Covid-19: Restrictions on Gyms and Sport

Catherine West Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell, and a delight to be in another debate led by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell). Perhaps like you, Mr Mundell, being a rugby fan and a Scotland supporter, I did not have such a great weekend. However, we must go forward. We live in hope with the navy jersey and the white thistle every week. One never knows one’s luck.

Like the hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani), I have two golf courses in my constituency and many upset constituents who are unable to keep taking their constitutional. That also refers specifically the indoor piece: gyms, leisure centres, indoor tennis and cricket centres, and, of course, swimming pools. In these brief remarks, I will focus on swimming.

The hon. Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt) has outlined the lifelong benefits of swimming, but as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on swimming, may I thank the Minister for twice attending the APPG and listening carefully, and crucially, for ensuring that school swimming continued during this second lockdown? It is so important that we do not lose a cohort of children, some of whom would carry a lack of swimming ability through their secondary school years and beyond, and perhaps end up in Spain or somewhere during a gap year and tragically lose their lives because they had never learned to swim.

I am really pleased that, in theory, swimming lessons have continued, although that depends on people’s access to a swimming pool. We know that the statistics on swimming pool sufficiency have dropped over the past decade, owing to austerity and to developers not building enough pools under their section 106 and community infrastructure levy agreements. I hope that when the Minister gets a chance, he and his officials will look at the issue of swimming pool sufficiency, because there are lots of regions in the UK where children will not have access to this crucial hardware, so that they can actually learn to swim.

I also hope that the Minister will use any time that might be available to be strategic and look at the role of swimming instructors, paying those people properly and having them in proper arrangements, whether through local authorities or the third sector.

The other element of the announcement I am pleased about is the fact that the third sector will be able to apply for funds. Obviously, all our local authorities are really stretched, so given that some money has had to be spent—I would hope—on mitigating the impacts of covid, there has not been enough to cover all the leisure estate in many of our local authority areas.

I am pleased that the provider in my local authority, which is the charity Fusion, will be able to apply to the Minister for funds. In my constituency, I have an active outdoor swimming group, the Park Road Lido User Group, which is vocal about how much it is missing its swimming and keen to get back in the pool. A case study has been carried out by Hesketh Benoit, one of our key swimmers. He swims every morning—he is up at six, then down to the swimming pool—and also runs basketball and other sports for young people during the summer. He is a fantastic example of a lifelong swimmer.

I pay tribute to those workers who look after our swimming pools locally. I am thinking of West Reservoir in Hackney, the ponds on Hampstead heath, and all these outdoor swimming areas, because research has come out recently that suggests outdoor swimming can play a role in preventing dementia—something I recommend that the Minister look at.

I hope that, as the fund is brought forward, the Minister will come back to this House and tell us exactly how it has been spent, and hopefully that our disadvantaged communities will have access to sport in the same way that everybody else does.