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Olympics and Paralympics (Funding)

My hon. Friend is a great advocate for Medway and everything it strives to achieve, and I am certainly happy to congratulate it on that excellent initiative. Earlier, my hon. Friend also touched on the work of Sport England. I would like to add my thanks to Sport England, for its support for sporting facilities in my constituency through the Places People Play fund. I was delighted to join the fund in presenting cheques to the Folkestone sports centre and the Hythe sports pavilion, which have received combined funds of £60,000. That money is being spent now, and those facilities that are being refurbished will be ready before the Olympic games, so that those who are inspired to take part afterwards will have newly refurbished facilities ready and waiting for them. It is good not only that the money has been made available, but that it is being committed and that those facilities are being improved. The Chairman of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), mentioned the sporting participation target and the Government's decision not to keep to the target of 1 million people increasing their active participation in sport. I think we would all hope that the long-term legacy is indeed a greatly increased participation, but it is difficult to know now exactly what that increase will be, over what period it will happen or even whether we could exceed that target. The Minister and the Government should look, and continue to look, at how targeted intervention through sporting programmes for particularly needy young people could be an effective part of the legacy of the games. Let me say a little more about that. If money is left in the contingency for the Olympic games by the time the games are staged—I appreciate that there will be many demands on it—perhaps the Department could look at the possibility of using it to help those people. We know from a number of excellent sporting initiatives—the Premier League's Kickz programme, the Rugby Football Union's Hitz programme and its Second Chance programme run in young offender institutions—that sports can play a dramatic role in changing the lives of people living in challenging circumstances, particularly young people. These programmes are often delivered at very low cost and are exceptionally good value for money, but the programmes delivered so far are often relatively small projects in relatively few neighbourhoods around the country. I believe that the research done so far suggests that these programmes can have an excellent impact. An excellent report, ““Teenage Kicks””, produced by the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation, focused on a project delivered by the Kickz programme run in partnership with Arsenal football club at Elthorne park in London. It showed that within a one-mile radius, there was a 66% reduction in youth crime. If the project were responsible for only 20% of that reduction, it would have demonstrated a return on investment of £7 for every £1 spent. I mentioned the Second Chance programme run by the Rugby Football Union. A report was recently produced based on the pilot at the Portland young offenders institution. It followed what happened to those youngsters who had engaged in the sporting programme. It found a reoffending rate among the young men of about one in five. That might sound quite high, but if we consider that the average reoffending rate for young men in that institution is one in two, this shows a dramatic transformation in their fortunes. As so many of the facilities already exist in young offenders institutions to provide sporting programmes, it is simply a question of bringing in the coaches and support to deliver them. They can be delivered at low cost. It has been estimated that if one of these sporting programmes stopped just one young person from reoffending and from being recommitted to a secure centre, that success could pay for the delivery of the entire programme within that single young offenders institution. Some excellent work has been done in this area, but we need a proper study, sponsored by the Government, to see how to deliver these sporting programmes both within the community, targeting vulnerable young people in areas of relatively high crime and antisocial behaviour, and within the young offender institutions themselves. We need to ascertain what rules we can devise from the work done so far and work out how to plan these schemes and projects on a much bigger scale. We also need to work out what incentives we could provide to companies and sporting organisations to run and fund more of these trials. This could be an incredible legacy of the Olympic games. A study with the backing and weight of the Government to demonstrate how best to run these programmes and the success they could bring would be a worthwhile achievement and pave the way for more programmes like this in the future. It would be excellent if we could use sport to touch the lives of more people in some of these hard-to-reach communities. It would require a piece of major research, preferably led by the Minister for Sport and the Olympics, and a unified approach across Government. The Government have with the aid of lottery money supported the Olympic games, and I believe that hon. Members of all parties are united in their admiration for the start of the process—it was begun by the previous Government and has been continued subsequently with the support of Members across the House. The value of the investment is widely acknowledged. It would be excellent if the Minister could use his position and stature as the Minister responsible for the Olympics to take a lead on understanding how these sporting programmes could work to benefit people throughout the country and if he could work with colleagues in other Departments, particularly with the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice, the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Department for Education. The Government have a strategic interest in sport across a wide area of government, and it would be good to see a co-ordinated approach, which the Department for Culture, Media and Sport could lead.