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School Sports Funding

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and may I refer him to Barrie Houlihan, professor of sport at Loughborough university and the lead evaluator of the school sport partnerships programme? He wrote about the Prime Minister's remarks from the Dispatch Box last week, and they are amazing comments to make about what was said by a Prime Minister at Prime Minister's Question Time. Professor Houlihan said that there was"““a selective use of statistics””—" a selective use of statistics from the Dispatch Box by the Prime Minister! Moving on to the third claim, the Prime Minister said that SSPs had failed because there was a decline in rugby union, netball, hockey and gymnastics. Again, that shows that the Government have no idea what they are talking about. The decline in those sports was minimal, and the reason for it was that schools are now providing, on average, 19 different sports, compared with 14 in 2006. There seems to be no appreciation of that huge change. On the three central claims the Government have made therefore, the figures speak for themselves. Their claims are summarily dismissed as nonsense.