Outdoor Sport and Recreation

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Huw Irranca-Davies

Wednesday 10th September 2014 Westminster Hall

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

It is good to be under your stewardship this afternoon, Mrs Main, for this debate. It is wonderful to see so many people turning out for it. There has been a great deal of interest in the topic of Government policy on sport, outdoor activities and recreation. It is really good to see that so many Members want to speak, so I will keep my remarks fairly short, although given the nature of what I will say, they will be slightly rambling. [Hon. Members: “Oh!”] Sorry—that is my only joke of the afternoon.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

He is Welsh.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Indeed.

I am an absolute evangelist for the great outdoors, which may come as a bit of a surprise because earlier in my career I was a sports facility and arts facility manager. My job then was to encourage people to come indoors, into sports centres, to get the gym mats out, do the aerobics sessions, get into the gym itself and so on; I was bringing people indoors. However, the greatest free gym that we have is when we step outside of our homes; we do not even need to get in a car. It is what we do when we step out into London or elsewhere, leaving our homes and turning left or right, before going up into the hills, as I am fortunate enough to be able to do when I walk out into the uplands of south Wales.

The great outdoors is a tremendous asset and I guess that my argument today is that we parliamentarians, the Government and the organisations that are involved with the great outdoors—of which there are many—all need to do our utmost to encourage people to get out there, because of the wide range of benefits of going outdoors. There are definitely health benefits, not only physical health benefits but benefits for people’s mental well-being. Encouraging people to go outdoors can also help to drive activities such as GP exercise on prescription, or GP referrals as they are sometimes called. Such methods are not appropriate for every individual who sits in front of a GP, but increasingly the evidence shows that a very good prescription for many people, whether they have mental health issues or physical health issues, is to do what they can within their abilities to go out and walk or cycle, and enjoy the great outdoors beyond them.

I really am an evangelist for this: in fact, I am a walking testament to it. As I said, early in my career I was in sports facility management, but later I was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, which for many people is a severe condition that will progressively get worse, eventually confining them to very restricted mobility, and so on. Yet the fact is that I simply walk out from my house on a Sunday afternoon, stretch my legs, go with the children and the rest of my family in my immediate neighbourhood; I cycle to work, even though it is only five minutes back and forth; and occasionally I go and do what I love, which is to get away from this place and get into the wide open spaces. That is the gospel I want to sing to a lot of people, and in a moment I will give some examples of where these recreational activities are happening and talk about areas where we can perhaps do more.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I entirely agree, and perhaps the most cost-effective way that we can do that is through a coherent strategy, involving the Welsh Government, the UK Government, the Northern Ireland Assembly and so on, that makes use of this great asset that we have literally outside our doors.

Such a strategy could certainly have a major effect on combating childhood obesity. Studies that have come out only this year, building on studies going back to the 1960s, show that if someone gets out of their car and walks or cycles to work, it has a major impact on their mortality, their length of life and their likelihood of developing serious medical conditions later in life. It is as clear as day now; there is no scientific argument about it. So let us make sure that we have such a strategy, which percolates from the national level right down to the local level, and into the voluntary sector as well; we should use the groups that are already in place to get people up and going.

[Mr Sheerman]

I agree with everything that my hon. Friend has said so far. I made a jibe about his being Welsh, but he knows that I started out as a Welsh politician in his very own village of Gowerton, and he knows that my father also suffered from ankylosing spondylitis.

Will my hon. Friend concentrate a little bit of his speech on the importance of getting children into the countryside? He knows that I am the chairman of the John Clare Trust, which has a campaign, Every Child’s Right to the Countryside. In this country, 35% to 40% of kids do not see the countryside at all, and if they do see it, they only see it on a school trip. So please let us do something to get schoolchildren into the countryside.

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Interventions should be quite short. They are becoming mini-speeches.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Thank you, Mrs Main.

My hon. Friend is right, and the John Clare Trust and so many other organisations do such good work. When I was an Environment Minister, one of the most inspiring projects that I saw in the national parks was the Mosaic programme, which dealt not only with children but with people from different ethnic backgrounds—people who typically did not go out, and felt that there was some sort of psycho-perceptual barrier that stopped them going out into the countryside—and encouraged them to go out. Then what we saw was the intra-generational effect of children taking their parents and grandparents into the great outdoors.

I am focusing on strolling, but I have enjoyed some of the most adrenaline-filled times in my life outdoors, including hanging by my fingertips from cliffs in north-west Wales, which was scary and exhilarating at the same time. I have broken bones on mountain bike paths; I do not do that anymore, as I am getting on now and have a more sedate approach. I have thrown myself off the cliffs in west Wales and swung from them, while coasteering, which is a tremendous activity. And I have swum in the sea off west Wales, through waters full of jellyfish, bottlenose dolphins and so on, which was absolutely phenomenal.

Such activity is an education as well as being good for people’s health, and it is good for the economy. Locally, we have some amazing initiatives along that line. We have a striders group—the Ogmore Valley Striders. What does it do? It works with existing groups on the ground that bring together older people—third-age people—and it says to them, “Come out. Let’s do some mild walking along the cycle paths that we have. Then maybe one day, we’ll go a bit higher,” and so on. I now see people from those groups sitting in the café halfway up that cycle path, and there will be 20 of them together. They are also spending money in that café, while they have a sit-down and a chat, before they go out and get the health benefits of walking as well.

We also have the Love 2 Walk festival. Labour-run Bridgend county borough council supports it every year, and it is growing every year, with a long list of places for people to go and walk to, ranging from easy walks to very challenging and rigorous walks in the south Wales valleys. Recently, we have had an Elvis walk in Porthcawl, which broke the record for the number of Elvises walking along the all-Wales coastal path—who can say more than that?

[Mr Sheerman]

There is nothing to say about that.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

However, there is not only walking. I pay tribute to the work that the hon. Member for Macclesfield (David Rutley) does in this area with several all-party groups, including an event that he pulled together in June last year where a range of organisations came together, which deal with canoeing, mountaineering, open access, open spaces, national parks, walking in London and other cities—all of that activity. Out of that event came a very good piece of work called “Reconomics”, which pulled together in a comprehensive way all the data—a mountain of data—that show just how beneficial outdoor recreation is; not just walking, but all the types of outdoor recreation. It showed that outdoor recreation is the UK’s favourite pastime, with all these diverse activities from potholing to caving, to simply strolling outside or going on a bike with the family.

Interestingly, women are just as likely as men to take part in outdoor recreation. As a former sports facility manager, I can tell hon. Members that, in terms of women’s participation in sports centres, we still have to break down some of the barriers to people doing indoors activities. We work hard on that. Outdoors, there is no differentiation; people do outdoor activities regardless of gender, and that is great.

More female than male staff are employed in outdoor activities. How many sectors can say that? Some 55% of employees in outdoor recreation and sport are women, not men. That is a great thing to celebrate. I know from my background that the industry employees a higher proportion of young people aged 16 to 24, giving them great opportunities.

Let us go for the hard cash and the hard sell. We see time and again, as reports come out, just how much this does for local economies and the national economy. The “Reconomics” report said that walking tourism alone was estimated to generate up to £2.76 billion for the English economy; that is quite staggering.

Let me turn for a moment to Wales and go back home to the Wales coast path—the first, the landmark and ground-breaking all-Wales coastal path. In its first 12 months, up to September 2013, the path generated 2.82 million visits and added £32 million to Wales’s economy. Some 94% of those visitors were walking for leisure, with around 40% of them visiting the path as part of a longer holiday. The impact of the path on the local economy helped 5,400 tourism-related businesses and led to an extra 120, and more, jobs created within 2 km of the route. I can see this for myself in my own area. Going down to the Glamorgan heritage coast, a tremendous piece of coastline—around Southerndown and so on—people will see the new businesses springing up. I particularly recommend the Barn at West Farm, just outside Southerndown, which is a fantastic place to stop when on a walk, have a nice coffee and listen to the guitar music being played—and on you go then.

The coast path has led to exposure for Wales on the BBC and ITV, in The New York Times and USA Today, and on Fox News, because it is an all-country, all-nation coastal path. People can hit the coast in Wales and turn left or right without stopping; it is phenomenal. The Wales coast path was included as one of the nominees in VirtualTourist’s campaign to find the “8th Wonder of the World”, alongside spots such as Yellowstone national park in the United States of America. National Geographic magazine named the Pembrokeshire coast section of the path in its top 10 places in the world to visit. In Lonely Planet’s 2012 “Best in Travel” guide, the Wales coast path was voted the greatest region on earth.

It is brilliant that recently, within the past few days, we have heard that the England coastal path will now be delivered by 2020. We were previously lacking a timetable for that. As the Minister who took the Marine and Coastal Access Bill through Committee, I can say that we were a little bit worried that the path was going to get kicked into the long grass, but it has now been said that there will be an all-England coastal path by 2020. People will be able to walk from the top north-east of England, all the way round England, through Wales, all around the coastal path, and right up the other side, then they can carry on up into Scotland, as part of a Great Britain walk.

[Mr Sheerman]

I am being carried away with nostalgia as my hon. Friend talks about coastal paths in Wales and elsewhere, but we in Yorkshire—in Huddersfield—have wonderful countryside, although we are bit far from the coastline. In terms of his Clare Balding tours, will he think about coming to Huddersfield and Yorkshire for wonderful walks with us, too?