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Sport

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, has set us all a very good example. I feel that the debate is already going downhill in that I am following a former boxing champion and a former winter Olympian. We now have someone who used to be on tenterhooks on Friday evenings waiting to see whether he had been picked for the college’s fourth team in football. Fortunately, there was a fifth team, so it was not too bad. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, for making this almost an annual debate, but none the worse for it, and for his wider contribution to keeping sport on the public agenda. The All-Party Group on Sports has developed into a powerful forum in this House, and the noble Lord is the driving force behind it. As the love of my life, Blackpool Football Club, is a beneficiary of the Football Foundation, I pay tribute to the noble Lord’s work in that area too. In many ways, as has been hinted at, this debate is a natural follow-up to the earlier debate on skills. Indeed, my starting point is to follow what the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, said about health. The Economic and Social Research Council’s 2007 report State of the Nation said that obesity was rapidly overtaking smoking as Britain’s single biggest cause of disease and premature death. The need for children to remain active and energetic has never been greater. Although the Government recommend that every pupil does at least two hours of sport at school each week, not all are achieving it, as has been said, and the problem seems worse for girls. Many teenage girls admit that they do PE only because they are forced to. They are self-conscious about their bodies in PE lessons and think the games kit is ugly. At the previous meeting of the All-Party Group on Sports, we were addressed by Dr Pat Duffy, chief-executive of the Sports Council UK. He outlined the initiatives taken by his organisation to promote good coaching for children, for general participation, for developing talent and for providing the right kind of coaching for the elite in each particular sport. What he had to tell us seemed to press the right buttons in a number of the areas to which I have already referred: good coaching can make sports fun and can address particular problem areas, such as the early dropout of girls. The right pattern of recruitment into coaching can provide the role models and mentors in areas of wider concern, such as the alienation and underachievement of black youth. One has only to watch most professional sports to see how black talent has forced its way to the top. But beyond the elite are many other black sports men and women who could be encouraged to see sports coaching as a professionally regulated vocation and who could then be employed in schools, social service departments, youth offender institutions and sports clubs. The noble Lords, Lord Pendry and Lord Adonis, mentioned initiatives linking sport and training. I recently visited Oaklands College for further education in St Albans, where I found a range of study courses available, from the BTEC Foundation First Certificate in Sport through to a Foundation Degree in Sports Studies. In addition, the college has established academies linking up St Albans City Football Club, of which I am vice president, Boreham Wood Football Club and Saracens Rugby Club, providing courses that deliver first-class coaching and training, an opportunity to shop-window your talents at a high level and a chance to remain plugged into education. That is an important asset that sport can bring. Young people who might otherwise drop out of education could be encouraged to stay in further education by sports and education-linked courses. We all know that sport is brutal in sifting out the very good from the elite. Indeed, many soccer clubs and other sports clubs have a trawler effect, bringing together large numbers of young people, most of whom will never make it to the top of the professional sport. But if imaginative courses linked to sport can keep young people involved in further education, sports studies skills, both educational and social, are transferable to other areas. For example, I wonder whether it is possible to recruit the male black teachers for whom, we are told, there is a great need in sports studies departments and academies. The Oakland College experience also points to the benefit of close co-operation and sharing facilities between education-based and club-based sport. I have always stayed well clear of the politics of sports administration—it has always struck me as far more vicious than the politics of Westminster—but I think that the general approach should be to foster and reward close co-operation between schools, colleges and clubs, a matter close to the heart of my noble friend Lord Addington. I belong to a generation, as the noble Lords, Lord Glentoran and Lord Pendry, hinted, where the local youth club was a focal point for a range of social and sporting activity. Sadly the youth club is often a first candidate for closure when budgets get tight, just as the school playing fields become a prime source of cash injection when the property developer calls. Apart from the general reluctance of the taxpayer to fund public expenditure, our feral media are always willing to present the provision of sports and leisure facilities for actual or potential young offenders as being soft on crime. We have all seen stories of young offenders being taken rock-climbing or canoeing where that is presented as rewarding bad behaviour. However study after study and pilot project after pilot project show that sporting initiatives can have an impact on youth offending. Studies show that it is worth while targeting local hotspots with attractive and positive activities for young people. Such initiatives have been shown to help young people to resist pressures to take part in harmful or anti-social behaviour and increase self-esteem and organisational and social skills. Yet studies also show that short-term funding means that projects often do not last long enough to have a meaningful impact, and last-minute funding often leads to projects that are disorganised and lacking in focus. Nevertheless studies by Sport England, local authorities and academic sources show that sport can play a decisive part in cutting youth offending and putting young lives on a positive course. Following the example set by the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, I shall miss out a marvellous section in my notes linking sport and tourism. But I want to finish with a plea that the noble Lords, Lord Glentoran and Lord Pendry, both made. I hope that, despite a proper concern for how it is organised and financed, we get behind the 2012 Olympics. Sometimes our national sport, and certainly our national sports media’s sport, is enjoying losing penalty shoot-outs. Winning in Singapore was a great triumph, and we should enjoy it as a nation. The Olympics are, in the jargon, a challenge and an opportunity. Given how successful host cities such as Barcelona and Sydney still bask in the glory of their Olympic success, this is an opportunity that we should all get behind. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, for this welcome debate. As it unfolds, it will demonstrate that sport is not just about sportsmen and sportswomen but has a wider impact throughout society.