Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40
- 46)
THURSDAY 17 JANUARY 2008
Mr James MacDougall and Mr Andrew Hanson
Q40 Lord Lea of Crondall:
In your evidence you relate to Article 2E, a new Article 2E which
I have not been able to find, but it is relevant to funding streams,
I gather. You say that an exclusive sports funding stream will
allow an expansion of sports throughout Europe. This would be
impossible without ratification of the Treaty. Can you comment
on what funding streams we have got now versus what could be and
how this new Article 2E changes that?
Mr Hanson: It is very similar to the previous
witnesses. The funding streams that are out there are those areas
where the EU has competence, for instance, in education, in culture.
As the EU has no competence in sport, it cannot create a funding
stream for sport. Therefore, sports organisations are having to
look at other funding streams. For instance, in Austria and the
Czech Republic they managed to pull together a Nordic skiing centre
based on a funding stream directed at tourism, but it is quite
hard for sports organisations to do that. What this Treaty will
enable is the EU to create funding streams specifically for sport.
Q41 Lord Lea of Crondall:
At the moment, in Britain, the National Lottery, your main funding
stream, also is helping cultural organisations, heritage organisations,
and I declare an interest as one of the Vice Presidents of the
All-Party Group on Arts and Heritage, and the Olympic Games, ten
billion or whatever it is, each time you open the paper another
billion has been taken out of museums and given to sport. If it
were the other way round---. You are saying that sport is ring-fenced,
but it is not ring-fenced here, is it?
Mr Hanson: There is a lottery fund for sport.
There is Sport England and there is UK Sport, and they have a
share of the Lottery part of it in the same way as the Heritage
Lottery Fund does and the Arts Council of England does.
Q42 Lord Lea of Crondall:
But there are decisions to transfer funds from arts and heritage
into sport. Presumably that can go the other way round. Would
that be true at European level as well?
Mr Hanson: I think the UK issue is quite different.
At the moment what was voted through on Tuesday in the Commons,
and has yet to be debated in the Lords, is taking money from all
of the lottery distributors, including the home country sports
councils, and giving them to the Olympic Lottery Distribution
Fund. So, we would also be arguing that grassroots sport is losing
out in the same way as the arts and heritage. What we are talking
about from a European perspective here is, rather than sports
organisations or, similarly, children's organisations, having
to look at funding streams designed primarily for something else
and putting sport into them, we are suggesting that what the Reform
Treaty would allow us to do is give the EU more flexibility in
how it prescribes funding streams, so, if it was minded, it could
create a fund for sport to deliver other social objectives but
which would be easier for sports organisations to apply to.
Mr MacDougall: As an example for that, the White
Paper on Sport outlined 12 different funding streams that are
applicable to sport. If you examine them in any depth, you realise
that they could use sport as a tool but they are not their primary
function. One example is the prevention and fight against crime
funding stream. The last funding stream that was open there was
the for prevention, preparedness and consequence management for
terrorism, and I cannot get a sports project, unfortunately, to
fit that stream, and it is the same for a lot of the other streams
that are out there. I think it is true that you can use sport
as a tool to do a lot of very good things, and I think we have
seen in great depth the possibilities with health, social cohesion,
and so on and so forth, but what we are after is a funding stream
that says, "Use sport for these tools", not, "These
are the goals along with some other goals and you can pick a project,
whether it is cultural or otherwise, to do it."
Q43 Chairman:
To clarify that, you are not saying, or this Treaty does not say,
that any directive from the EU can have an impact on the funding
stream that Lord Lea is talking about, the UK funding streams?
Mr MacDougall: No, the EU Treaty does not say
where it will take money from or what it will do. That is a matter
for the European Parliament to decide the project.
Chairman: The impact of the Treaty is
not going to be on the funding streams that Lord Lea is talking
about within the Union?
Q44 Lord Lea of Crondall:
Chairman, I am sorry, we are talking at cross-purposes. Obviously
money does not grow on trees; it is coming from somewhere. It
is coming from our national budget. It could be, as it were, part
of a funding stream that could have been earmarked nationally.
That is logically the corollary, is it not?
Mr Hanson: The Treaty will not give the EU power
to amend the UK's National Lottery funding.
Q45 Baroness Gale:
In your evidence, you indicate that you will urge the Commission
to appreciate better the link between professional and grassroots
sports. Could you explain why you consider it important that this
issue be addressed at the EU level and what specific action you
would like to see taken by the EU?
Mr MacDougall: Certainly. I think in the White
Paper on Sport there is a clear differential between grassroots
and professional sport, and that is simply not the case and that
is artificial and potentially damaging as well. If you look at
the national governing bodies of sport in the UK, they look after
the national game and they look after the grassroots game as well.
If we take, for example, the sports cricket and rugby, 80% of
their income comes through the national game, through television
rights and so on, but they put the money into grassroots sport.
In fact, in the UK we have a voluntary code of contract which
is led by the CCPR, which means 5% of all television rights going
to grassroots sport, the money from television rights go into
grassroots sports, and what we are looking for is something a
little bit closer so they understand the link between professional
and grassroots sports. If you ever see the Committee of Region
report on the White Paper on Sport, that really does take it down
to a grassroots level, which is very good. From our point of view,
from a European side, what we are looking for is also then to
protect the national game and television rights—examples
for this might be the Intellectual Properties Directive—to
make sure that things that fund European sport, like television
rights, are not stolen in the same way, and the draft legislation,
or the draft documents that went through in December, went into
great detail about the film industry, and so on and so forth,
but did not mention sport once. If sport is specifically mentioned
in the EU Reform Treaty, then we have the possibility of including
another directive sport being mentioned and protecting sport,
and that in particular is why we want to have a look at grassroots
sport. I think Andy will now elaborate on further points.
Mr Hanson: The White Paper also discusses licensing
the clubs, with the focus particularly on professional clubs and
the potential for serious crime, such as people trafficking and
money laundering. However, much can be learned about safeguarding,
for instance, children from the grassroots club. The FA has its
Charter Mark Scheme, there is a Club Mark Scheme across clubs
in England and, if you like, the White Paper focuses on the professional
end of sport, but actually there is a lot of good practice at
the grassroots end that could be learnt from, so it is not a distinction
in our mind to separate the two.
Chairman: Thank you very much.
Q46 Baroness Perry of Southwark:
Obviously one of the places where a love of sport is developed
is at school, where school sports have a role to play. Unlike
Lord Lea, I have not read every detail of the Treaty. Is there
not anything in that already, through the education budget in
the EU, which stimulates school sport?
Mr Hanson: There was actually in, I think, 2004
the European Year of Education through Sports, which the Youth
Sport Trust was the managing partner for in the UK, and that works
well, but I suppose it is noticeable that that has been the one
significant project involving sport that has been successful.
So it can be done, and it was done, but we just believe it would
be easier if the EU has this soft competence.
Chairman: Thank you both very much. That
concludes this evidence session. We are grateful to you both for
joining us and for giving us some very helpful evidence which
will enormously help at least our understanding of the Treaty
and a lot of these issues and help us in writing our report. Thank
you both very much indeed for coming.
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