EUC Report: Grass-roots Sport

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Thursday 10th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Hornsey, for leading this afternoon’s debate on grass-roots sport and the European Union. We are grateful to her and her committee members for launching the initial inquiry that led to their report, published in April this year. The debate is particularly timely as we approach next year’s Olympic and Paralympic Games.

We all know that sport is firmly ingrained in British life. People of all ages, abilities and backgrounds from across the country take part regularly. That participation comes in a variety of ways: there are those who are active sportsmen and women; those who give their time voluntarily to support sporting activities; and the many millions who just enjoy watching sport. However, as we have heard today, compared to the significant amount of media coverage that professional sport generates daily, grass-roots sport often remains in the shadows. As the committee’s report recognises, grass-roots sport makes an important contribution to British society, but we are also looking at the role that the EU has to play.

As we have heard, sport became an EU competence with the ratification of the Lisbon treaty two years ago. Since that landmark moment, the European Commission’s work has progressed and, throughout this time, the United Kingdom has continued to be fully engaged, ensuring that the UK’s voice is clearly heard in Brussels and beyond. We want our relationship with the EU to be about maximising benefit for the UK as we work with our EU partners. We make no apology for that. Where there are changes that can add genuine value, or which will help our sports do even better, then we will willingly support them. However, where there is duplication, unnecessary regulation or overspending, then our job is clearly to say so and to negotiate in the best way to protect our interests. We have heard from my noble friends Lord Courtown and Lady Scott and the noble Baroness, Lady Young, of the difficulties posed by overregulation in trying to encourage grass-roots sports.

The Government presented their response to the committee’s report in June, setting out their position. As we have heard, we welcomed and supported a number of the report’s recommendations. I shall comment on some of the developments that have taken place so far. The European Commission’s first sports policy document since the ratification of the Lisbon treaty, Developing the European Dimension in Sport, set out the Commission’s work plan for sport through to 2015, listing actions for both the Commission and member states. The European Council of Ministers subsequently adopted a resolution on the associated European Union Work Plan for Sport, 2011 to 2014, in May this year. It was intriguing to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Billingham, of the work that she had been involved with as an MEP in the 1990s, urging the Commission then to support sport. Some things take rather a long time to come to fruition, but we seem to have made progress since those days.

We fully recognise the importance the committee placed in its report on ensuring that sport is mainstreamed effectively both at the European Union level and at the national level. Despite its importance, sport has from time to time suffered unintentionally due to policies in other areas. We are encouraged that, at the European level, following strong UK interventions, the work plan now makes explicit reference—as we have heard—to the need to take sport into account when formulating, implementing and evaluating policies and actions in other policy fields, with particular attention to ensuring early and effective inclusion in the policy development process. Ministers and officials will continue to use each appropriate opportunity to ensure that this commitment is fulfilled across government departments.

Participation in grass-roots sport is a high priority for the Government, particularly as we look to leave a wide-ranging sports legacy from London’s hosting of the Olympic and Paralympic Games next year and from Glasgow’s hosting of the Commonwealth Games in 2014, as well as from the various other major sporting events in the UK in the coming years. We are therefore pleased to see that participation is one of the key priorities in the communication.

As we said in the Government’s response to the committee’s report, we are encouraged that one of the new expert groups set up under the work plan is focused on sport, health and participation and will be charged with producing recommendations on promoting physical activity and participation in sport. The UK is already playing a key role in this expert group, having put forward two expert representatives from Sport England and sportscotland as members. A number of noble Lords stressed health in their speeches. The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, my noble friend Lord Courtown and a number of other contributors all stressed the part that sport can play in having a healthy community.

The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, my noble friend Lord Courtown, the noble Baroness, Lady Billingham, and others challenged the Government as to what we are doing to increase participation at a national level. In England, last November the Government launched Places People Play, which is a £135 million mass participation legacy programme. In the past six months, under the places strand, we have launched the £50 million Inspired Facilities fund and the £10 million Playing Fields Protection fund, which acknowledge the importance of having the right facilities in place to support grass-roots sports participation.

In this the EU Year of Volunteering, my noble friend Lady Scott and the noble Baroness, Lady Billingham, drew attention to the important contribution of volunteers to grass-roots sporting activities. As an example, for the 70,000 places available for the London 2012 Games makers, we received around 250,000 applications. Under the people strand, the £4 million Sport Makers programme launched last month will capitalise on this by training the next generation of sports volunteers to organise and lead grass-roots sporting activities, creating sporting opportunities to give everyone the chance to take part. The enormous number of volunteers for those posts is an indication of just how enthusiastic the British population are about volunteering to contribute to sport.

The committee’s report recommended a focus on groups whose participation rates are lowest. The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Billingham, said that we need to concentrate more on particular groups in society. To give one example of action being taken in this area, £8 million is being ring-fenced to support a legacy to inspire disabled people to take part in sport. This is currently under development. Disability groups are being consulted and the programme is due to launch in the new year.

In addition, the English Federation of Disability Sport has been awarded £1.5 million in Exchequer funding to accelerate its strategy to work with national governing bodies to make grass-roots sports more inclusive. For the first time, Sport England is making funding available specifically to create opportunities and accessibility. We are committed to securing a lasting legacy from the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. We aim to drive forward wider attitudinal change towards disability sport, for example; and, through the School Games, to provide increased opportunities for all pupils—boys and girls, from all backgrounds and of all abilities—to compete at local, regional and national level. While we have been concentrating on the young in a lot of these debates, the noble Baroness, Lady Young, highlighted all ages and the importance also of making sport accessible for older people, and the ways in which that can contribute to their quality of life in later years, as well as in younger years.

The UK has played, and will be, playing an active role in each of the six EU expert groups on sport, through putting forward strong sectoral expert representatives. As evidence of that, the UK has secured the chairmanship of three of the expert groups—those on education and training, good governance and sustainable financing.

The UK has a good story to tell on good governance, an issue mentioned, I think, by the noble Baroness, Lady Young. The current Polish presidency is also putting forward Council conclusions on match-fixing; again, trying to tackle aspects of sport that go wrong. The draft text of that is being discussed at official level, and the UK is working to ensure that the proposals are not watered down and are as strong as possible, and that there is real integrity in sport.

One of the concerns raised by the committee was that Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales were seen to be excluded in EU sports policy discussions. Ministers and officials have been proactive in consulting their counterparts in the devolved Administrations on EU sports policy matters. In addition to sportscotland providing one of the UK experts on the sport, health and participation expert group, the Scottish Sports Minister will, for the first time, be joining the UK delegation later this month to attend the European Council of Sports Ministers meeting. However, I should stress that it is the responsibility of our devolved Administration colleagues to cascade any information from the UK Government to their own relevant stakeholders, such as their respective sports councils.

The UK has many examples of the positive nature of grass-roots sport participation and will share these with our EU colleagues. For instance, this summer, we hosted a delegation of MEPs from the European Parliament’s culture committee. They visited a tennis project in Haringey that has completely revitalised the local community and heard from Tottenham Hotspur Football Club’s foundation about the positive work it is carrying out in the area, including the Premier League’s Kickz programme. The noble Baroness, Lady Billingham, has told us about the Tennis For Free programme, and there are other examples of this happening throughout the country.

The UK also recently hosted the European Women and Sport Conference. The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, commented on the lack of women on sporting boards and generally participating, and the disparities in funding for women’s sport as against men’s. I am quite sure that the lack of women on sporting boards will be something that my honourable friend Lynne Featherstone, the Minister for Equalities, will be looking at to try and ensure that sport does not suffer from the lack of women in those positions of responsibility.

The noble Baroness, Lady Young, mentioned the structural funds. The decision on whether to fund a sports programme is part of the wider discussions of the future EU budget, the multiannual financial framework, which will of course include the structural funds. Discussions have taken place in friends of presidency meetings, but I believe that so far they have centred on technical clarifications. However, discussions on the EU budget, the structural funds and a future sport programme are of course linked, and the Government will be making the case for sport whenever opportunities present themselves in negotiations.

The noble Baroness, Lady Young, and my noble friend Lady Scott mentioned the importance of Street Games. Obviously we recognise that Street Games can play a vital part in fragmented communities and in other communities, and can give examples of participation, of teamwork and of reaching across boundaries to a whole range of young people in those communities. My noble friend Lady Scott asked whether there would in some way, through the volunteer section, be a route to recognised qualifications through sport. We will be looking at that to see that people have recognition for their achievement in a formal way as far as that is possible. My noble friend also mentioned the fact that the UK is not applying for EU funding streams to look at volunteering. The Government would very warmly welcome her offer to look more closely at ways in which the UK can take advantage of the available funding streams. We heard from my noble friend Lord Courtown on the sums of money at the top of professional sport and the disparity between the vast sums that professional sportspeople seem to have at their disposal and the grass-roots fund, which is constantly looking for fairly modest sums of money. That is something the sporting community is looking at and will take forward.

I have touched on the issue of diversity on boards. On the participation of schools, there will be an increased focus on competition as part of the curriculum review. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, has obviously been looking at the Secretary of State’s blogs. On the importance that he puts on competitive sport, we will find that there is cross-departmental work going on between the DfE, the DCMS and the Department of Health to try to ensure that those departments work together to encourage more sport in schools and to see that funding is made available through the different streams that are around at the moment for that purpose.

I may have missed some of the points that noble Lords have made. If so, I will write to them afterwards. To sum up, we are still in the early days of the development of the EU sports policy, but the direction of travel so far has been encouraging. The UK has uniquely positioned itself to be as influential as it can, both in our own interests and those of EU sport, through sports bodies in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. We will continue to be fully engaged in developments and take advantage of opportunities for the UK within an EU context. Once again, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Hornsey, and her committee for taking a proactive interest in this area and for producing such a valuable and wide-ranging report and recommendation. Indeed, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to today’s debate as we embark on a high-profile time for sport in the UK. We can see from this report and the debate that the United Kingdom is well placed to make the most of the new EU sport competence.