Sport and the 2012 Olympics Legacy

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Damian Collins

Wednesday 24th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Damian Collins]

I agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman says. Last Friday, I was in Folkestone to see the opening of the new 3G football pitch at Cheriton Road. We want to see more investment in such pitches. The Government have provided an additional £8 million for such facilities, but we should see more. I agree with the hon. Member for Rhondda that with all the billions of pounds coming into football we should get more of that money into the grassroots. We all want to see that. In his excellent book, “Bounce”, Matthew Syed gives a clear analysis of sports participation. Proximity to good coaches and facilities and the opportunity to engage increase the number of people who will participate and makes it more likely that we will find elite performers from almost any walk of life. It is a question of getting the combinations right.

Participation, which was mentioned by the Secretary of State, is important. The participation figures, as they are collected by the national sports bodies, are something of a blunt tool. One person who participates in three sports might decide to concentrate on one and spend more time on that one sport than they did on the three, but that is shown as a net drop in participation even though the hours involved in sport might have gone up.

We should be targeting interventions to get people who do no sport at all to start doing something, and we should focus on the most deprived communities, where people do not have access to facilities, coaches or the opportunities to participate. That agenda was set out by the previous Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, and I think that it will be an important step forward in how we incentivise investment to get people who play no sport to play some sport.

We should question whether voluntary groups and charities should be able to access some of that funding and whether they are better placed to tackle some of the harder-to-reach places than the national governing bodies. Some of those organisations are supported by some of the national sporting bodies. For example, the Rugby Football Union’s HITZ programme has done a fantastic job in supporting young offenders and focusing their lives around sport. Kicks, the Premier League’s programme, has done a fantastic job. There have been some excellent studies of its benefit in London in reducing crime and antisocial behaviour. That should be our priority and our focus.

School sport is important, but encouraging people to partake in sport outside school is even more important. There will only be a certain number of hours in the school day, so participation outside school is significant. A lot of good work has been done by the school sports partnerships, but the link between schools and sports clubs in the community is important.

[Caroline Nokes]

Last Friday, 2,200 children took part in the Hampshire youth games. One of the best things to see was the link with the sports clubs that volunteered and ran the different sports, such as the Trojans club in my constituency, which spent all day running the hockey.

[Damian Collins]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. In my constituency, an organisation called the Shepway Sports Trust is independent of the council and the schools. It is supported by funding from the Roger de Haan Charitable Trust, but it seeks funding from other sporting bodies as well. Its primary purpose is to connect schools with sports clubs, to drive up participation in sports outside school, as well as proactively recruiting new coaches. An organisation can have all the facilities in the world, but if it does not have the coaches to lead people through its programmes, they will not get the best out of it. That is the kind of co-ordinated approach that we need to see, with a focus on increasing participation among people who are outside the organisations that qualify for support and those who have otherwise missed out.

We should look at the sports in which participation has increased over the past couple of years, particularly those I mentioned earlier. Has that increase happened because they invest in community facilities or because they link up sport in schools with sport in clubs? What lessons can be learned, and how can we match funding to increase participation?

How can we set about getting funding from other areas of Government activity? Why should not people be able to get Home Office funding for sports programmes set up to deal with antisocial behaviour and crime in the community? Why should not the Justice Department pay for some of the work of programmes such as HITZ, which is turning around the lives of young offenders? Reports reveal incredible statistics, showing that one or two big successes in keeping a young person from reoffending can almost pay for an entire year’s programme in the community. Relatively small amounts of money are involved, but the return that we get on the investment in community sport is enormous. That should shape our strategy. I have had a couple of extra minutes as a result of taking interventions, so I shall call it a day now.

Interest Rate Swap Products

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Damian Collins

Thursday 21st June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

I start by adding my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb) not only on securing today’s debate, but on the immense work he has done on this subject over the past few months.

I do not pretend that the mis-selling of interest rate swap agreements is a huge issue in my constituency; in fact, it has been raised by only a very small number of constituents who are local business owners. For the individuals affected, however, it is a massive issue, and as they contribute to the local economy, provide jobs for local people and use local services to assist with their businesses in the region, the knock-on effect has the potential to be very significant indeed.

It has been reported that RBS and Barclays, two of the UK’s biggest high street lenders to small business, have sold roughly 7,000 of these products between them. I can certainly add Lloyds bank to the list, as one of my constituents has had significant difficulties with that bank, which sold him this product several years ago.

Interest rate swap agreements are highly complex. As one of my constituents pointed out, these are the territory of corporate bankers, but have been sold to chip shop owners, to care home providers, as we have heard, and indeed to landlords. A constituent who approached me is the owner of a company that rents out a significant number of properties in Southampton, largely to the student market. He pointed out that, should his company fail, 1,000 individuals could be turfed out on to the streets of Southampton in the middle of their studies. What redress do these businesses have should it all go wrong?

Fear of the bank calling in the debt has kept many quiet. Micro-businesses have the option of going to the Financial Ombudsman Service, but that is possible only for those with small turnovers employing fewer than 10 people. My affected constituents are not eligible for assistance from the ombudsman, having too high a turnover and too many employees. So they have been forced to consider court action. However, as one of them said:

“how can you sue a bank you need to support you?”

In any case, the maximum redress the Financial Ombudsman Service can award is limited to £150,000, which is scant compensation when one of my constituents assures me that he has been charged an additional £6.1 million on a £3 million loan and he has already made payments into the interest rate swap agreement of over £1 million.

[Damian Collins]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this looks like old-fashioned extortion? Were the banks not simply trying to obtain the maximum possible rate, with the threat that rates might rise even higher unless people took advantage of the product?

[Caroline Nokes]

Let me reply to my hon. Friend by quoting a constituent who said to me, quite seriously, “I would have been better off going to Wonga.”

I welcome the FSA’s decision to review these products, and sincerely hope that the outcome will be assistance for the thousands of small businesses that have been affected. We should not forget that they are the lifeblood of the British economy. As that same constituent said, he is paying £3 million on top of the interest on an £8 million loan. The loan was for only three years, but the swap product was for 10. As he said, if he had not been stuck in the product he would have expanded more, employed more people, and paid more tax to the Exchequer. He also came out with a fantastic remark which really hit home in describing precisely the sort of small business man to whom these products have been sold. He said, “I left school with no qualifications. I learned my maths by scoring darts at my father’s pub. Yet suddenly I am involved in interest rate future, caps, collars, derivatives, curves, flows. All I wanted was a loan.”

My constituent is in no doubt about the fact that the loan to expand his business was dependent on the swap product. He has been quite clear about the position. His bank has been threatening him, telling him not to raise the matter with his Member of Parliament or to pursue the complaint via the courts. Land sales over which the bank has had a charge have been delayed until he makes his intentions regarding court action known to the bank. All the while, his business has been saddled with a swap product which, against the odds, he has managed to service. It has cost him more than £1 million over the last four years, and his business, family and employees have faced uncertainty.

I commend the work of my hon. Friend in pursuing this issue. I have no doubt that, as the motion says, prompt action is needed to ensure that small businesses do not continue to suffer as my constituents have. Their banks must not be allowed to threaten them.