School Sports Funding

Debate between Andy Burnham and Dennis Skinner

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

What I will enjoy today is educating Conservative Members. When we came into government, we introduced rules on the sale of playing fields, which was to be allowed only if the proceeds from a small patch of the land were to be reinvested in higher quality sports facilities on the same land. The hon. Gentleman should check his facts, because that is what happened.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

On the question of selling off playing fields, does my right hon. Friend recall from his youth that most of the welfare playing fields were sold off because the Tories shut the pits and the playing fields followed suit—[Laughter.] In Tibshelf in my area, in a school that will now no longer be rebuilt, John Barker runs a schools sport partnership and has managed to get more than 90% of the kids to start playing sport again. What does he get in return? He gets the sack: he is one of the people who have lost their jobs because of this lot.

[Andy Burnham]

I noticed that when my hon. Friend made that impassioned contribution coalition Members laughed, because they have no understanding of what happened to communities such as his and mine in the 1990s, when the coal industry social welfare organisation tried to protect some of those facilities. Some are still there, but not all of them. Coalition Members have no understanding of the role of sport and how hard communities in former mining areas have fought to keep their sports provision.

There was a developing consensus, which was repeated just before the recent general election. A write-up of a Radio 5 Live debate appears on the Youth Sports Trust website and it says that, on school sport partnerships, Hugh Robertson said it would be wrong to dismantle “13 years of work” and, instead, “the party would build on” them. But that broad consensus has now been broken by the Secretary of State. School sport partnerships have joined a growing list of things that the Conservative party said it would protect in opposition, but has scrapped in government.

Let me make one thing clear: Labour Members would have understood if the Government had decided to reduce funding to school sport partnerships and the Youth Sport Trust, as long as they kept the basic school sport partnership infrastructure in place. What we are struggling with is having to accept the Secretary of State’s decision to remove 100% of their funding and demolish an entire infrastructure and proven delivery system that is improving children’s lives here and now. I cannot understand why he has done that.