, then it will absolutely be a lost opportunity. That is why building the right sort of structure is crucial to our focus for the next four years. Q373 Chairman: You clearly are intending to focus your activities much more through the sporting organisations, the governing bodies and the clubs. If that is the case, do you still need the large bureaucracy that Sport England itself has? Is it still necessary to have regional boards across the country? Ms Price: We are in the middle of designing our strategy at the moment. I think it is very important that we get very clear what we need to do and, as you rightly say, a central plank of that strategy is going to be substantial funding going through governing bodies. Once we have that very clear shape of the strategy the next question for Sport England will be what structure do we need to deliver it and those questions will need to be asked and answered. I would say that if a governing body says in its submission for four-year funding that they can stimulate participation, perhaps multiply it five times in a particular area of the country, it is important that Sport England has the knowledge of that area of the country to be able to challenge this where necessary to really understand those proposals. We do need some local knowledge. The real details of the structure need to come once we have the strategy very clear. Q374 Chairman: Would it be fair to say that it is likely that Sport England will be smaller and more streamlined at the end of this? Ms Price: It is fair to say that I will be designing the structure that really does deliver on that strategy and that obviously we will look carefully at value for money and appropriate costs in doing that. Q375 Chairman: In terms of your programmes, £183 million of the £295 million that you are contributing as part of the package for the funding of the Olympics is for the community legacy. Can you just tell us a bit about how that money is going to be spent and why it is different from the money that you spend anyway on supporting community sport? Mr Holt: In terms of how it is going to be spent, quite a lot of it has already been spent on a range of projects. When the bid was put in Sport England put together a strategy with a number of areas including club infrastructure, talent, skills and access to facilities. A number of those activities are ones that are intrinsic to community sport in any event and I think that is perhaps some of the issues we have been discussing, that great community sport is great community sport Olympics or not. The Olympics gives it a great boost and some of those projects have a very clear Olympic link. Some of them have a link to issues which would be relevant to the Olympics. The "Sailability" example I have already given you. We have specific volunteering projects. We have a number of specific projects connected with talent pathways, for example, because, as you know, UK Sport only focuses on the very elite of elite and it is the job of the community sports structure to make sure that there is a good pool of talent being delivered there and a certain amount of the money has been devoted in that way. I would be very happy, if it would be useful, Chairman, to provide the Committee with an analysis of the specific projects on which that money has been spent and the sort of areas they have covered. Q376 Chairman: I think that would be helpful. What you say does suggest that to some extent it is money which probably would have been spent on much the same sort of thing anyway; it has just been rebadged as part of the Olympic package. Ms Price: I think we have thought quite carefully to try and make sure that the projects do have appropriate connections and are going to contribute to delivering a really good legacy. Q377 Rosemary McKenna: I want to ask Sean a specific question about a sport which is dear to my heart and it is a non-Olympic sport but a really good participative and social community sport and that is netball. The numbers involved in playing netball, particularly with the development of mixed netball, are growing. How much involvement do you have in developing that and encouraging it? I think it should be an Olympic sport but it is not! Mr Holt: It is a sport close to my heart as well. From Sport England's perspective, we have supported netball over many years and we see it as a tremendous sport for participation and will continue to support it through our new strategy going forward. It is an MGB that traditionally we have worked with and we will continue to work with them both in terms of increasing and wider participation but also in the context of developing their players and their player pathways to make sure that we can reach the international goals that we have set ourselves. Q378 Rosemary McKenna: In terms of local participation, it is one of the cheapest forms of participation. It is very, very easy to book a court for a number of people to play inside or outside. There is a school near where I live in London where there are tournaments going on in the evening and it is marvellous to stand and watch. It has got two parts to it, it has got the aim of international excellence and success, but I believe it is one of the best sports to encourage participation. People play on quite late in their lives. Mr Holt: They do indeed, which is terrific. Like all sports, we have to make sure that we have a good club infrastructure to support that interest in that sport. We have also got to make sure that there are opportunities for the wider community and netball certainly does offer that. We have also got to make sure that the sport itself is encouraging not just participants but also match officials, volunteers, attracting those and --- Q379 Rosemary McKenna: Are they losing out on any cash because of the Olympics? Mr Holt: No. We have invested over £2 million in netball over the last four-year cycle and so from our point of view we will continue to invest in all sports regardless of whether they are Olympic or non-Olympic and netball features very strongly for us in terms of participation in sport and it is one that we hope will develop over the next few years. Chairman: I think that is all we have for you. Thank you very much. Memorandum submitted by Department for Culture, Media and Sport Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Gerry Sutcliffe MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, and Mr Jonathan Stephens, Permanent Secretary, Department for Culture, Media and Sport, gave evidence.
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 school children 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 peoples' 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 Well-being 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 £110 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 sort of 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 Sports 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 has 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, Jed 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. Q400 Chairman: One of the stories which the Secretary of State told, he recounted how Seb Coe and Daley Thompson had come back from their Olympic success to find a queue 50 metres long of young people wishing to join sports clubs, but being turned away because there was not the capacity, and he suggested that that was a tragedy which he wanted to make sure did not happen next time. How are you going to achieve that because you are not suggesting that the Department of Health is going to be supporting individual sports clubs? Mr Sutcliffe: I think what we want to achieve, and we are doing it before the 2012 Olympics, we are doing it through the Decade of Sport, is to use sport to inspire people, to use sport to work in partnership with local government, with the regional sports bodies and with the governing bodies to look at what needs to happen in terms of participation rates. We talked earlier about the investment in school sport and how we are going to achieve that through the increased offer from two to five. In community sport, and I see it in my own constituency and I am sure colleagues do in theirs as well, local people volunteer, get involved and try and run these sports clubs without a great deal of support in the early stages. What I hope to achieve is that that level of support is there so that there are people to go to that can give advice about the investment that is needed in facilities, what support can be given in terms of training facilities and what support can be given in pitches. In Bradford, I have to say, some of the football pitches are the same now as when I played on them 35/40 years ago because the investment has not taken place, so we need to work with local authorities and we need to work with the governing bodies about how we will turn all that around. I talked earlier about world-class facilities and I genuinely believe that, that community sport is entitled to world-class facilities and it is important that we put the investment in at the elite level to get the return on medals that we hope we will see in Beijing and in 2012, but we want to offer up those low-cost facilities as well, so it is about raising capacity, about encouraging people to be involved, and about giving direction to people in knowing where to go in terms of advice and support for the many clubs and many volunteers that are out there. Q401 Chairman: You have, to some extent, increased the grant in aid to Sport England, but not sufficiently to make up for the amount of money it is going to lose from the Lottery, but clearly, if you take those things together, you are then talking about hoping to attract money from other government departments. Is it your hope that actually the total amount of money going into sport will not decrease, despite the Olympic drain? Mr Sutcliffe: I hope that that is the case. Another sector we can look at for investment is the private sector with all that I said earlier about trying to get people to be involved. We were very clear at the outset of the Olympics that money would come from the Lottery and the Secretary of State and the Minister for the Olympics have been very clear about setting out that case, and again I am pleased to see that that was supported certainly by the Commons last week and hopefully by the Lords in the coming weeks so that people understand fully where we are, but yes, we will be looking at all opportunities to increase the level of income that comes into sport. Q402 Chairman: And, in order to achieve that vision of ensuring that community sports clubs are there to accommodate the rush of people who are going to be inspired to participate, that is going to require at least that the present level of funding is maintained, if not increased. Would you not agree? Mr Sutcliffe: Yes, but we can work wiser, we can be more efficient in the way we do things and we can look at what support other departments of government, particularly the Treasury, can give to sport, and again we will push all those opportunities. Q403 Chairman: On Sport England itself, when do you want to see a Chairman in place? Mr Sutcliffe: As quickly as possible. As has been said, the process has already started and we will be looking or Sport England will be looking at the candidates and hopefully we will get to a very early appointment. Q404 Chairman: Were you disappointed by the remarks of the outgoing Chairman? Mr Sutcliffe: Well, first of all, I would like to congratulate Derek Mapp on the work that he did when he was Chair of Sport England. He clearly disagreed with the direction of travel that we wanted to go in. I think he was wrong and the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. I think that he could have stayed and would have enjoyed working with us, but clearly that was not to be. Q405 Chairman: But presumably he agreed the direction of travel with the previous Secretary of State? Mr Sutcliffe: Well, the direction of travel was to increase participation by two million by 2012, and that has not changed. Q406 Chairman: But, nonetheless, his vision and how you went about increasing participation must have been something that he then agreed with the previous Secretary of State and, if not, it was not his fault, but the Secretary of State has changed and we now have a completely different vision. Mr Sutcliffe: No, I think that the participation targets have remained the same. I think he had not the same faith perhaps in our ability to negotiate with our colleagues in other departments, and I am happy to say already in the meetings that I have been involved with that I am heartened by the discussions that we are having, so again the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. Q407 Chairman: This is the Andy Burnham-chaired committee? Mr Sutcliffe: It is a mixture actually. It is the Health and Well-being Committee and I also sit on the Obesity Committee dealing with the Foresight Study and, again with Kevin Brennan and now Dawn Primarolo from education and health, so I think there are a number of avenues where resources and support will come in addition to all the things we have talked about today which will make sport activity a benefit. Chairman: Well, I am delighted to hear that you are finding enthusiasm in the Treasury to spend more money; it will be a novelty if it is the case! Q408 Philip Davies: One of the great benefits of the Olympics, we are told, is the increased participation in sport, even though there seems to be no evidence from any other host city anywhere previously that they have seen this increase in participation in sport, so do you think the Government are perhaps placing too much faith in it providing a boost to participation in sport? Mr Sutcliffe: No, I think it is the right thing to do and, you are right, it is about the legacy that has happened in other cities, and there will be arguments, I am sure, from those countries about the benefits that they had. Certainly we are looking at what is going on in Vancouver, for instance, on the 2010 Winter Olympics and how they are looking at participation and how they are setting about increasing it. I am very confident, I think it is the right thing to do and certainly I think now is the right time to be doing it rather than leaving it, as you said earlier, to the two or three weeks of the Olympics. We need to be putting the infrastructure in place now and we need to be trying to trying to inspire now to make sure that we do get people participating. Q409 Philip Davies: Most people, and hopefully a lot of people in this country, will be able to see the Olympics in 2012 when it happens and, even if that happens, the vast majority of people in this country in 2012 will access the Olympics by watching it on TV, so why should anybody be more inspired to get involved in sport by watching a British athlete win at the Olympic Games in 2012 in Britain than they would be by watching a British athlete win an Olympic Gold Medal in Beijing in 2008? If they are both watched on TV, why should one inspire somebody to take part in sport more than the other? Mr Sutcliffe: I think it is more than that. The Olympic Games, whilst we focus on sport, is more than just sport. It is about the whole nation coming together and being part of the Olympic events in London, and that is why there is the variety of bodies, there is the Nation and Regions Committee of LOCOG and in the DCMS I chair the Legacy Board, looking at all activities across government that can help people benefit from the Olympics in 2012, but I think that was very much part of the reasoning for bidding for 2012, to look at a legacy of inspiration of all things, whether that is cultural or economic, and we want to make sure that people are boosted by the Olympics taking place in 2012, so I believe that people will get more than just the satisfaction of watching many more British Olympians getting medals on TV. It will be more than just watching it on TV, it will be the actual fact of it taking place here in the UK. Q410 Philip Davies: If we tried to use our Olympic heroes as role models to get people to participate, and the Chairman mentioned earlier this 50-metre queue of people who were waiting for Daley Thompson and Seb Coe, but they did not win their Gold Medals in Britain, they won them in other parts of the world, so should the Government not really be making more of an effort to use the Olympic Games in Beijing, for example, as a stepping stone for getting people to participate in sport rather than waiting for this panacea of 2012? Mr Sutcliffe: That is a fair point and we are doing. In UK Sport, the £600 million has been invested in elite sportsmen and women, meaning that for Beijing we will hopefully have an improved performance on what we had in the previous Olympic Games in terms of the medal count and the development of our major athletes, so you will start to see hopefully from Beijing improvements which will inspire people to perform in 2012 as well. Q411 Adam Price: On the issue of elite sport, could you just describe how you see the different roles played by UK Sport and the British Olympian Association in preparing high-performance athletes for 2012? Mr Sutcliffe: Complementary, and I am pleased to see BOA and UK Sport working very well together. There have been hiccups along the way, but we have managed to resolve those in terms of the relationships that exist, but everybody is focused on making sure, with the investment that has gone in, that we provide the best opportunities for our sportsmen and women and paralympians to make sure that they do the best they can in Beijing and in 2012. Q412 Adam Price: There is potential for duplication. What were the hiccups that have been ironed out, if I can mix my metaphors? Mr Sutcliffe: Well, the particular thing that caused a problem was the BOA's view about the involvement of Clive Woodward in terms of his ideas on coaching and performance and that of UK Sport. I was happy to meet both bodies individually, look at what was put to me and I saw them being complementary and I am happy that I was able to persuade both the BOA and UK Sport that they were complementary, and people are now working very hard together to make sure that we deliver those projects. Q413 Adam Price: The BOA have set a target for the UK of 2008. Does the Government support that target? Mr Sutcliffe: Well, clearly on the basis of the £600 million investment, that is what we were told should be the outcome for that level of investment. Q414 Adam Price: You are not the Minister for betting? Mr Sutcliffe: I actually am! Q415 Adam Price: Well, are you a betting man? How confident are you that we will reach that target? Mr Sutcliffe: Very confident in the sense that the investment is there and I have looked at what is going on within UK Sport with the BOA, so I believe that everything that could be done is being done and we have to keep monitoring that. I do not want people to become complacent. The investment is the largest-ever investment in elite sport. I am slightly concerned by some of the news about tennis players being sent home because people should be aware of the level of investment that is there, people should not be complacent, and we do expect people to deliver on the level of investment that has gone in. Q416 Adam Price: The Government has said that you hope to raise an extra £100 million from private-sector sources additionally to fund elite sportsmen and women development. Are you announcing today in your annual report the appointment of the fund-raising partner? Mr Sutcliffe: Not in the annual report, but I am happy to announce it to the Committee today, that we have entered into partnership with Fast Track to help us raise this money. Fast Track have good experience of raising money in this sector in the way that we foresee and we are now working and drawing up detailed plans with them about how we are going to achieve this money. Q417 Adam Price: In broad terms, in what kind of timescale would you expect that money to be raised so that it will be invested in sufficient time for it to have an effect? Mr Sutcliffe: Well, the Treasury expect us to be able to raise £20 million a year for the next five years, so we need to be up and running very quickly. Q418 Adam Price: Could I finally raise the issue of the Paralympics and the current ban upon participation in the Paralympic Games by adults with an intellectual disability, which I know Rosemary McKenna has raised previously. Is the Government pressing the International Paralympic Committee to revoke the ban on people with learning disabilities taking part? Mr Sutcliffe: I think there are a number of things here, and I know that most hon Members will be aware of the Mencap campaign on the involvement in youth and school games, and, I am happy to say, we have had a very positive meeting with Mencap about how we can let athletes with learning disabilities be involved in those games. I have met with the Paralympics to talk about intellectual disabilities and clearly there is an international issue here which needs to be addressed, but again, I am happy to say, we have been working with especially the Olympics Disability Sports and the Paralympics about what can be done. It may mean that we have to look for some investment in trying to sort out the definitions, but what I got was a feeling from all of those organisations that there is a willingness to make sure that this issue is resolved as quickly as possible. Q419 Adam Price: And you have come to a judgment, as far as UK Sport and government-funded sporting activity is concerned, that there will be no discrimination against people with intellectual disabilities? Mr Sutcliffe: Very much so. I see this being a part of the family of sport and I want to make sure that there is equal treatment for those people who want to participate. Q420 Rosemary McKenna: As a follow-up to that, there is an issue about the length of time it is taking to get this resolved because what it does result in is the denied access to UK Sport world-class-funded programmes and also exclusion from school schemes, so the longer they are excluded, the longer it is going to take to catch up in terms of achievement and it is very difficult for them to understand exactly what is happening there. We had a marvellous programme for them and they were really, really happy about it, so can I just press you on that and can we really, really push this issue? Mr Sutcliffe: Very much so and you may know that I am working very closely with Anne McGuire, the Minister for Work and Pensions, on this issue and we have been holding joint meetings, pressing the bodies at the Youth Sport Trust level for the school games and the Paralympics in terms of the international competition, and I am confident that progress will be made. Q421 Chairman: Can I just ask you about one specific issue which is the ability for potential Olympic medal-winners in pistol-shooting to train. Can you just tell us what progress has been made to actually allow them to practise in this country? Mr Sutcliffe: I am hoping that there will be an agreement between the governing bodies and the Ministry of Defence and the Home Office, so we are trying to make sure that the ability for our athletes to be able to train in the UK is there. Clearly, there are problems relating to the Firearms Act of November 1997 about where guns can be used, but the discussions, I understand, are almost at the point of an agreement, so perhaps when my hon friend, the Minister for the Olympics, arrives at the Committee, that deal may well have been done. Q422 Chairman: So you appear confident that the deal can be reached whereby those who are potential medal-winners can train in advance of the Games in the UK? Mr Sutcliffe: Yes, but clearly, with all the relationships and issues relating to the legislation, we have got to make sure that departments are happy with that and that the sites that may be chosen are appropriate. Q423 Chairman: So that means that we can hope that we might stand a chance of winning medals in this discipline in 2012. What chance have we of winning medals in any Games after 2012 if people cannot practise? Mr Sutcliffe: Well, clearly that is an issue that we will have to discuss further. I think the first step is to get 2012 resolved and then to see what progress can be made with the individual sport. I know that at the moment competitors are training abroad. Q424 Chairman: But you would like to see some mechanism whereby the people who wish to take up the sport of pistol-shooting might be able actually to practise it in this country? Mr Sutcliffe: I would like to see that, but clearly working in conjunction with the legislation that exists and in consultation with our colleagues in other departments. Q425 Chairman: And you are talking to the Home Office about how that might be achieved? Mr Sutcliffe: Yes. Q426 Philip Davies: Simon Clegg, the Chief Executive of the British Olympic Association, said that the British public would judge the success of the Games by how many British athletes stand on the podium with medals around their necks. Is that a sentiment that you share? Mr Sutcliffe: That is one of the measures, but the other measures will be that people participate in sport and that there is a feel-good factor about the whole of the UK because of our athletes and a variety of other sportsmen and women that will be competing in this Decade of Sport. Q427 Philip Davies: Is there a possibility that the Government is sort of willing the ends of winning medals, but not particularly willing the means? I went to a swimming gala in Shipley just before Christmas and I met somebody there, a girl, who hoped to take part in the 2012 Olympics and it was inspiring her to try and do better, but, as you will know as well as I do, there are no 50-metre pools in Bradford anywhere for her to be able to train and she struggles to get the appropriate pool time to practise as much as she wants to, so how can we, in reality, try and inspire people like that to see London 2012 as a goal when she has not got the facilities that she needs in order to be in a position perhaps to win a medal at this Olympics? Mr Sutcliffe: Well, I am sad at that because that individual should have been identified by that sport's governing body as talented and gifted and ---- Q428 Philip Davies: As she is. Mr Sutcliffe: ---- and she should have gone on to UK Sport's programme for talented and gifted athletes. The route exists now, so perhaps outside the meeting we need to talk about the individual to see whether or not she does meet the criteria for the sport in terms of her opportunities. On the bigger issue of facilities, I agree with you and that is why I encourage local authorities like Bradford to have a serious sport strategy, which they do not at the moment and which they have not had for over seven years, which has prevented us having a swimming pool of 50 metres, which has prevented us having the opportunity for lots more sport infrastructure, so I am sure that we can work together, particularly in Bradford, to make sure that Bradford delivers. Chairman: I think that is all we have for you. Thank you very much.
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