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Sport

rose to call attention to the local and national role of sport; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, this Motion gives me the opportunity to underline the importance of sport in this country. It cannot be overstated. In my 37 years in this House and the other place I have long argued the case for higher government priority to be given to sports policy. Britain, after all, has a rich sporting heritage. We invented many of the world’s great sports—football, cricket, tennis, rugby, golf and many others. Each year more than 20 million adults and 7 million children take part in sport or recreation, and even more people watch sport. Just think of the millions who watch football matches every season, and that is just one sport. On top of that, UK sport is thought to generate about 2.5 per cent of GDP, to say nothing of the tangible benefits per se to those who take part. Sport also plays a useful part as a social tool helping to address serious challenges facing us in delivering the education, health and social inclusion agendas. These benefits are disproportionate with huge dividends resulting from relatively modest investment. This is the sort of thinking that I and colleagues helped to build in Labour's sporting manifestos in the 1980s and 1990s. When this Government came to power in 1997 the situation was far different from what it is today. There was, for example, a decline in school sport. The number of PE teachers had been almost halved. Every free-standing PE college had been closed. Some 5,000 playing fields had been sold off and another 260 were under threat. Many of our athletes were denied adequate funding to attend the Atlanta Olympic Games despite Labour’s calls for a change in the lottery funding regulations to assist to that end. Angling, the country's most popular participatory sport, was not recognised as such by the then Sports Council. Happily, it now receives £315,000 per year via Sport England. I could go on, because there are many other examples. What has happened over the past 10 years? After all, talk can be cheap, especially in the period running up to a general election. As the author of Labour’s sporting manifesto in 1997, Labour's Sporting Nation, I am proud of the achievements since then. Of course much more has to be done, but since that time our record has been very impressive by any objective judgment. On school sport, £750 million has been invested in community facilities for schools in the UK—£581 million in England alone—through the new opportunities funding for PE and other sports programme funding. The 2005-06 school sports survey demonstrated that 80 per cent of children aged between five and 16 have participated in two hours of high-quality PE in school sport, exceeding the Government's own target of 75 per cent. All of that is, as I say, a far cry from what the Government inherited in 1997. In Labour's Sporting Nation we said that we would pitch for the Olympic Games, and of course we have succeeded in that. I will return to that in a moment. We have also had a successful Commonwealth Games, and thanks to the new Prime Minister we are pitching for a future soccer World Cup. People play sport primarily because they enjoy it. People run sports clubs so that they and others can enjoy the benefits of sport that such clubs can bring. Clubs can enrich people’s lives and, for many, bring about personal fulfilment. That is why community sport deserves recognition both for its own sake and for the part it plays in the life of the nation For those at risk of exclusion, sport can be the hook that reignites interest in education and brings people back into the mainstream. For instance, volunteering to help in the running of a club or captaining a team can help to build confidence and develop the sense of belonging. It can also help to develop the social and communication skills and sense of responsibility that are so valued by employers. It even provides the opportunity to gain qualifications such as coaching awards that can lead directly to employment, to say nothing of the teaching profession which is now recruiting more PE teachers than ever before. More than 600,000 people work in the active leisure and learning sector. Sport and recreation is the most dominant subsector accounting for some 57 per cent of overall employment in the sector, and is expected to see the greatest growth rates in the future. For sport to function properly at both the local and national levels, I am sure the House will agree that all those working in the sector—coaches, gym instructors and teachers—need to be adequately skilled. The Department for Education and Skills recently endorsed the latest round of proposals for new national skills academies which deliver the necessary skills in each sector. I am delighted to be able to say—the Minister has said this—that the sport and active leisure sector is about to have its own academy to transform access to learning for those hoping to forge a career in the world of sport. Skills Active, the skills council for the active leisure and learning sector, is doing a great deal of excellent work in this area. It will lead the reforms around the academy, which is an exciting prospect for the sector’s workforce, and will both increase participation in sport and help to meet productivity challenge. Another valuable initiative in this field is the advanced apprenticeship in sporting excellence—the AASE—designed to meet the needs of young people who have the potential to make sport their main career goal while continuing with their education. The AASE programme has flourished over the past few months. Golf and football have seen the first completions and other sports such as cricket, tennis, rugby union and water sports have recently been enrolled in the programme. Skills Active is also developing the sport and leisure diploma in consultation with employers, schools, colleges and training providers. Currently in the planning stage, the diploma will be on line by 2010. The work of Skills Active shows that the backing is there from employers to improve skills within the sports sector and from this will flow increased participation, more engagement of young people, a more productive workforce and, of course, a healthier nation. As we all know in this House, building a healthier nation has never been more important than it is today. Given medical advances and today’s standard of living, it is regrettable that we face so many challenges in the field of health, none more so than child obesity. When my right honourable friend—I was going to refer to him as the Minister for Sport; that was the case this morning but I understand that he no longer holds that position—addressed the all-party parliamentary sports group, he described obesity as a ticking time bomb, comparing it in importance to climate change. I share his view. The predicted prevalence of child obesity for 2020 is over 50 per cent. If we do nothing to stop this problem, it will be compounded with high incidence of obesity carrying over into adulthood, with all that means for long-term medical conditions such as cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. Obesity-related costs are estimated to be about 5 per cent of the total National Health Service budget and are increasing every year. The cost of obesity today is estimated to be £7.4 billion a year. The Chief Medical Officer recommends that children and young people should achieve a total of at least 60 minutes of moderately intensive physical activity each day and that at least twice a week this should include activities to improve bone health and muscle strength and flexibility. This can be gained in one session or more or through several shorter bouts of activity of 10 minutes or more. We need look no further than these recommendations for the strongest endorsement of the value of sport to the health and well-being of the nation. Here again I take pride in what the Government are achieving. If all the attainable benefits of sport are to be delivered, it is crucial that we begin at the beginning and get things right at the grass roots. Participation is all. Nothing is more important therefore than school sport. We have got to get children active and interested in keeping active long after their school days are over. Many of us in this House are of an age to have been lucky in the provision of sport at school. I certainly was. We had built in to the curriculum sessions in the gym—I would never have become a colonial boxing champion had I not done that—and there were organised team games for a full afternoon every week and matches at weekends. We must return to that ethos and practice. This Government’s commitment to ensure that schools offer children a minimum of four hours’ sporting activity a week by 2010 is therefore a hugely important policy announcement. In looking at the Government’s commitment to sport that I referred to earlier, I must touch on the biggest success of all in the past 10 years—indeed, in our sporting lifetime. I speak, of course, of hosting the 2012 Olympics in London. Staging the Games and the Paralympics will bring fantastic opportunities to the whole of the UK. The Games are the biggest sporting event in the world and will provide an unparalleled opportunity for organisations of every size and nature to contribute to the UK’s sporting, cultural, economic, social and environmental services and objectives. London 2012 offers the country the best opportunity we have ever had to motivate a generation of young people—and, I believe, as a result, successive generations—to take part in sports in the years ahead. Hosting the Games provides a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to watch Team Great Britain on home soil. The build up gives us the opportunity to enhance participation in sport across the country and place sport high on the social and political agenda where it belongs. Sport England has a target of getting 2 million more people participating in sport by 2012. Just think about what an achievement that would be and what benefits it would bring. Others are waiting to make their contributions to this debate. Therefore, I close by pointing to just one more outstanding success story of the past 10 years. I am proud to be able to declare an interest because I speak of the Football Foundation, of which I was the first chairman, and am now its president. A partnership between the Government, the Premier League, the FA and Sport England, the Football Foundation was launched at No. 10 Downing Street in July 2000 by the then Prime Minister, myself and ministerial colleagues, and has proved to be hugely successful. The foundation has funded 2,700 projects with over £500 million, 3,500 new local sports facilities and 1,300 community schemes, which use the power of football to tackle issues such as obesity, crime and education. Participation has increased by 21 per cent on average at every facility which has been upgraded. The foundation is a model for other sports and is regarded as a blueprint for public/private partnerships in how to target funding effectively. Only this month the foundation’s chief executive, Paul Thorogood, addressed a conference of European Football League representatives, suggesting how they might replicate its success in their countries. The Football Foundation has received endorsements from the highest level. I should like to quote but one from our new Prime Minister, who has gone on record as saying: "““With the Government’s backing, the Football Foundation is leading the way in harnessing sport as a force for good within society””." I hope that I have been able to demonstrate that sport has a hugely important part to play in our lives, both locally and nationally. It will be a lasting legacy of this Government that they recognise this fact and have developed sports policies in that light. There has been more participation, more sport in schools, more playing fields, more facilities everywhere, the birth and successful early years of the Football Foundation, and greater investment through Sport England and the Sports Lottery Fund. If we add to that our victory in winning the opportunity to host the Olympic Games, it does indeed make a golden decade. With the sporting baton now passing from one Prime Minister committed to sport to another, we can look forward to a further 10 years of success. The future of UK sport has never looked brighter. I beg to move for Papers.