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Sport and Physical Education

My Lords, the noble Lord indicated that ““Carry on”” was probably an unlikely title, so I am grateful to him for being specific. We will certainly look at that, but the noble Lord will appreciate that we have identified interesting developments, apart from in rugby union, in other sports where opportunities are developing. In fact, my noble friend Lord Rosser mentioned Chance to Shine, with regard to cricket, about the relationship between schools and cricket clubs, which helps, we hope, to prevent the break that occurs when young people leave school and ensure that they have a welcome. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, indicated that that depends a little on what kind of welcome one gets in a club. Good links between clubs and schools no doubt ease the path so that young people feel confident when they join a club, and will help to reduce drop-out rate. They will also increase the profile of sports clubs in the community, so that we get people taking an interest in and feeling that they can happily return to sports that they might have dropped. I emphasise that we have, and have had, tough targets to raise participation across the country. However, our work in the area gives us a strong foundation from which to make further progress. The Prime Minister’s announcement last year of an additional £100 million investment in PE and sport means that we aim to offer every young person between the ages of five and 16 five hours of PE and sport per week, with three hours of sport for 16 to 19 year-olds. The noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, was a little anxious about progress in those areas, and he is right to chide us for the extent to which we have made progress. We now see high participation among girls as well as boys; the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, spoke about the importance of young women having the opportunity to participate and develop confidence in sport, and to continue in it after they had left educational establishments. We are also keen to emphasise competitive sport in schools, which is why the National School Sport Week will take place between 30 June and 4 July. All round the country, in each of the school sport partnerships, there will be an exciting range of interschool and intraschool sport competitions throughout the week. We also have a brand new programme, which has already been successfully piloted in a number of areas and is due to roll out nationally from September. It will increase opportunities for children and young people aged five to 19 to participate regularly in sport in clubs and the community. Funding will be channelled through county sport partnerships and the activities themselves will be delivered through a broad range of local youth, after-school and community sports clubs, and will be determined locally by their relevance and interest to young people. I hope that meets the point of the noble Lord, Lord Selsdon. He gave us the well known description—it is not a caricature—of how sports bodies in the past seemed to include everyone, including the kitchen sink, and then produced little after those vast meetings had taken place. We are concerned to make sure that the operation of support for young people in sport should minimise red tape and deal directly and sympathetically with youngsters. That lesson has been learnt. The noble Lords, Lord Addington and Lord Glentoran, asked about those with disabilities and their chance to participate in sport. There is no doubt that the Olympics and Paralympics of 2012 will give us a great opportunity to focus increasingly on the question of the disabled in sport, but we need to take steps well before the Games hit their highest point of public appreciation. We are concerned that there be the high-quality participation and competitive opportunities for disabled young people and adults that their more able colleagues enjoy. We support the national governing bodies of Paralympic sport in their goals and will help schools to identify pupils with higher ability, through targeted continuing professional opportunities for teachers and termly ““identifying ability”” days. The theme behind that is that, if we can get into schools the realisation that the disabled should have opportunities alongside more able colleagues, that will translate into expectancy with regard to continuing adult life. In that area, I assure the House that the Government will not drag their feet in any way but will be very concerned to make progress. My noble friend Lord Rosser very ably outlined issues relating to leadership in sport and volunteering. There is absolutely no doubt that volunteers always have played and will continue to play an important role in sport, with some 1.5 million people being involved. We recognise the importance of improving the quality and diversity of young people as leaders, volunteers and role models in sport. Far too few people volunteer, but we all know that clubs depend totally on a great deal of volunteer activity. We need more people to play their part and to see the sporting opportunities that they can provide for the next generation. Twenty-three national governing bodies of sport, covering all the major sports and many others, now have a volunteering strategy in place. As part of that strategy, 989 young ambassadors will help to spread the Olympic and Paralympic message and ideals within the school sport partnerships. A number of noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Pendry, who opened the debate, commented on the Sport England strategy. There is no doubt that we will shortly publish a new strategy for Sport England. Considerable progress has been made in recent years, but the strategy will now set out how Sport England will develop a world-leading community sports system of high-quality sports clubs, coaches, volunteers and facilities. It will have an investment of £250 million a year and will be able to monitor progress. That point was emphasised by the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, but I know that my noble friend Lord Pendry has also always emphasised that we should be able to monitor progress in relation to the government money that is devoted to sport. The Government recognise that being physically active is important for everyone, and therefore they are keen that it should not only be the Department for Culture, Media and Sport that is concerned with the sports strategy. The House will appreciate that there is also involvement from the departments concerned with schools, from the Treasury in providing resources and, crucially, from the Department of Health, which will be the beneficiary of the end product of more successful sport and exercise participation in the country. That participation will help the department to hit its objectives. There is no doubt that people who become involved in sport and physical activity develop healthier lifestyles, and we intend to increase those opportunities. More than half of English adults are now either overweight or obese, as is one in four children. According to research, by 2050 60 per cent of men, 40 per cent of women and 25 per cent of children could be clinically obese if we do nothing. There is therefore no doubt about the priority that needs to be attached to this strategy and no doubt about the role that exercise and sport can play. My noble friend Lord Faulkner raised the issue of ticket-touting and welcomed the degree of progress that we have made. We are continuing to explore options for improving the market to increase affordability and access. We are all too well aware of the extent to which sports fans are deeply resentful of the way in which certain tickets for major events provide an opportunity for exploitation. We are looking at options for a voluntary agreement on tickets for certain ““crown jewel”” events. Those events underpin the list of sporting events that must be available for free-to-air television. However, there may be one or two additional events where voluntary agreements can be reached on how tickets are to be distributed and where controls can be put in place to ensure that the incidence of ticket-touting is greatly reduced. We want to develop a new code of principles to deliver improved access through distribution and other market-led measures that enables more fans to get tickets at source. If we can ensure that the vast majority of tickets are taken up by those with a genuine enthusiasm for the sport rather than for making money out of the opportunities that a special event provides, it would go a long way towards reducing ticket-touting. The House will appreciate that we have necessary objectives in this regard with the Olympic Games. Finally, I come to our past success in sporting presentation; namely, the Manchester Commonwealth Games. They show how well we could organise great sporting events; they were no doubt also a factor in London’s successful bid for the Olympic Games. We are only a matter of months from the point at which Beijing hands over to London. When it does so, London and the country more widely will be vested with a tremendous opportunity to emphasise the importance of sport in our national life. Much of that will revolve round the achievements of elite athletes in the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games. We want our Paralympic athletes to achieve in the Paralympic Games in Beijing at least what was achieved in the two previous Games at Athens and Sydney, when they had the second highest total of medals. We might even look at one stage above that—the top position. We would be gravely disappointed if we did not hit similar levels in the 2012 Olympics. The Olympics also provide the opportunity for the world to see the highest level of achievements. We have a clear target for our elite athletes and competitors and we want those targets to be achieved. That will require great emphasis on sport training at elite levels and the necessary investment in sport. I assure my noble friend, who has done so much work in this area, and the House that the Government are committed to a strategy that will ensure that the nation benefits from sport, that the health of the nation benefits from the participation of our people in sport and that at the elite level London presents a superb Olympics in 2012. In addition, our elite athletes and competitors should show the kind of results of which this nation should rightly be proud.