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School Sports Funding

I will come to that very fair point at the end of my speech. The Secretary of State is right to point out the amount of red tape and bureaucracy in the existing scheme, and to say that we should devolve responsibility for decisions to the lowest possible level, and, within our education system, to governors and head teachers. However, there are two problems. First, if schools buy in services, they need to have a broad framework from which to purchase. Unless we take action quickly, we will discover that all aspects of the school sport partnership network have disappeared. That is why it is important to accept the principle that we need to find a way to maintain a base level of support within some sort of structure. Schools need something to buy in to. I agree with the Secretary of State that there ought to be ways of slimming the bureaucracy and of the number of bodies. Within my own constituency, the county sport partnership—another excellent set of bodies that do excellent work—already work with our schools and some of the excellent staff who are involved with the school sport partnership to see whether they can find a way to build a framework into which schools can opt. With a little bit of additional support from the Government, that could be a way forward. I do not think that it is necessary to have county sport partnerships and school sport partnerships. Indeed, the divisions between school sport and community sport have been too great under the current structures and, as I have said, bringing them together has been beneficial. To my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, I say that I agree with the shadow Secretary of State that while some slimming of the structure is necessary, it has provided some excellent things and, with a smaller budget, there is a way of providing a basic framework whereby schools can bid.