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Listed Sporting Events

It is pleasure to be under your tutelage this afternoon, Mr. Hancock. It is also a pleasure to talk about the Davies report and the rugby league challenge cup. Those of us in the rugby league community see the cup as extremely iconic, not only for rugby league, but for sport in general. It is important that we give the Minister and his team in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport some reasons why the rugby league challenge cup final should be on the A- list, and remain free to view for the UK public. The report was commissioned by the previous Secretary of State for the DCMS, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham). Interestingly, he was as surprised as the rest of us when it was concluded that the rugby league challenge cup should be delisted, and he put out a press release to that effect. I hope that the current Secretary of State will take note of that, and that he will talk to his predecessor and take his views on board. The Secretary of State has indicated that there will be a 12-week consultation on this matter. I hope that the Minister will give us more detail and put on the record the way in which members of the public can have some input in the consultation, as it is not immediately clear—perhaps it would be helpful to have an e-mail address or whatever. One of the surprising things in the Davies report, and in the report by Frontier Economics which went with it, was the paucity of public input in the consultation. The Davies report asked Frontier Economics to do a background report, which is a detailed read that gives a lot of background information about how people view sport on television, and whether or not they have access to TV sport on satellite and so on for which they pay, or on a free-to-view service. It is an impressive document, which the Davies report, quite properly, draws on. I have also read the Davies report, which is interesting to say the least. However, one of the things that it did not do well, was interview sports bodies. There were interviews and so on, but when representatives from rugby league came along, only three out of the eight members of the Davies committee were at the interview. We understand that people who do those kinds of things do so on a voluntary basis and have other interests. Nevertheless, when looking at something this important, it is not good to have less than half of the people available. That was not true only for the rugby league presentation. I understand that a presentation was also made by the English Cricket Board, and that only four members of the committee were present. There are some difficulties regarding the legitimacy of the report and its conclusions when only a small number of people were present. Paragraph 156 of the Davies report states:""The Panel accepted that sports governing bodies should be best placed to know what was in the best interests of their sport now and for the future."" If the members of the committee think that the best thing to do is to talk to the sports bodies, it is incumbent on them to turn up, listen to and question any points that are made. Another point that is made in the report is about the access that people in this country have to pay TV. There is not a lot of difference by social class—roughly 50 per cent. of people in all social classes have access to pay TV, give or take 5 per cent. either way. However, among people whose income is less than £11,500, there is a big drop, and the figure for pay TV goes down to below 15 per cent. on average. The other important factor is that although there is not much variation between different age groups, if we look at those aged 75 or over, less than 30 per cent. have access to pay TV. Taking the rugby league challenge cup final out of free-to-air viewing would exclude a lot of people who are currently able to watch that iconic sporting event. The report provides some detail about the differences in the viewing figures for the challenge cup, which is free to air, and those for the grand final, which is on Sky TV. I have no objection to Sky TV. It does a superb job and has improved the way in which television portrays our sport, and other sports. It has raised the profile of the sport, and developed the ability of TV to make sporting events more iconic, available and interesting for the viewers. This is not an attack on Sky TV—far from it; it does an extremely good job. However, the number of people who watched the challenge cup final on free-to-air TV was six times the number who watched the grand final. Anybody who knows rugby league knows that the grand final is the epitome and pinnacle of the rugby league season. It is when the two best teams play each other—knock-out competitions tend to be a little more open, and depend on the way in which the balls come out of the hat. If only a sixth of those who watch the challenge cup can watch the grand final, that tells us something about the issue. Frontier Economics has tried to analyse the effects on the sport, but it largely looks at the financial impact. It does not look at the real issues that people in rugby league want to know about. That misses the point, not only for rugby league but for all sports—the super league, the Ashes, Wimbledon, and so on. All those events are at the very pinnacle of sport, but below them, there is a huge base of people who play or have played sport, and who are interested in it. That is an important point, which I shall return to later. As I said, the committee consulted the public. Surprisingly, only 148 people responded. I say "surprisingly", but I am not all that surprised. I did not know that the public were being asked, as I might have put in a recommendation or said something about the issue. However, there were only 148 responses, which is very poor. That is why it is important that in his response, the Minister gives us some idea of how people can respond to the consultation process that he will undertake. Let us look at some of the details. Sixty-two people responded to question 12, which asked what the most important issue was for them. Of those respondents, 12 people—the largest group—said that affordability was important. That goes back to my earlier point about those people on low incomes and the over-75s. We risk excluding a lot of those people, and that is what most of the respondents were concerned about. In question 9b, the majority of those who responded said that they wanted no change whatsoever to the listing process. When asked whether the rugby league challenge cup final should be moved from the A-list to the B-list, no respondents wanted that to happen. When asked whether some events should be moved from the B- list to the A-list, so that they would be shown on free-to-air TV, four people said that the rugby league challenge cup should be shown in full, rather than as highlights. They were saying that they wanted to see games all the way through, not just the highlights of games. Of the 136 people who responded to question 9d, only three—or 2.2 per cent.—said that the challenge cup should be moved. Not only would none of us be elected on 2.2 per cent., but none of us would retain our deposits. The committee went on to consider what the criteria should say. Paragraph 138 says that there should be some amendments to the criteria. Paragraph 154 also refers to what they should look like. I will not read them all out, but paragraph 138 states that a relevant event should be""a pre-eminent national or international event in sport"," should involve""the national team or national representatives in the sport concerned"" and should""be likely to command a large television audience."" Paragraph 154 states that the panel concluded that""the 'other factors' in the current criteria that the Secretary of State may take into account—including the potential impact of listing on the income to a sport—should not strictly form part of the criteria for listing, but were matters for the Secretary of State to the extent that it is appropriate for him to take them into account"." I am sure that that sounded good in the original double Dutch, but it does give some indication that the Secretary of State has a little leeway. There is no definition in the Davies report of what the criteria that were set out mean in practice. That is important. I know that other hon. Members want to speak, so I shall just give what I think are the major reasons why the rugby league challenge cup should be included and why the Secretary of State should not take account of the Davies report's recommendations. The most important reason is the community nature of our sport. I do not think that there is another professional sport anywhere in the UK with the community base that rugby league has. It goes right the way down. All of us here could name teams in our areas whose players play rugby league from the age of five right the way through. Although that is also the case in other sports, there is a difference. I remember that in the 1980s and '90s, we had Steve Hampton, Joe Lydon, Shaun Edwards and Andy Gregory playing for what was probably the greatest rugby league team around—not just then, but before or since. They played for a Wigan team and were all born and brought up in Wigan. If we look at the current Wigan team, we see Sam Tomkins, Joel Tomkins, Gareth Hock and so on. Right the way through that Wigan team are players who were born and brought up in Wigan, and that would be the same in Leeds, Bradford and Widnes. All those players come right the way through, and it is very important that we have that community that feeds up into the challenge cup final.