---

Sport and Physical Education

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lord Pendry on initiating this long overdue debate. I am exceedingly glad to see that the Government are refreshing their activities around these important areas. First, I should declare an interest as vice-president of Birchfield Harriers, the premier athletics club in Birmingham and one of the great clubs in the country. I shall be there on Sunday morning and afternoon at a men’s event, which follows the women’s events on Saturday. I shall be back again at the end of July for the AAA’s Olympic trial. However, I shall talk about tennis. I know that there is a tennis match on the television in our home when from the other end of the house I hear my wife screaming well meant advice at whoever is on the court. Unfortunately, Tim Henman did not take any notice of her, and she is hoping for more success with Andy Murray. This week, many tennis fans will be following the French Open on the red clay courts in Paris, but not so many will be aware that this week also marks the official start of the grass court tennis season, with the first tournament taking place in the somewhat surprising setting of Surbiton. Very sensibly, the Lawn Tennis Association moves these events around centres across the whole of the country. The game is presently dominated by players from the eastern bloc because their youngsters seem to be more hungry for success than our players. In the run-up to Wimbledon there will be the inevitable chorus of voices bemoaning the lack of British champions on the tennis scene, and I confess that I have joined my wife in similar criticisms in the past. But apart from Andy Murray and his brother Jamie, there is promise of improvement. In the women’s game in particular, progress is now being made. Britain now has five female players in the top 200, up from two only 12 months ago. Two weeks ago, Anne Keothavong became the first female in nine years to break into the top 100 players. This follows the Lawn Tennis Association’s decision to put women’s tennis on an equal footing with the men’s game, increasing the support it provides to women players. It is strange to be saying that in 2008 and makes you wonder why it was not done 100 years ago. Among the juniors, Laura Robson at only 14 is flying high in the ITF junior world rankings, and youngster George Morgan ended last year on a high, winning the prestigious 14 years and under ““Orange Bowl”” against the top international performers in his age group. He is already performing well at 18-and-under events, and there are currently nine boys in the top 100 of the ITF rankings. The challenge is to convert these results into success in the men’s game. In wheelchair tennis too, we enjoy continued success as a nation and are serious contenders for Paralympic medal success in Beijing. Peter Norfolk is the reigning US Open champion, Lucy Shuker is No 10 in the world rankings, and Gordon Reid and Jordanne Whiley are making rapid progress up the senior rankings. In the past year, the Lawn Tennis Association, the national governing body for tennis, has put in place a systematic approach across the country to discover, develop and nurture our best players. This includes increasing the support it provides to its high performance clubs around the country as well as establishing a network of talent scouts. The scouts visit clubs and competitions to spot talented youngsters, and run a series of county, regional and national level ““talent ID”” days. A key priority is how to keep these juniors in the game and the LTA support for its performance club network is central to this. The very best juniors have access to world-class facilities and services on offer at the National Tennis Centre which opened last year as the new home of British tennis down the road in Roehampton. As noble Lords who take part in parliamentary tennis matches will know, the centre now serves Britain’s aspiring tennis players—including, of course, your Lordships. Of course, facilities alone do not create champions, but they are important. We need the right talent development structures in place and we need our youngsters to work hard to make the most of the opportunities which are there for their taking. We also need to do more to create quality opportunities to play and compete in tennis and other sports available to all, as has already been said by noble Lords. An estimated 10 million people will watch Wimbledon on television this year, and many more will follow the results. But for too many, that is their involvement in the sport for the year. Tennis is a sport that takes place all year round and can be played by men and women, boys and girls, aged from four to 84. Indeed, tennis is already one of the highest participation sports in the country, with around 900,000 adults playing once a month or more. Working alongside its charitable arm, the Tennis Foundation, the LTA is committed to further growing the game as well as helping people to stay involved in sport throughout their lives, alongside the work I have already described: identifying and developing future British talent. The Government’s strategy for sport has already contributed to improvements in this area. For example, thanks to the renewed emphasis on active sport in schools, tennis is again extending its reach. According to last year’s School Sport Survey, tennis is now offered in 79 out of every 100 schools across the country, an increase of 9 per cent since 2003-04. The links between schools and tennis clubs are a key strand of the Government’s PE and School Sport and Club Links Strategy—a name to conjure with. They are now in place in 39 per cent of schools, which represents a substantial increase of 12 per cent on five years ago, when only 27 per cent of schools had such links in place. Over the past five years, the Government’s community club development programme has contributed some £14 million towards the LTA’s investment in tennis facilities across Great Britain. This has been put towards the development of 109 new indoor tennis courts, floodlighting for 488 courts, 469 new outdoor courts and 54 ““kid zones””. There are approximately 13,800 courts across Great Britain, 7,000 of which do not have floodlights. I still bear the marks across my back from getting involved in a campaign in my former constituency of Birmingham Erdington where an active and growing tennis club wanted to put in floodlighting. Unfortunately there was a housing development on its boundary which did everything it could to stop it. Indeed, it succeeded in doing so, but it was worth the shot. Some 5,300 outdoor courts have floodlighting; there are 1,250 indoor tennis courts; 126 partially indoor tennis courts; and there are something like 10,000 tennis courts in parks. However, from my observation, many of these are poorly maintained and the Government’s emphasis on trying to regenerate many of our large, especially inner city, parks is to be much welcomed. I hope that it leads to local authorities finding the resources to bring those tennis courts up to scratch. As ever, of course, more should and can be done. We expect the Government to announce in the next few days their plans for the future of community sport. I hope they will say how they plan to maximise the legacy of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and the decade of sport ahead of us. A renewed focus on growing sport, on sustaining participation and on helping talented youngsters to excel is critical to success in this drive and I look forward to seeing how sports such as tennis can maximise their impact going forward. However, I echo the point made by my noble friend Lord Rosser that it is not all about winning medals and competitions but taking part. Millions of people—it should be many millions more—find enjoyment in sport at levels much lower than championship level. As I have said, tennis is one of the highest participation sports in the country and is a major spectator sport. Spectators have an important supporting role to play for our champions taking part in tournaments. It is good to have a crowd behind you. That is certainly the case at parliamentary elections, so why it should be any different on tennis courts, cricket fields and so on. The Sport England Active People Survey 2005-06 found that 874,000 people aged 16-plus play tennis at least once a month. This makes tennis the ninth most popular participation activity among adults, higher if you exclude walking, going to the gym and recreational cycling. About 3,000 schools are members of the British Schools Tennis Association affiliated to the Lawn Tennis Association. The schools’ association offers a range of training courses for teachers involved in delivering tennis in our schools. I am glad of the recognition that has been given, in the past five years in particular, to the importance of training and of the trainers and coaches who give their services on a voluntary basis. This is especially true in athletics. There will be literally dozens of unpaid volunteers at the athletics competition to which I am going on Sunday helping to make it possible. They give their time and take the training. It is absolutely magnificent to see the support that comes to such events in that way. A great deal of money, effort and commitment is being spent to bring more young people onto the tennis courts, with expert scouts and coaching to nurture our future champions. I hope that in not too many years we can see its benefits on the tennis courts of the world.