Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Baroness Sater and Baroness Grey-Thompson

Wednesday 10th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 495, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, and to which I have added my name. This amendment, after Clause 62, seeks to insert a new clause on teacher training reviews. I declare my interests as president of the LGA, chair of Sport Wales and chair of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, which is actively looking at enrichment around the school day to help children develop more skills that will help them across the whole of their lives.

It feels like we have been discussing teacher training for sport and physical activity for years. Quite often, certainly around primary-age teacher training, only about four hours of instruction are given on how to deliver physical education. It is a very difficult subject to teach because, even at the youngest age, there is a huge range of capability in children. The amendment is important because it is not just about finding a new set of Olympians and Paralympians but about developing physical activity for life. The amendment is required because of the state of inactivity in England and in the UK.

Women in Sport data shows that 80% of women are not fit enough to be healthy. The organisation ukactive has published lots of research on obesity rates in children, which seem to be creeping up and up. While I acknowledge that the school cannot do everything around encouraging children to be fit, healthy and active, it can play a huge part.

If we look to another subject, we do not expect children to be able to do trigonometry without teaching them the basics of maths; there is a path to follow. However, we expect children to play sport without teaching them the basics of physical literacy. It is really important that we learn from elsewhere. In Wales in 2012 and 2013, we came very close to giving physical literacy the same status as literacy and numeracy in schools; it would have been part of the teacher training and measured by Estyn. This is important because it is about a healthy mind, body and spirit and about developing a certain level of activity. We know people’s relationship with physical activity: they drop in and out, and girls especially drop out at the ages of 18 and 13. We have to do something to change that pattern of behaviour.

This is also really important for disabled people. Quite often, PE teachers, through a lack of experience, will still send disabled children to the library—and that is happening more and more. You would think that, on the back of some amazing Paralympic success, there would be better attempts at inclusion, but that is not happening. A number of parents write to me to tell me that their children are being excluded from PE lessons under health and safety rules. Alternatively, they are told that, because there is not another disabled child in the class, they cannot participate or play sport with anyone else, so they are excluded.

His Majesty’s Government already offer support through the Inclusion 2028 programme, which is a step forward. They have worked with the Youth Sports Trust and 50 lead schools to develop this knowledge. I would be interested to understand how that is developing. We have to develop much wider support to ensure that the patterns of inactivity are broken and that we have a fitter and healthier nation.

[Baroness Sater (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, whom I hope she does not mind me calling my noble friend.

I will speak to Amendments 437 and 495, which are in the name of my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond, who deeply regrets that he cannot be with us today. Amendment 437 speaks for itself. I have attached my name to Amendment 495; I have worked with my noble friend Lord Moynihan on it for quite some time.

Our concerns are the weaknesses of the sport and physical literacy components of teacher training in the UK. They are most pronounced for generalist primary school teachers, who often lack sufficient training, confidence and practical opportunities. These issues are compounded by the low professional status for physical education within schools and it not being prioritised. There is also a minimum time allocation: generalist primary teachers typically receive very little training in physical education during their initial teacher training—ITT—programmes; one source cited an average of four to six hours. This is widely seen as woefully inadequate for preparing them to deliver high-quality PE.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Debate between Baroness Sater and Baroness Grey-Thompson

Committee stage
Tuesday 9th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sater (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak briefly in support of Amendments 138A, 185SC and 185SD in the name of my noble friend Lord Moynihan, who has articulated very well why these amendments are so important and should be considered.

The focus of the amendments, as we have heard, is to ensure that any national or local plan or strategy relating to planning and development must be designed to provide access, spaces and facilities, and to preserve existing sites for sport and physical activity, so that we can improve the health and well-being of society.

A proper local plan and strategy is critically important. Why? Research from StreetGames, the sports charity I chaired for several years, showed that children and young people living in the most deprived neighbourhoods typically tend not to travel outside of their immediate locality, and with other barriers, they have less access to opportunities for sport and play.

Sport England’s active lives survey shows that individuals in lower socioeconomic groups are more likely to be inactive, partly due to a lack of safe, affordable and welcoming home spaces and facilities. This disparity has not helped factors such as limited school facilities’ access for community use, with data showing the correlation between facilities available and activity levels.

The Fields in Trust charity, this year celebrating its centenary, publishes the green space index. It estimates that by 2033, 4,000 new parks will be needed to maintain the current level of accessible green spaces across the country—and the current level is not enough. To preserve these park spaces and sports facilities, planning in future will need to be truly focused if our country is not to be worse off. The pausing or ending of the Opening Schools Facilities Fund is also unhelpful and detrimental, as this fund was providing its worth.

If we are to tackle health and socioeconomic inequalities, we need to improve community provision of opportunities for all, including those in the most deprived neighbourhoods. To do this means making sure that integrating sport and physical activity in all planning decisions is an absolute requirement.

StreetGames and many other similar organisations daily demonstrate the importance of local community facilities, sports fields, leisure centres, gyms and parks. We know how sport and physical activity help to improve lives, whether the issue be obesity, isolation, physical and mental health, or crime and anti-social behaviour. These organisations help aid social cohesion and provide places for social interaction, provided they have access to the right facilities. They deal daily with the rebalancing of issues of health inequality, and without concerted efforts through planning, they will be unable to do their work.

For these reasons and many more, I hope we can prioritise the issues raised in these amendments. I support these amendments because they protect the provision of sport and physical activity in the National Planning Policy Framework. In so doing, sport and physical activity become the underpinning of health and well-being within communities, and help eliminate inequalities.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as president of the LGA and chair of Sport Wales. While recognising the devolved nature of planning, it would be remiss of me not to mention that the social return on investment for physical activity and sport in Wales is £5.98 billion a year.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, raised the Well-being of Future Generations Act. It is an incredibly important lens through which to make decisions on things like sport and physical activity.

We have a chance with these amendments to really cement opportunities to be active in our communities. We do not get the chance to talk about sport that much in the Chamber. We are in the middle of an exciting moment in women’s sport this summer. We have had the Women’s Open in Porthcawl, the Euros, and the Women’s Rugby World Cup, but sport is a small part of activity, which we really need to concentrate on.

All the people who played in these amazing tournaments started somewhere, but to be good at sport—and the nation is generally supportive of our sportspeople—we need to have lots of people being physically active. To be physically active, you need access to play, but you also need a place to do it.

I thank the all-party parliamentary group on sport, which met this afternoon. We had representatives from the Sport and Recreation Alliance, and from cricket, tennis, Sport England and the FA, who talked about what we are already missing. On current demand, we already need 12,000 extra grass pitches, let alone after this summer of sport, when we will hopefully get thousands more young women who want to play sport.

We are a nation that loves sport, but we are also a nation that needs to be more active. I happened to be chair of ukactive when it produced a number of reports, the first of which was called Generation Inactive; there was also Turning the tide of physical activity. They highlighted the challenges that need addressing. We have a generation of young people who are more likely to die before their parents because of inactivity. People are hitting frailty in their 40s and living with that for decades. This is both costly for society and bad for the individuals, because it excludes them from society. Around one in eight children in England between the ages of two and 10 is obese, according to an NHS survey published in September 2024.

Approximately 39% of all sports facilities in England, including sports halls, studios and pitches, are located behind school gates and often remain inaccessible outside school hours. There is a need to open them, and we cannot afford to lose any more than we currently have.

I was delighted that my noble friend—in sport— Lord Moynihan talked about swimming pools. We have seen through Covid the challenges of keeping them open. Again, this is not sport for sport’s sake. The Royal Life Saving Society estimates that 328 UK and Irish citizens lose their lives to accidental drowning each year, so keeping swimming pools open is incredibly important. If we do not protect these facilities, we are dooming another generation to a lack of opportunity. It is going to have an increasingly negative impact on their health.

Looking back to the summer of sport, we are seeing amazing players like Georgia Evans in rugby and Alessia Russo in football. They provide a moment of inspiration, but we have to do more than that. We have to provide the right facilities, whether you want to make the elite pathway or just not be very good at sport. We should channel Wales’s Well-being of Future Generations Act and look at the legacy we are leaving the boys and girls who follow, who desperately need somewhere to play.