Sport, Health and Well-being National Plan (NPSRC Report)

Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, with her passion and enthusiasm for the subject. I draw noble Lords’ attention to my entry in the register of interests which, from our Select Committee sessions, noble Lords will know are extensive. I shall not read them all out here, because it would take most of my speech time—but most pertinently for this debate, I was chair of UK Active during the evidence sessions, and vice-president of the LGA, which is still current. I am now chair of Sport Wales, co-chair of Yorkshire CCC and a board member of the National Academy for Social Prescribing, and I was author of the independent review of duty of care in sport. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Willis of Knaresborough—we are all sorry that he is not here—and the secretary and Dr Mackintosh for guiding us through, as well as my noble friend in sport, the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, for leading the debate today, for his expertise and for summing up the extensive contributions.

The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, is right: this never gets to the top of the priority list. We talk about medals and sports performance, but what we are talking about here is far more serious: the health of our nation. As someone who has worked in this space for a number of years, I learned through the Select Committee process that there is a lot of agreement. It also gave me contact with organisations that I do not normally deal with.

I will start the main part of my speech with a quote from Nelson Mandela in 2000. He said:

“Sport has the power to change the world.”


It is a high bar to follow, and I am not going to argue with Nelson Mandela, but I would change it slightly by adding physical activity. Sport and physical activity have the power to nudge the world into a better place. Away from big sports reporting, we need to find a way of raising this up the agenda. There is so much research to show that sport and physical activity can tackle inequalities and bring community cohesion, academic attainment, personal responsibility and so on—I could go on and on—yet they never get to the top of the priority list.

Big sporting moments such as the Olympics, the Paralympics and the Commonwealth Games are amazing and great; I competed at all three. Working in this area, I experienced a really proud moment after the Lionesses’ victory last year. I was on a train, and I heard two young boys arguing about who was the best English female footballer. It felt as though we had turned a corner, but we then seemed to slow down again. If you look at what the 2012 Games did at Olympic park for communities and the built environment, beyond an incredible Games, you will see, again, that we must have the right support beneath these big sporting moments —you cannot just expect them to change anything. One of my biggest frustrations is when people tell me that 2012 changed the world for disabled people. It did not. They were a great Games, but we have to do more.

We sat as a committee during Covid, and as I was going out and about being active it was interesting to see so many more people, including women, being active who were not before, because they had the opportunity to do so. During that time, we heard so many people being passionate about the NHS, which was amazing, but I throw out the challenge that, if we care about the NHS so much, we have to stop people going into it. We should not talk about physical activity and sport in silos—they need to be the golden thread that runs through our debates. Physical activity can help with waiting lists and surgery; it can help with everything. We just need to talk about it a little more. I raised some of these issues at Second Reading of the levelling-up Bill.

The question is: should there be a national plan for sport? The answer, really simply, is yes. We could all have answered the question very quickly, but it was right that we spent so much time looking at it. What was really powerful about the committee was bringing it all together in one place. Briefly, I will pick out a couple of the recommendations and give my thoughts.

Statutory provision is vital. This cannot be a postcode lottery. We have to start thinking differently about the money that is spent. There should be a new requirement on councils, with adequate support from the Treasury, but we have to think about it as investing in people’s future and not just about the money that we spend. Many have called for a review of the tax environment for the sport and recreation sector, and I fundamentally support that.

What do we think about PE? A lot of people’s experience of PE is not positive, and I would argue that that is because of the way that it can be taught. It brings in sporty children, like me, but we do not teach trigonometry without teaching maths, yet we expect children to play sport without teaching them physical literacy. This is not just about the health of the nation; it would have an impact on our elite pathway. Members of the committee who do not work in this space were shocked by what happens in schools. I found that to be really useful and an important wake-up call.

It would be remiss of me not to briefly mention the areas that I am currently working in. I urge the Minister to look again at the establishment of an independent sports ombudsman. I am not desperately attached to the name or the connotations that come with it but calling it “an independent body that provides some oversight of the sports system” does not quite have the same ring to it. I had to call it something. The Government should look at this again, especially given all the sports and governing bodies in use at the moment.

I would also be delighted if the Government were to look favourably on mandatory reporting. I have a Private Member’s Bill on the list and I would happily hand it over to the Minister. It was written with the support of Mandate Now and others, because, again, this is something that is sorely needed.

I will make one plea. There is the report and there are other things that we need to think about doing. The potential closure of swimming pools is a real worry for me. Without the Government’s support, it is anticipated that 40% of council areas will lose their leisure centres or see reduced services before 31 March this year. That should be a cause of huge concern to all of us. I am sure the Minister will tell me why the Government cannot look at this differently and regrade the commitments made, but they should look urgently at doing something to protect this, because it affects the whole of British society.

Finally, there are so many opportunities in this area and I am really looking forward to the Minister’s response. This is our chance to do things differently and we should take it.