EUC Report: Grass-roots Sport

Baroness Young of Hornsey Excerpts

Thursday 10th November 2011 Lords Chamber

Moved By

[Baroness Young of Hornsey]

That this House takes note of the Report of the European Union Committee on Grassroots Sport and the European Union (16th Report, HL Paper 130)

[Baroness Young of Hornsey]

My Lords, as London and the UK gear up for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and with the EU year of active ageing rapidly approaching, the publication of the EU Committee’s report, Grassroots Sport and the European Union, makes this debate timely. When the Social Policies and Consumer Protection EU Sub-Committee, which I chair, began its inquiry at the beginning of this year, it was not immediately obvious to all of us that the EU had any specific locus in the sporting arena. Your Lordships may be aware, however, that the Lisbon treaty, which entered into force at the end of 2009, granted the EU a formal competence in the field of sport for the first time. This now permits the EU to support, co-ordinate and complement the actions of member states, which retain primary responsibility for sports policy. To this end, the Commission published a communication on developing the European dimension in sport on 18 January 2011. It was this document that prompted us to conduct the inquiry.

The report considered how the new competence could best be used to support grass-roots sport by extending the benefits of participation to individuals, teams and communities. It focused on grass roots rather than on professional sport in light of the fact that one of the reasons for developing an EU sports policy and therefore introducing a competence was recognition of the social significance of sport. While it is fair to say that there was a degree of scepticism among some members of the committee at the start of the inquiry, we heard powerful evidence from a range of stakeholders that convinced the committee at an early stage that sport can make a valuable contribution to policy areas in which the EU has a stake. For example, we heard from volunteers of Street Games who run sports projects in disadvantaged communities where they have reduced anti-social behaviour and brought together diverse or fragmented communities. As part of its inquiry, the committee visited Swiss Cottage School in Camden to learn first hand how disabled children and young people in the area are benefiting from being involved in grass-roots sports. In addition, we heard about projects that are helping people into education, employment and training by developing skills such as team work, as well as confidence, and other initiatives that aim to reduce social isolation among elderly and migrant communities.

Sport alone will obviously not solve these complex social problems, but the committee became convinced that it is a powerful tool which policy-makers should use. The committee’s report recommends ways in which the EU and the UK can exploit the full potential offered by a sport through mainstreaming it into their policy-making and using it to deliver their objectives in a broad range of areas, including health, education, social inclusion and equalities. Increasing the participation of underrepresented groups such as older people, the unemployed, disabled people, migrant communities and other disadvantaged groups, should be a particular priority, as well as recognising the importance of recruiting and retaining volunteers.

The EU can also affect sport in a number of less obvious ways, and it is here that the committee considered that the new competence could be particularly helpful in ensuring that sport is taken into account. For example, EU legislation on the single market and intellectual property can ultimately affect the amount of money available for grass-roots sports projects. Our reports suggested ways in which the EU can avoid placing unnecessary regulatory or legislative burdens on sport, particularly when they affect volunteers, who are essential to grass-roots activity. In this respect, we recommended a review of EU legislation by the Commission, similar to that recently undertaken in the UK to identify regulatory burdens and ideally remove them in due course.

Although there have been signs that the Commission is starting to integrate sport into policy-making and funding programmes, we did not consider that it was taking place consistently enough. We considered that the EU could adopt a more focused role through the Commission’s sport unit in making a more compelling case for the integration of sport in a wider range of policy initiatives. This could be effected through data collection and research, for example, particularly with regard to the evidence base for the social outcomes that sport can facilitate, through improving mechanisms by which member states and grass-roots organisations can share best practice, making funding available through truly transnational projects via a dedicated sports programme and through recognising that more general EU funding streams, such as the structural funds, can also offer significant potential to grass-roots sports. While we accept that resources for any funding streams specific to sport are likely to be small, we are still hopeful that the matter will receive the attention that it deserves during the current negotiations in Brussels regarding the next multi-annual financial framework for the period 2014-20.

The redistributed revenues from the broadcasting of professional sport also provide a significant source of funding for grass-roots sport. The treaty now allows for the specific nature of sport to be taken into account in the assessment of commercial arrangements, such as collective selling and territoriality, that had previously come under scrutiny for their compliance with EU competition and internal market legislation. We welcome the Commission’s recognition of the benefits to be derived from collective selling. However, the uncertainty over what the specific nature of sport entails has been a long-standing concern of stakeholders.

Your Lordships may be aware that this matter received media coverage last month as a result of court action taken by a UK publican, Karen Murphy, who has been fighting for the right to air Premier League games using a Greek TV decoder. The European Court of Justice, which took note of the new article in the treaty and the requirement to recognise the specificity of sport, ruled that national laws which prohibited the import, sale or use of foreign decoder cards were contrary to the freedom to provide service. While not providing an absolute green light for publicans across the land, especially regarding copyright issues, this decision could nevertheless have major implications for the Premier League and lead to cheaper viewing arrangements for foreign broadcasts. The implications for the funding of grass-roots sport from broadcasting revenues are far from clear, particularly as lower subscriptions may, of course, increase the volume of subscribers.

Digital piracy of sporting events is another issue of increasing concern, and our report recommended that sport be included in the Commission’s work on the digital agenda. Similarly, we recommended that any work resulting from the Commission’s Green Paper on online gambling takes sport into account. We heard divergent evidence on whether the gambling industry should be required to pay a fair return for the use of sport’s intellectual property. This is a complex issue, and we recommended that the Government and the Commission analyse the French levy and consult more widely on the issue.

Lastly, we concluded that the Commission needed to do more to ensure that the voice of grass-roots sport is sufficiently heard. Dialogue between the Commission and sports stakeholders is currently dominated by professional sport, particularly football, and is therefore not truly representative. Our report recommended that the Commission should put in place enhanced measures to inform grass-roots organisations about work being undertaken at the EU level and the opportunities available to them. The EU Sports Platform, as chaired by the ex-Taoiseach John Bruton, should help with this.

We also suggested ways in which the EU working groups, which progress many of the EU’s initiatives in this area, could be more productive and focused, including making use of smaller grass-roots organisations with expertise in specific areas where appropriate. In the UK context, we considered that Sport Northern Ireland, sportscotland and Sport Wales should be invited to join the DCMS EU Sport Stakeholder Group, which is currently only attended by Sport England.

Hugh Robertson MP, Minister for Sport and the Olympics, wrote to us on 22 May this year to set out the Government’s response. There is clearly a lot of common ground between our views and those of the Government on the issues we dealt with in the report. We welcome in particular their commitment to ensuring that the contribution of sport to other EU policy areas, including the Europe 2020 objectives, is recognised in the work plan for sport for 2011-14, as well as being mainstream throughout the EU’s broader activities. We also welcome their commitment to increased participation, including through volunteering, and in line with their London 2012 Singapore promise across government departments and building on their existing engagement with the devolved Administrations.

The Government were less persuaded of the committee’s recommendation to establish an EU sport programme as a specific funding stream under the next multi-annual financial framework, which we note does not form part of the Commission’s recent proposals in this respect. However, the Government did support the committee’s recommendation that sport should be mainstreamed through other funding instruments, including the structural funds, and they undertook to promote such opportunities to the UK sports bodies. However, the Government did not indicate whether that policy would be integrated into the UK’s negotiation stance in the next round of structural funds. We look to the Minister to tell us more about the Government’s intentions in that regard.

The Government also supported the committee’s recommendations on the need to address the digital piracy of sporting events in work on the digital agenda, as well as accepting the committee’s conclusion that too often EU legislation in unrelated areas unintentionally adversely impacts upon sport, particularly on volunteers. They also accept that there needs to be better vigilance and better use made of the impact assessment process. The EU’s impact on grass-roots sport would surely pass unnoticed without adequate dialogue between the Commission and the sports organisations on the ground. In this respect, the Government support our recommendations on the need for such dialogue to be more representative and outcome-based and for the Commission to communicate better, particularly to smaller organisations, the opportunities available to them at EU level.

We also received a response to our report from the European Commission in September this year. We were encouraged to read that the Commission was largely supportive of our report’s conclusions and recommendations, although it also suggested that financial constraints may prevent certain measures being adopted to improve dialogue between it and sports organisations.

The committee understands that the Council will adopt further conclusions on the role of voluntary activities in sport in promoting active citizenship and, in the wake of the recent international cricketing no-ball controversy, on combating match-fixing and promoting good governance in sport more generally. In similar vein, the Commission is currently developing its approach to online gambling following the publication of its Green Paper, and the committee will look forward to considering any proposals that may result from that process.

Since the responses from the Government and Commission were received, I have also had the pleasure of giving an address about our report to a conference in London that was organised by one of our main witnesses during the inquiry, the Sport and Recreation Alliance. The Commission and the European Parliament were also involved in that event, so it provided an excellent opportunity to make the committee’s views known on this matter.

I hope that my remarks today have demonstrated that the EU’s new competence potentially offers real benefit to sport and the millions of people who enjoy participating in it across Europe. The committee is hopeful that the competence will be used to ensure that even more people can reap the benefits of doing so, and we expect that the EU’s work in this area will only develop further over time. As sport is truly international, it seemed only reasonable that the EU should have a strong role in that context, as long as grass-roots activities at the local level continue to receive the support that they require and deserve. In that respect, we are hopeful that the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games in London and the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow will provide a lasting sporting legacy without taking much needed funds away from grass-roots sports. I look forward to hearing from other noble Lords, and of course from the Minister on behalf of the Government, regarding this important matter. I beg to move.

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[Baroness Young of Hornsey]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have participated in today’s debate. It has been most stimulating. It is particularly gratifying to hear some sort of endorsement for our report from those who have been participating in sport at a very high level indeed. I am particularly pleased that the noble Baroness, Lady Billingham, and my noble friend Lady Grey-Thompson were able to participate this afternoon. I am also grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Courtown, who, as a new member of the committee, made a very important contribution, I think, when he raised the issue of obesity and the potential for sport to be used to address that, among other things. He also pointed out the difficulty of ensuring that that legacy actually happens and gave us some examples.

Going back to the remarks made by the noble Baroness, Lady Billingham, I think she pointed out some of the challenges in thinking about a new area of competence in the current economic situation. It was also very useful to hear about Tennis For Free. It exemplifies the kind of work that can be carried out quite effectively with little or no money to push that kind of initiative through a whole range of different sports activities; and I know that there are other initiatives like that going on.

I am not sure whether the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, is aware that Street Games is an organisation. It visited the committee as part of its submission to the inquiry. It was notable that it brought along two volunteers who had formerly been involved, shall we say, in local activities that were not steering them in quite the right direction and who had ended up working with Street Games to great effect with their peers. They also gave evidence to the committee.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, a dedicated member of Sub-Committee G, who focused on volunteers. As we all know, they are the absolute bedrock of grass-roots sport, as they are in other areas of activity in this country. She emphasised the regulatory burden particularly on smaller groups and the lack of representation, a point to which virtually all noble Lords referred.

My noble friend Lady Grey-Thompson raised the important issue of the participation of girls and young women in sport—perhaps I should say the lack of adequate participation. The lack of attention given to women’s sports was also raised. The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, and I discussed that as we came over to the House today. If one looks at most newspapers and television, one would not even know that women play professional sport in this country. That matter needs to be addressed if we are serious about getting more girls and young women to participate in sport. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, recognised the potential of sport to do that and the way in which it can contribute to a wide spectrum of policy objectives, not only domestically but internationally.

I thank the Minister for reiterating the need to overcome regulation, among other things, and for her encouraging comment about continuing to push in negotiations around structural funds, the ESF and so on to embed sport in those discussions. There is a danger that either the area could be hived off into one corner with the thought, “Okay, we have dealt with sport now because we have put it in a kind of box and therefore we do not have to try to embed it elsewhere”, or it will become so thinly spread that people will not know where it is or what its specificity is. Somehow we will have to steer a course between those two extremes.

The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, and my noble friend Lady Grey-Thompson raised the issue of women on boards. It might be useful to look at other areas, such as the arts, where there have been quite a few initiatives that have had effective campaigns and mechanisms to broaden the membership of boards in the arts and the cultural sector.

In conclusion, I acknowledge absolutely the efforts of my fellow members of Sub-Committee G and I am glad to see the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, in his place. He was a member of the committee which carried out the inquiry, although he has now sadly left us for other pastures. There was much questioning and reflection, and a good deal of openness. As I said at the beginning, people were a little worried about where this might take us but in the end we were convinced of its worth.

I should also like to thank Professor Richard Parrish, who was our specialist adviser for the inquiry. I also want to record the contribution of clerks and special advisers, which we should never take for granted. I should like to acknowledge Talitha Rowland, who has moved on to other work within the House, and Alistair Dillon and I thank them for their work on the inquiry and the report.

This has been a particularly stimulating debate. We have covered a wide range of areas and issues in a relatively short time. I am very glad that we were able to have this debate on the Floor of the House. I beg to move.

Motion agreed.