Sport, Recreation and the Arts

Baroness Sater Excerpts

Wednesday 19th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sater (Con)]

I am very grateful to, and thank, my noble friend Lord Moynihan for introducing this very important debate on sport, recreation and the arts and their value to society.

As a teenager, I played a lot of tennis, and even had the honour of once representing Wales as a junior. Although I did not go on to pursue a professional career, I know that participating in sport, at whatever level, can bring great benefits to communities and individuals. Sport can often touch and inspire young people who struggle in other areas of their lives.

We are all familiar with the image of the typical teenager these days—glued to a smartphone or stuck in their bedroom playing computer games hour after hour. There is no shortage of evidence that young people do not take enough exercise, as mentioned today. According to Sport England, 80% of girls and 70% of boys do not meet the Chief Medical Officer’s national recommended level of activity. The challenge is particularly great for disadvantaged young people, who do not always have access to good facilities or the opportunity to participate in sport.

Until recently, I chaired the national sports charity StreetGames—an interest that I need to declare—and I am now privileged to be its patron. There are 1,000 organisations in the StreetGames network, each providing activities on most days of the week. They are all the lifeblood of their neighbourhoods, providing about half a million young people with activities each year. Exercise is not the only benefit. The StreetGames Fit and Fed campaign delivers many hours of physical activity nationwide to disadvantaged young people each day of the school holidays and it provides a meal, facilitating an opportunity to combat the inactivity, isolation and loneliness that affect many children during their holidays. These projects were evaluated by Northumbria University, which highlighted that they provided more than just sports and food; they also offered the opportunity to learn new skills from the course leaders, from each other and from partner organisations.

I would also like to touch on the use of sport to reduce the risk of young people getting into trouble and to support those who need a positive pathway to stop reoffending. Children and young people get into trouble for all sorts of reasons. The value of sport in tackling youth crime and anti-social behaviour is well known. It is not just that the physical activity takes them off the street; mentors and supportive volunteers provide a friendly ear and the discipline and guidance that these young people do not get anywhere else. Self-confidence grows from breaking away from the crowd.

As a youth magistrate and a board member of the Youth Justice Board, I saw how sport can transform young lives. As a magistrate, I often wished that there were more options to send children to relevant and safe community sports clubs and programmes that would really help them and help to deal with the issues they faced with their offending. Finding that club, organisation or activity to which they could relate made a huge difference, and there are some great initiatives and organisations providing excellent opportunities.

One example is Wirral Positive Futures, which engages young people who have offended or are at risk of offending or at risk of substance misuse. One teenage boy referred to this organisation had been excluded from school in year 10 with no academic qualifications. This negatively affected his confidence, self-esteem and behaviour. The Wirral anti-social behaviour team helped him get involved in sporting activities and in volunteering for several sports development programmes, including the National Citizen Service. He went on to gain a City & Guilds level 1 qualification. But more than the paper qualification, he described how he now felt he had a focus on what he really wanted to do with his life and on who he wanted to be, with a better path ahead. Without sport providing these opportunities, the future for this young man looked very different indeed.

Such opportunities should be available across the country, through the creation of a locally led national referral pathway to be used by youth offending teams and other agencies to help reduce crime and reoffending by directing young offenders into sport and physical activity. I ask my noble friend the Minister to explore the potential to integrate sport into the core crime reduction and protection policies across government. The aim would be to develop an early pathway to connect the youth justice sector with community sport to reduce crime and anti-social behaviour. A huge leap in the right direction would be to get key agencies and organisations such as the Home Office, the MoJ, the Youth Justice Board, the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, DCMS and Sport England around a table. The potential benefits are clear to see, for the young people and for wider society: fitter, healthier and more focused teenagers, as well as safer communities with fewer victims of crime.

Finally, we need to recognise the importance of thousands of dedicated volunteers up and down the country who help deliver community sport in whatever local facilities can be found. Volunteers give their time freely and selflessly. They make a huge difference to others, and we owe them a huge debt of gratitude. Sport can and does play a massive role in society, improving physical and mental well-being, bringing communities together, increasing social interaction, creating positive change and, in some cases, turning lives around. This all makes our society healthier, safer and happier.