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School Sports Funding

The answer to the right hon. Gentleman is, broadly, yes, as I will say in my conclusion. If I wanted to be positive, I would praise the previous Government for their work, for example, in building up the links between schools and sports clubs. Above everything, that increased the opportunity to provide a wider range of sports, so that more children are more likely to find a sport that they like. I would also praise the work that they did in developing the amateur community sport status, which gave tax benefits to sports clubs, and the way in which they restructured and simplified the landscape of the various sporting bodies. In particular, I would praise them for the excellent UK school games, which had a great effect on very many young people—it took place in my constituency of Bath. The debate has also been polarised on the question of whether the school sport partnerships scheme was excellent or varied. The obvious truth is that there are examples of very good practice and of not such good practice. Surely the House wants to ensure that it provides a lasting sporting legacy from 2012. That is what we are all about. We know that if we are to do that, we must ensure that we have coaches, volunteers, sports facilities and many other things, including a proper support structure for sport, whether for school, amateur or elite level sport. The one thing that is clear to me is that school is where it all starts. If we can get sport provision right in school, particularly by linking schools with clubs, we have a real opportunity to provide that sporting legacy from 2012. The Government are right to have introduced the innovation, building on the UK school games, of the schools Olympics—or whatever it will ultimately be called—because that will boost the amount of inter and intra-school competition.