Sport and Recreational Facilities

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right. I mentioned earlier the Youth Investment Fund, which is not just about places and people, although those are important, but about entitlement. There are many schools in the independent and state sectors which do arts provision extremely well, and we want to build on their example. Also—and my noble friend the Minister is working very intensively on this —I feel that we should make sure the fund offers arts opportunities for after-school activities as well. The noble Baroness also mentioned the important word “creativity”; we want to see much more focus on that.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the Minister to her new role. The Government have a situation where schools that used to provide many of the facilities for junior clubs in their start-up role are increasingly finding doors locked. What duty is being placed on those schools to get in touch with the governing bodies of these sports to let them know what facilities are potentially available, possibly upping the revenue of these schools?

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes]

The noble Lord asks a very good question. As I said, I am about to talk to the Secretary of State for Education; I will put that on the agenda of the meeting. The noble Lord is right that facilities do not have to be offered just in school premises. Working with local community facilities or other sports facilities, for example, and making sure that those links are built is important. If he has any specific examples he wants to share with me and the department so that we can pursue this, I would be interested to receive them.