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Sport in the Community

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, on securing this debate. This is one of those debates where, if you are to have any form of intellectual honesty, you cannot go into the trenches. We have realised that we have very similar goals regarding sport, we have established that there are certain ways we can achieve them, and the disagreement around them is minor. We had a system that effectively fell apart from the school level on up as a result of educational changes. This was unforeseen and unplanned, but it happened. However, the system was pretty rickety in the first place if a slight knock in the number of teaching hours could lead to a lack of recruitment. It was something that was waiting to happen, and indeed, by giving it a kick start, maybe the Conservative government of the 1980s can say, ““At least we got things to change and move on into the modern world””. The model of the school being the basic provider will not work any more. It was never that great, because it cut out choice. The idea that you were at a rugby, hockey, football or netball school—that was the school sport, and you did not play any others—was a disaster for participation. If you had a bad initial experience of sport, you stopped it. This happened for many people. Then we had an idea about taking things up later on in life. We have arrived at a situation where we are developing a more coherent system. All three major political parties have looked at their sports policy of late and come up with very similar answers, for the simple reason that we spoke to the same people. We said, ““What are we going to do? We do not like x and y that happened before. There are holes in there—let’s fill them in””. We then come on to the debate itself. The speech of the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, was wonderful, but it got me heartily cursing, because one of its major points was the fact that we have had lots of initiatives and there has been lots of activity, but there are questions about what has worked well and what has not. We have got to the point, and the Government can take some credit for this, where they have managed to create an environment—maybe through desperation; who knows?—where we have tried everything. Dozens of things are happening and different models are being brought forward from various sports, which all look rather similar, at least superficially. Which ones are delivering best, and which are not? We have a system where we are trying to create something similar. The problem is diversity. It depends on the sport. There has been a wonderful scheme lately with regard to cricket, but even that shows its limitations. It was said it would reach a third of all state schools, which is great for those schools—but what happens to the other two-thirds? That is one of the questions we must ask ourselves. The Government are now setting themselves a difficult new target. How do we get beyond the idea of an initial school age that produces cricketers, but then we fall away? That is a new and fundamental question about what we are trying to do. The difficult bit is a link between the clubs that are enthusiastic and those going outside. That is why finding out which of these schemes works best is the real challenge in front of us. The noble Lord, Lord Carter, has effectively been agreeing once again. There is a consensus of opinion about where we have to look to see what happens next. It is not what is to be done, but the best way to achieve it. We also have to address the thorny questions of political focus and resources. One of the most important changes in political attitudes, and hopefully one of the positive things that has been encouraged by the Olympics, is the fact that the Minister for public health is now meeting frequently with the Minister for Sport. I myself was annoyed by my own party, because it refused, as and when we get into power, theoretically to move sport into the Department of Health. Perhaps this was bureaucratic empire-building or whatever, but it was stopped. If we bring these two things together, sport then gets a high-spending champion in Whitehall that will allow it to go on. When the great playing-field debacle comes to the fore—when education authorities say, ““We can we do without a playing field; let us have one pitch. Let us sell the other off””—unless a school or an educational authority takes on board outside interests, it will probably say, ““Yes, we can do that””. They have to be stopped. If you are an educationalist whose priority is not and has not been sport, it is an absolute no-brainer that that is what will happen repeatedly. Unless someone says, ““There are tremendous on-costs from doing that””, that will happen. If we can encourage the whole of government from local government upwards to take sport more seriously and see it as beneficial and as something that is probably directly in line with their responsibility—health is an obvious aspect—we will have a more coherent approach. At the moment we are riding a wave of fashion and reaction against disaster, or near disaster. Unless we structurally embed further this wave of enthusiasm could disappear. If, for instance, the Olympics do not turn out to be quite the success we are hoping for, everyone will put up their hands and shriek, ““We do not want to get involved””. I hope that that does not happen; I simply put that forward as a possibility. Alternatively, if we have a couple of bad World Cup matches, politicians will stop wanting to be photographed with the man with the Cup. Let us face it, all parties are guilty of this. Unless we can institutionalise sport the Government’s structure from top to bottom, we shall be in danger of that happening. Politicians have to be pushed. My theory is that the average politician who likes sport soon discovers that it is not compatible with having to attend committee meetings and delivering leaflets. Thus, we are not the best informed group to ensure that we take sport seriously. We have to come to it late. We are the few people who do not look first at the back page of the newspapers—we look at the letters page on subjects other than how our football team performed. It is true, of course, that everyone who tries to be elected to office claims to be a great fan of their local football or rugby team, but how many of them could find the stadium without first looking at a map? I do not know. We must try to establish a more coherent approach and bring government together. Government must start to grasp another thorny branch. If we are to achieve an expansion in the number of those interested in sport, we must achieve an investment in sport. There is a finite number of times that we can go to the Lottery. Football is the best example. Eighty per cent of people who play football play it on public land. It is not like the other sports which traditionally buy their own grounds. Are we to expand the number of pitches to allow 10 per cent more people to play? Simply saying that you will better manage the time is a complete red herring because people have time to play sports only at certain times of the week. Traditionally, sport is played on Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings. A few artificial pitches or few more sets of floodlights may take the pressure off as regards training, but the fact is that teams will get together at weekends. Some may say, ““We have a wonderful Wednesday afternoon league for X number of sports””, and certain sports will have slightly different traditions, but the biggest participation in sport—and I have checked this—occurs at the weekend. If a pitch is overworked four times, you will not have that pitch for very long; you will have a mud bath. The noble Lord, Lord Carter, defined the game of rugby as fat men fighting in mud, or at least as fat men fighting—I object only to the ““fat”” part of that. The same will happen in football except that it will be thinner men who are falling around in the mud. Indeed, it will be a case of thinner young women falling around in mud as they will be playing on the same pitch if we do not increase the number of such pitches. We must ensure that resources are available. Do the Government plan to buy more pitches to allow people to participate in sport within their current recreation time frames? The alternative is to change the pattern of the working week and of our leisure time. I suggest to the Government that having a few more pitches would be much easier and cheaper. If the Government do not devote their attention to that approach, there are distinct limits on how far we can take participation. We have a great diversity of sports but we can take participation only so far in our present cultural environment, certainly in the medium term. In the minute or so which is left to me in which to speak I should like to ask one or two specific questions, or rather seek government guidance on how matters are developing. I believe that a private company is touting its sports hub programme round local education authorities. Under that programme a physical and aptitude assessment is carried out on children of school age to see which sport they might be best suited to physically and in terms of aptitude. To what extent is this programme or something like it being introduced in schools to ensure that people are encouraged to try the sports which they will enjoy, or at least stand a chance of enjoying? If we are to expand our base, we must go beyond what we have done traditionally. The noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, said that Warrington rugby club is encouraging members of the local community to try other sports. It would be too much to suggest that a rugby league club should encourage people to try playing rugby union, but that is a good example of someone being interested in one sport subsequently becoming interested in another. If you participate in a sport you may have time to take part in two or three sports at certain periods of your life. A top flight football player may not also play cricket, but someone who has a kick around with a Sunday morning football team may well play cricket during the summer. That level of participation and diversity of effort will ensure that participation rates are good. I could go on at great length, particularly stressing the fact that everything I have said applies also to women. Indeed, we will have achieved sporting equality when 51 per cent of sport participants comprise women. I believe that reflects the female percentage of the population. What are the Government’s thoughts on the next stage? They are in the unusual position of experiencing a great deal of good will across the entire political spectrum in this regard. However, there is always a danger that that good will may be spent without achieving as much as it might.