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

Baroness Sater Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Sater (Con)]

My Lords, I thoroughly enjoyed serving on the National Plan for Sport and Recreation Committee and thank everybody involved in producing such an excellent report. I especially thank the noble Lord, Lord Willis, who sadly is not here today, for his excellent chairmanship and my noble friend Lord Moynihan for helping drive this important subject to a committee of the House. I also draw your Lordships’ attention to my interests set out in the register, as I shall mention one of them later. It was also good to hear from my noble friend Lord Naseby that he plays tennis. I play a little too, so if he would like a game sometime, I am sure we can arrange it.

As we have already heard, there is so much more work to be done to tackle health inequalities across the nation. Sport and physical activity provision must be one of the primary tools to achieve this and help foster and support the culture needed to deliver a healthier society. Extremely good provision is being delivered, but so much more can be achieved. When the committee initially released the report in December 2021, the then Minister indicated his support for many of the recommendations made in it, so it is disappointing that there seems to have been such little progress considering the initial positive noises from government.

The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities highlighted data in March 2022 relating to how physical inactivity is associated with one in six deaths in the UK and is estimated to cost the economy £7.4 billion annually. Our population is around 20% less active than it was in the 1960s. One in three men, 34%, and one in two women, 42%, are not active enough for good health. We really need to get a grip on this.

We know that physical activity leads to better mental and physical health. That is partly why the report recommended that the OHID should be renamed as well as placed on a statutory footing and that physical activity, health and well-being should be prioritised across government. We have heard many urgent issues raised today, from PE becoming a core subject to saving our swimming pools, and there are many that I would have wished to speak on. I hope the Minister will be able to give some hope on the concerns highlighted today so that we can make genuine progress.

I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Addington, would welcome some positive feedback, especially in light of the Health Minister’s response to his Health Promotion Bill that the OHID’s

“core aim is to reduce preventable ill health and health disparities”

and that

“We are all united in wanting to find the best way to promote healthy living through sport, education and active lifestyle.”—[Official Report, 2/12/22; cols. 2002-05.]


I also reinforce the report’s recommendation on the importance of improving social prescribing, which has been mentioned briefly today, with local authorities working more closely with health and well-being boards, local NHS trusts and clinical commissioning groups to ensure that co-ordination and quality are enhanced to create better outcomes.

A taskforce set up by the Alliance of Sport in Criminal Justice, which I chair, recently published the Get Well, Stay Well agreement. It provides a framework for increased collaboration, health promotion and the use of physical activity and sport to tackle health inequalities across the justice system. Like so many issues that need to be addressed, the report highlights the urgent need for cross-departmental working in this area, which, if achieved, could make a real difference. To move forward and reverse the decline that we have seen in physical activity levels across the population, bringing relevant national and local stakeholders together would be a really good first step. It would be helpful to know what updates my noble friend the Minister can give us on the work that the OHID is undertaking in this area, particularly on the promotion of sport and physical activity in tackling health inequalities.

Another recommendation in the report that I would like briefly to touch on is with regard to the physical activity observatory, which my noble friend Lord Moynihan touched on earlier. At present, the sector is fractured in its reporting and lacks substantive evidence in certain areas. Acting as a central point for data collection that could in turn be independently monitored, an observatory would bring relevant stakeholders together and gather the data needed to better support and show the benefits of investment and delivery and to drive this whole agenda further and faster.

If we do not act soon, particularly in the current climate, with grass-roots sport under pressure and budgets constrained, we risk sleepwalking into a society with even worse outcomes and a generation not being offered the vast range of opportunities that follow from better physical and mental health. I remind noble Lords that not only are we less active than in the 1960s but the OHID predicts that, if current trends continue, our population will be 35% less active by 2030. We cannot allow this to happen—we really must act now.