School Sports Funding

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

Anyone who has dealt with sports policy knows that this has been the key issue we have been working to crack. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South (Mr Sutcliffe) for working so hard on it, by not only getting kids to play sport in schools but then encouraging them into the clubs at weekends and in the evenings. The figures show that links between schools and local clubs have increased significantly. It is very important to raise that point, and, again, it seems to be lost on the Government.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman is right to laud club sport; it is very important and it largely happens outwith school. Will he therefore acknowledge the changes to lottery rules under this Government that mean that 20% of lottery receipts will now go to sport, unlike under his Government where that withered?

[Andy Burnham]

I reject that out of hand, because what happened was—[Interruption.] If Members will listen for a moment, what happened was, when we came into government in 1997 we established something called the New Opportunities Fund—I have already referred to it. It allowed for the spending of lottery money in statutory premises—in hospitals and schools. That is what the public wanted. That fund, which was additional to the sports lottery fund, paid for the first generation of active sports co-ordinators. So that shows, again, that this Government are making statements and claims about which they have no knowledge whatsoever.

The Culture Secretary stood at that Dispatch Box yesterday and told my hon. Friend the Member for Bury South (Mr Lewis) that

“in year 7, four in five children are not playing sport at all.”—[Official Report, 29 November 2010; Vol. 519, c. 520.]

That is simply wrong; it is an outrageous abuse of statistics. Will the Education Secretary apologise for these erroneous claims that Ministers continue to make? Will he set the record straight? Has any civil servant warned him or his Ministers, or Ministers in other Departments, about the way in which they are presenting these figures? I do not expect a straight answer from him on that question, but I can tell him that I will be writing to the UK Statistics Authority asking it to comment on the public presentation of statistics in this area by Ministers because I believe it to be woeful.