Basketball (Funding)

Bob Russell Excerpts

Monday 28th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Mosley]

My hon. Friend is correct. Basketball is a game that includes everybody and more people should get involved. Given what he says, it sounds as if Plymouth college is doing a fantastic job to get people into the game and playing sport, which I am sure is what we in this Chamber all want.

My argument about UK Sport and its decision to remove funding from basketball is that the facts do not add up. Since UK Sport funding for basketball was initiated, both the men’s and women’s teams have gone from the bottom rung of the international ladder to being some of the most respected teams in Europe. At London 2012, the men were one basket away from achieving their UK Sport quarter final target, and they recorded an historic 32-point win against China, which was ranked 10th in the world. They lost by just one point to eventual silver medallists, Spain, and they almost beat Brazil, which finished fifth overall at the Olympics. These results were unthinkable just four years ago, and demonstrate not only the huge progress that has been made, but the potential for basketball in the future.

In addition to their collective achievements, the number of individual star talents in the GB team is growing all the time. Chicago Bulls superstar Luol Deng is one of the greatest sports stars in the world and one of the hugely successful British players currently plying their trade in the greatest league in the world, the NBA. He has written to the Prime Minister to protest against UK Sport’s decision, and I hope that the Minister has seen his letter. What message are we sending to young British basketball players who aspire to similar greatness if we do not fund our national team?

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is coming to the crux of the matter. If we are to encourage young people, in whichever sport, we need a broad-based pyramid to get the elite players at the top. Without that pyramid, boys and girls will not participate.

[Stephen Mosley]

My hon. Friend is correct. I am not talking only about the men’s team, but about the women’s team and the youth team.

The women’s team was the youngest team at the Olympics. It almost beat the silver medallists France, and was narrowly defeated by fourth-placed Russia. That is stunning progress from a team which came together only a few years ago. I also want to quickly mention the British youth men’s team, who just last week won bronze at the Australian youth Olympic festival, demonstrating the strength that we have coming down the pipeline.

For UK Sport to categorically state that neither adult team has any hope of medals is hugely disappointing. It ignores the enormous progress that has been made over the previous one and a half funding cycles, and it consigns British Olympic basketball to the scrapheap for the foreseeable future. How is the British national team expected to progress further and to bid for future funding if UK Sport is removing any chance of success in the short and medium term?

Furthermore, the Minister’s recent assertion that the Great Britain basketball teams are unlikely to qualify for either Rio or the 2020 games also looks to be wrong. For example, the men’s team has qualified for the 2013 European championships, and because it has risen significantly in the world rankings over the past 12 months it has avoided a number of the higher ranked teams in the group stage draw. It now has every chance of qualifying through to the next round. As a result, Rio qualification is a real possibility, and choosing to write the team off at this stage would be a gross miscarriage of justice.

I also understand that the Minister has expressed some concerns about the administration of the game and the ability of the governing body to deliver. To my knowledge, and to the knowledge of British Performance Basketball, there has never been any past criticism of its performance, structures or business model. I am sure that the Minister will understand the concern felt by British Performance Basketball, so before it makes any official appeal to UK Sport, it would be grateful to know if those comments were in fact directed at it, and if so, what it has done wrong and what it needs to do to improve. I would be very grateful if the Minister could cast some clarity on this very important matter.

I know that the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West would like to make a brief contribution to this debate, and I hope that I have left her sufficient time to do so. An hour and 40 minutes should be enough —[Laughter.] I would like to stress that, as I am sure the Minister will appreciate, the breadth of these arguments means that they warrant far more attention than the time afforded to them in an Adjournment debate. I hope that he will consent to meet representatives of British basketball as soon as possible, so that they can gain some clarity on what exactly they need to do in the future. There are a lot of unanswered questions and a great deal of confusion surrounding these decisions. The whole of the British basketball community would be very, very grateful for the Minister’s support in the crucial weeks ahead.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

Very briefly, I would like to put on record my appreciation for my constituents Mr John Lloyd and his son Mr Mark Lloyd, who over the years have contributed nationally and locally to the development, growth and success of basketball. On their behalf, I hope that they will be able to continue doing that.

One of the great delights in last year’s Olympics was the breadth of sports in which Britain won medals. We won medals at sports in which, only a few Olympics back, Britain’s participants did their best, but never came within a whisker of winning a medal. It is a credit to the Olympic movement in this country that that breadth of sports has developed.

Let me finish on the point I raised in my intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Stephen Mosley). To my mind, the Olympic legacy is the participation of as many young people as possible in sport. We all know that basketball, with a court set up in the corner of a playing field or across the full pitch, attracts youngsters in numbers, particularly in urban communities. If there are international and national figures whom they can look up to and aspire to be, the pyramid of participation will widen. Whatever the sport, the wider the base of the sporting pyramid, the better chance we have of seeing the pinnacle—the elite athlete—come through. Therefore, the withdrawal of funding is short-sighted. We only have to compare our record in the London Olympics with what happened five, six or seven Olympics back to see how dramatically Britain’s sporting success has increased across the spectrum. To a large extent that is about funding, as well as the enthusiasm of the various sporting organisations. I hope it will be possible for those responsible for funding basketball to realise that mass participation is part of the Olympic legacy for our young people.