Ben Bradshaw
Main Page: Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)Department Debates - View all Ben Bradshaw's debates with the Leader of the House
(11 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Hugh Robertson
Two things in particular. The new youth sports strategy, which has been announced and the figures for which will be announced in December, will involve an investment over the next four years to encourage sport governing bodies to make those precise investments. Separately, the Places People Play programme has now invested in improving more than 700 facilities up and down the country.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
What prospect does the Minister, helped by his new Secretary of State, whom I welcome to her post, think he has of persuading the Education Secretary to reverse his disastrous decisions on school sport partnerships, on the two-hour target and on liberalising Labour’s very strict laws on disposing of school playing fields?
Hugh Robertson
The new youth sport strategy is precisely designed to address a problem that existed even under the old scheme—the difficulties in getting people out of school and into community clubs. Steps are being taken. There is no doubt that in some areas school sport partnerships were extraordinarily effective; in others, they were not. I think the consensus is that they were an expensive way of doing things. I note, from what the shadow Chancellor said to the TUC last week, that the Labour party is not making any spending commitments. There is an opportunity now to work together for a new system that I hope will deliver the improvements we all want in school sport.