Sports: Volunteering

Baroness Scott of Needham Market Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Allen, for tabling the Question and for giving so much of his time—and for the experience he has gained over the years in business—to this endeavour. I suppose that he is the epitome of the volunteer.

It has been interesting listening to the facts and figures that have been used freely this evening. It is worth reminding ourselves that this is quite a new thing to be able to do. It is ground-breaking and innovative to be able to put some sort of financial value on these matters. We have not been able to do that before. Join In and the people who work with it should be commended.

In 2011, the EU Select Committee of this House carried out an inquiry into whether the new competence in sports matters that came out of the Lisbon treaty could be used to assist grass-roots sports. One of the key recommendations of the report was for better data collection and analysis, and I therefore encourage the Minister to ensure that these data and methodologies are spread across Europe, where there is a real need for a greater understanding. It is a good time to look at grass-roots sport and the role that volunteering plays in its growth and development, but before doing so I declare an interest as chair of the National Volunteering Forum, which under the auspices of the NCVO brings together volunteering organisations from across the country.

One of the many delights of 2012 was the volunteers, who were truly magnificent. We should confess that, for fairly obvious reasons, at the time we did not give enough thought to what was going to happen afterwards. I quickly realised that it would have been a crying shame to have lost not just the enthusiasm but the skills and all the training given to the Games makers in the run-up to the Games. I was really pleased that in my home county of Suffolk we got hold of that opportunity very early. A consortium of organisations, with some funding from the local councils, began a series of legacy projects. We started with a big event to pay tribute to all the Games makers who came from across the county; they individually received recognition for what they had done. The Suffolk Records Office came along and created an archive of oral and written history to keep in perpetuity the recollections of people who had been involved. It was a great evening and there was a lot of buzz. Crucially, the event provided a continuity of contact, and a database was formed of skilled trained volunteers who since then have been called upon to help in major events in the county—some sporting and some cultural. The Suffolk Show, for example, attracts more than 100,000 visitors when it meets in May. Those volunteers are now involved in helping.

It is an obvious but often forgotten point that volunteering generally has to be given in opportunities that come in a wide range of forms, because that is how people live their lives. Not everyone can commit to the same time every week, or even to any regular commitment. The voluntary sector is getting much better at recognising this but there is still a long way to go in creating a breadth of opportunities that are relevant to a much broader range of people.

In a similar vein, we also need to accept that there need to be varied routes into volunteering. There have been some really interesting online schemes, such as Do-It, that are very good at matching volunteers to opportunities, particularly good at working in volume and especially good at young people, who, as far as I can tell, are now surgically attached to their smartphones. Join In has used the technology in a pretty smart way too. What I particularly like about Join In is that it uses celebrity, television, the power of the media, and the private sector to create a strategic buzz, if you can have such a thing.

Then there are organisations such as the volunteer centres, which provide a much more low-key but tailored approach, which is really important for groups of people who are traditionally underrepresented in volunteering. They are very good at finding volunteers for small charities and for areas that are actually not very exciting. The evidence shows that this more bespoke approach is more effective at creating lasting matches between volunteers and organisations.

The conclusion is that there is no magic bullet: we need all sorts of approaches to increase volunteering. What they have in common is that they all have to be resourced. I hope that the incoming Government will consider reintroducing the access to volunteering fund, with the aim of getting more people with disabilities into volunteering roles. With role models such as the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, I am sure that the will is there, but a little extra help is required.

Coming back to the Suffolk sports and volunteering project, I am pleased to say that, two years on, it is still running and has funding for the next two years. It is increasing the number of volunteering opportunities in sport in Suffolk, making them accessible to a wider group of people. On my noble friend Lord Addington’s point, the project is working to encourage best practice in recruitment and management of volunteers, and in project-based work. One of the other new pieces of work it is doing focuses on local businesses to encourage them to give employees time off. Corporate volunteering has been one of the great success stories of the last few years. An increasing number of companies realises that this is not just good for their corporate social responsibility reporting: it makes them more attractive as employers and it can develop new skills in their employees that they might not otherwise have had.

Becoming even more parochial for a moment, I want to mention my local football team. Needham Market Football Club is now secure in the play-off zone for promotion to the Ryman League premier division. It is playing on a par against towns many times its size. It is a remarkable achievement for a little town of 5,000 people. I mention this not just to big up the Marketmen, but because I want to reflect that behind the first team there are reserve teams and youth teams, with even a full-time academy for young players. To keep it all going there is an army of volunteers: match day helpers, people doing the training, ground staff, people running the club house, fundraisers, and, of course, the IT and finance people mentioned by my noble friend Lord Addington. Strong support from local businesses helps to keep the club going through advertising and sponsorship, but of course requires constant work. The point is that almost everyone in Needham Market knows someone involved in the running of the football club. Its contribution to building a sense of community is immense.

One of the most powerful pieces of evidence heard by the 2011 Select Committee, to which I referred, came from Northern Ireland. It described sporting projects that had brought communities together. Other witnesses from inner cities described how sports projects such as StreetGames had a marked effect on reoffending rates when aimed at young, troubled men. Sports volunteering has a double hit: all the well known benefits of active lifestyles with all those of voluntary community action. I have been delighted by the recent emphasis from my party on mental health. I hope that some of the extra funding, when it comes, can be used imaginatively to encourage patients into sport and volunteering activities, which can assist their recovery and continued well-being.

I again thank the noble Lord, Lord Allen, for raising this topic. All sides of the House have raised some really important points in this late stage of the Parliament, but these issues will still be here when we are all back later on.