Sport: Drugs

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Monday 3rd December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, we can only be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, for his perseverance in this cause. I have had occasion, as others have, of reading the Library briefing, and the piece de resistance was the debate in late 2015 when the noble Lords, Lord Addington and Lord Moynihan, and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, laid out the case perfectly. In a sense, all we need to do is resurrect what was said then in such an authoritative way. The Government in their response made it clear that they are aware of the seriousness of this question and are anxious to address it as creatively and as generously as they can.

In reading about all this I did not want to go over the ground so ably covered before me in so far as this problem affects sporting practitioners. For the very first time in my life, I read one of the annals of epidemiology—the things you get drawn to by membership of this House. One long article states that this is the very first meta-analysis of the global lifetime prevalence rate of anabolic-androgenic steroid use. I cannot oblige the wish expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Goddard, to avoid acronyms. I think that AAS is what that will have to be from now on.

However, the findings in that article suggest that the use of AAS is more prevalent among teenagers than among those older than 19 and that non-medical use of these steroids has steadily increased in recent years. Indeed, it has become a major global public health problem that requires the attention of policymakers and researchers. However, it is the spread from the focused sporting evidence to something rather more general that has really caught my attention.

When looking at the material put our way by UKAD, which is concerned with the use of drugs in sport, I found myself looking most specifically at the fact that it has found users as young as 14 indulging in these substances. The fact that we cannot yet control the internet sufficiently makes it possible for young people to access these drugs. As the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said, injecting has become normalised.

It is disturbing that UKAD sets out the programmes for dealing with the problem. For the 16 to 24 age group, there is a programme with gyms and leisure centres in mind; for the 16-plus age group, there is a programme with university and colleges of education in mind; for those aged 14 to 18, there is the Clean Games Policy, for use in major sporting events; for children of 11 to 16 years of age, there is Think Real, delivered in PE lessons with the collaboration of Sport England; and for those aged 10 to 14, in years 7 to 10 in schools, the Get Set for the Spirit of Sport material is taught in the classroom. What worries me is the fact that all those strands of educational initiative have clearly been devised in response to what is perceived as a prevalent problem.

I was surprised to see turn up on my desk material from the Welsh Rugby Union, with its anti-doping protocol and guidance. We know that rugby lends itself to a massing of the body, and there is a great temptation for those who want to get on in the professional game to resort to that. However, in its protocol and guidance the WRU targets under-15 squads of amateur players, who are beginning to get the idea that using these drugs and massing their bodies in this way will help them when one day they turn to a more representative form of playing the game.

Out of all this, and without repeating what others have said, I have become aware of something that I want to leave as my contribution to this debate. I have been standing in this position at the Dispatch Box for only a few months and we have discussed doping in sport more than once, as well as how it affects children. Only a year ago, the Minister and I, together with my dear friend Wilfred—my noble friend Lord Stevenson—were engaged endlessly in discussing the Data Protection Bill, which became an Act. Significant parts of that legislation had children and the internet in mind, and a number of amendments were framed to help deal with the problem of children being exposed to possible misuse of the internet.

Only a month ago, I stood here talking about children and gambling, and the way that the advertising industry and television target children by exploiting their interest in sport and other events. I think that the number of children quoted was half a million. So children feature across all those fronts. We have also just heard about a debate that took place here last week on the subject of knife crime—again, involving teenagers—and only yesterday the head of Ofsted talked about obesity among children, as well as knife crime and bullying.

In all those things, I see a common thread. There is a need to take the specificity of this debate and incorporate it holistically with all the other concerns that have been expressed in this Chamber in recent times, recognising that perhaps the time has come for us to look generically at how the needs of children are addressed. The Children Act 1989 was a great step forward and a real turning point, and it seems that we are now ready to look generically at this question all over again. Therefore, I am delighted that my noble friend Lady Armstrong of Hill Top has tabled a debate for two weeks on Thursday that will simply ask us to look at the state of young people in our society today. It sounds vacuous and general but it could be the key to entering this very necessary area of consideration, looking at the needs of children in general across these fronts so that they might again just enjoy being young.