Sport and Youth Crime

Charlotte Leslie Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2011 Westminster Hall

[Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dobbin. I congratulate and thank my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) for securing the debate, which could not be more timely or more important. I thank him and other hon. Members for illustrating so effectively the statistical basis we have to demonstrate why sport is so important in tackling youth crime.

There is also the value-for-money aspect. My hon. Friend talked in a learned manner about boxing and the Tottenham boxing academy. What is so fascinating is that, as an alternative pupil referral unit, it actually costs a lot less than a regular PRU and is significantly more successful. In difficult economic times, youth sport is not only a good mechanism to tackle one of the big issues of our time, which erupted in August, but an extremely valuable mechanism to deal with social problems that arise when we do not have much money to do so.

In my short time this morning, I do not want to concentrate on anecdotes, because there are many, or the statistics and value-for-money figures, because they have been given out very effectively. I want to outline briefly why sport is important. If we understand what sport is and why it is important, it becomes a no-brainer that it will perform the functions that we need to demonstrate statistically—because we are accountable politicians—before we spend money on it. It is very important to understand what sport is.

I am president of my local boxing club, The National Smelting Co Amateur Boxing club, and chair of the all-party group on boxing. As with many sports, boxing is so important for many young people who have fallen out of all the normal authority measures. They have fallen out of school because they do not see that it offers anything for them. They have fallen out of the council’s best attempts to engage them in its systems of social work because they feel that they are dislocated from authority. For many young people, the boxing club is the only rival identity to other less savoury identities that are offered to them. One young boxer said to me:

“My life was a cul-de-sac of going into a gang. If I wanted an identity, security, protection, feeling I am something, there was only one option for me and that was to join a gang. My local boxing club provided an avenue off that cul-de-sac where I could find a family and identity.”

Family and identity, particularly identity for young people, are massively important. We all remember our school playground days and how important it was to be a member of a group of friends for our own identity. Crucially, for many young people, sport is the first opportunity they have to have a traction on achievement. In the riots, we saw a whole generation of young people who felt that they had nothing to lose, so why not go off and do stupid things? They felt they had no traction on achievement in their lives. They did not actually know how to achieve. The word “aspiration” is bandied around a lot, and the concept, included in the document, “Five days in August”, of hope and dreams is also bandied about a lot. There is a big, big difference between having hopes and dreams, and having goals. A hope and a dream is something one might vaguely hope to get to. Lots of young people have hopes and dreams of being David Beckham, or a WAG. They do not have any idea of how to achieve those hopes and dreams.

Sport begins to give young people a ladder to climb, from where they are now to where they think they want to be. Not everyone can be David Beckham. He is a very talented footballer. The narrative that society gives to young people is that David Beckham became David Beckham by just appearing on TV one day in a football kit, but David Beckham became David Beckham by putting in hours and hours and hours of training and hard work. The immense value of sports clubs—particularly boxing clubs for kids who will not engage with other forms of society, because they feel they are too much part of authority—is that they provide the first opportunity to learn the very important lesson that my old swimming coach, Eric Henderson, taught me—no pain, no gain. To achieve something, one has to put in effort now, be it doing maths homework because one wants to be rich, have a fast car and a very attractive wife, or be it putting in a bit of effort going for a run and a sports training session that one does not really want to do—because it is early in the morning, it is raining and one feels tired—but one does because one wants to achieve something in sporting life later on. That, of course, applies to school, sport and life. It applies to getting a job. It applies to so many things. In fact, it is the citizenship lesson about work and achievement—about teamwork, learning how to win and learning how to lose—that is so often delivered in schools in a two-dimensional form on a piece of paper, but which we need to deliver to young people in a real form on our sports fields and in our sports clubs.

We have the most extraordinary opportunity on our horizon next year. It is a once in a generation event: the Olympic games. We have just come through a summer that has rocked our nation. There is a problem with youth disengagement that we all knew existed. My goodness me, communities up and down the country knew it existed, because it was on their doorsteps daily. It erupted with massive force in London in August. The whole country looked at our young people and asked, “How have we let this happen?”

Next year, we have the most iconic solution to that problem—we have the Olympic games. I beg Government—I will do everything I can to work with them—not to let the opportunity of an Olympic legacy go to waste. On the ground, people know that sport works. If we understand the basic psychology of kids and all human beings, it is very apparent why sport works. We urgently need statistics, and the statistics base around it, to justify expenditure we need to make. We need to put that at the heart of tackling the massive social problem that erupted this year. What better opportunity is there to do that than when our British Olympic champions stand up on those podiums with those medals that I have no doubt they will win, saying, “Not only is this a gold medal because I was fastest or jumped highest on the day, not only is this a gold medal to say I was the best, but this gold medal also means a lot to me because of all the work I put in to get there”? Not everyone can be an Olympic champion, but everyone has their own personal best that they can achieve. It would be a great message to have every British Olympian standing and inspiring our young people to achieve. We can only do that if they have the rungs on the bottom of the ladder in our communities at grass-roots sports level in our schools and in our amateur sports clubs.

Once again, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe for securing this debate, which could not be more timely. We do not have much time to act and I urge the Government to address this issue with all seriousness.

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

It is an absolute pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dobbin. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) on securing this important debate.

I am passionate about the positive role that sport can play in our local communities. I support that positive role through encouraging a healthy and active lifestyle that improves behaviour, teamwork and enjoyment. Sport can channel young people’s energy and boost self-esteem. Sport can be a forum for enjoyment, friendship and personal fulfilment. Sport can reach and change young people by improving their life chances, increasing educational attainment and building life skills. Sport can achieve some of the social outcomes that will help transform our society, and sport can be used a tool to benefit disadvantaged young children.

The reason why I am so passionate about sport relates partly to my own background and partly to the fact that I was the lead member for leisure on Swindon borough council before I became a Member of Parliament. I went to a school that was bottom of the league table in Worcestershire. We had many of the challenges that are often raised in debates connected to this subject. Two of my best friends when I was growing up ended up spending time at Her Majesty’s pleasure. Some would say that, now that I am in Parliament, perhaps I did not do better than those other two people, but among our group of friends, the main reason why the majority of us did not follow my two friends who did go to prison was, frankly, that we were too tired at the end of the day because of sport. We were influenced by role models on television. We predominantly played football, but, if it was Wimbledon fortnight, out came the tennis racquets. If the Tour de France was on, out came the bikes from the shed. If it was the Ashes cricket, out came the cricket bats. This is a serious point: we were genuinely too tired to cause too much trouble. By the time the sun went down, we were more than ready to go home and be watered and fed.

I want to focus my comments on the opportunities that I benefited from and that we as a society can provide for young children. When I was first elected, probably one of my more controversial moves was to support the move to defend the school sports partnership programme. I was a big champion of that scheme, because its whole principle was to provide sporting opportunities for those who are not particularly naturally competitive. If someone is gifted at sport, invariably that is because their parents have encouraged them from a young age, and they will therefore have been provided with plenty of opportunities. The vast majority of children, however, need a bit more encouragement. The one thing that the school sports partnership programme does very well is offer a wide programme of opportunities. There is a sport for everyone. When I refer to sport, it is not always necessarily the obvious sports that we might see in the Olympics or on the television, but such sports as street dance—basically, anything that can make young people active and constructive.

We also need to encourage more coaches—a number of hon. Members have already touched on that—but also day-to-day volunteers. When I talk to sports clubs, their biggest challenge is to find someone to be the club secretary or treasurer, and someone to fill in all the complicated forms and to organise the fixtures. There is a real deficit of people to fill those roles. In a society, people who are not particularly sports-minded can still play a constructive role. I welcome the work of the Football Foundation with its funding; rather than only the traditional provision of a brand-new, shiny set of football kits for a variety of sports clubs, it is looking at the legacy and encouraging more coaches and volunteers, so that more people get an opportunity to benefit.

[Charlotte Leslie]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, if we are going to talk about the big society, for example, there are few areas where it is more prevalent than in sport?

[Justin Tomlinson]

I am passionate about the merits of the big society, and sport can be absolutely at the heart of it. We can all play a role, even if it is not the traditional one of leading on the front line in the sporting team.

During the 10 years that I was a councillor, four of which were spent as the lead member for leisure, the one thing that I was most proud of was setting up the Sports Forum, which brought together about 60 different sporting organisations from throughout Swindon. They would meet once a quarter to share best practice, to identify additional funding, to help increase their presence in the local media and to share facilities. It was a huge success.

In a brief deviation, we had the extremely sad news that Roger Byrne, who was the lead officer for leisure, passed away last week. He was one of the main driving forces behind the Sports Forum, and during my 10 years on the council, he was easily the most respected officer that I and many others ever worked with.

From the Swindon Sports Forum, an example of how different organisations coming together can make a huge difference is Esprit Gymnastics, an excellent not-for-profit organisation promoting gymnastics. It used a facility that was full to capacity, with about 400 children a week benefiting, but it was so popular that the neighbouring units on the industrial park where it was based complained, saying that there was nowhere to park after school times, because all the parents were descending, and that either it should move away or they would move away.

Suddenly, a successful gymnastics organisation was faced with being homeless. Through the Sports Forum and Swindon borough council, an alternative facility was found—at the old Headlands school, which was being bulldozed to create a new academy, although a £4 million sports hall had only been built a couple of years earlier. We faced the embarrassing situation of bulldozing a relatively new £4 million sports hall, and to cut a long story short, a deal was done and Esprit Gymnastics moved into the sports hall site, while the school was bulldozed around it. Esprit paid a level of rent to the council and managed the facility.

I went to visit last Monday and not only does the site now have a much bigger gymnastics facility, but the Kirsty Farrow dance academy and the Leadership Martial Arts organisation are in place as well. From 450 children a week benefiting from a facility, we now have 2,000 children a week. This is all washing its face, and it is a fantastic facility. I met with parents who were dropping off one child for dance, one for gymnastics and another for martial arts. Some do different activities on different nights, and we even have a shop in the facility that provides all the specialist clothing. It is a really good example of organisations coming together, led by volunteers, to transform a number of young children’s opportunities.

Other opportunities go back to when I was younger and playing lots of sport: the absolute, desperate need for accessible, usable open spaces, which I talked about in my maiden speech. The turf on the football pitches does not have to be premier league quality. I played on an almost vertical hill that worked very well; because two of my friends, the twins Matthew and Paul Gilbert, were so much better than we were, they had the privilege of kicking uphill all day long, while the rest of us got to kick downhill—we still lost.

The other frustration that I saw when I was a borough councillor was to do with private finance initiatives and access. Schools in my old ward of the borough were PFI and, once the clocks hit 4, it cost an absolute fortune to get access to those facilities. I represented a high-density housing estate with limited open spaces, but with wonderful expanses of open space behind high fences priced out of the community’s reach. As a society, we need to look at that.

I welcome some recent Government measures—in particular, the introduction of a “troops to teachers” programme. When I visit schools, particularly primary schools, the heads are saying that their big challenge in providing sporting opportunities is not necessarily having a pool of teachers who have the confidence or the skills to deliver a wide variety of sport. If we can get some of those troops who become teachers into primary schools, they would be apt to offer such opportunities.

Insurance continues to be a big burden, particularly for young teachers who are extremely expensive to insure for school minibuses, which limits the opportunities to go and play sport in school competitions or at the regional or district level. I keep calling on the Government to broker a national agreement, with their collective power of hundreds and thousands of schools, to get a better deal for the younger staff.

Let us look at legacy and the schools Olympics. As has been mentioned, the Olympics are a wonderful opportunity to inspire young people who, however, then need the opportunity to play the sports in which we are successful. Whichever sports we are successful in are the ones that the children wish to replicate, so it is really important that the schools Olympics that we are driving forward are taken on board and utilised, so that everyone has regular opportunities, especially once the razzmatazz of the Olympics has passed.

There have been many mentions of mighty premier league football clubs such as Liverpool and Manchester United, so I will throw in Swindon Supermarine of the seventh tier of the Football League, whom I worked with to secure funding for from Capita, to pay for a sports programme for the most challenging schools in both the Swindon constituencies. It was about not only providing an opportunity to play football but helping with nutritional advice—in some cases, the basic necessity of a meal—as well as providing kit. Again, that has been exceptionally popular.

Finally, sport needs to work more with the youth service. In the old days, the traditional youth service and the traditional sports club, which was for the most competitive and technically able children, would never mix. The two should be one and the same. In all local authorities, the head of sports should also be the head of youth. When I was head of leisure, I touched on the youth service briefly, and I visited a lot of those traditional youth centres, which might have only six or eight children on a Friday evening. Yet I would go to the ice-skating disco and 600 teenagers were whizzing around the rink, chasing whoever was their flavour of the month and keeping themselves active and constructive. It always used to frustrate me that sport could have been used to engage with children, whether street dance, ice skating or football. The youth service needs to get out of its fixed facility and park itself outside wherever sport is enticing children.

Recently, I spoke to Stratton parish council, which is considering spending somewhere in the region of £4,000 or £5,000 on graffiti walls, which I am utterly opposed to. I said that it would surely be far better to spend that money on hiring some coaches, whether for boxing or for football, who could come in on a Friday night—the council would not have to charge itself for opening up its own facilities in community centres and school grounds—and those coaches, on £30 or £40 an hour, could provide entertainment and a constructive outlook for young children.

My plea to the Minister is to keep driving home the need to create opportunities. The facilities do not necessarily have to be fantastic, wonderful or driven by the most efficient, sports-minded people, but give young people an opportunity—they are creative enough to take advantage of it. If we can keep them engaged actively, as I was, they will be too shattered to cause any trouble.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stella Creasy]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to talk about priorities, but he is being a little disingenuous about Kickz, because it received public funding from other agencies. This is not just about particular projects; the case that he made powerfully, with which I agree, is that it is about the activities that we ask youth providers to undertake. Indeed, I would be critical of those who simply offer sport without asking what it can do in the long term for young people and those who say that it is enough just to get young people off the streets. That is why I challenge the hon. Member for North Swindon, who suggested that all that mattered was that he was tired at the end of the day. I suspect that participating in sport, working with other young people and organising sport made a difference to his confidence and probably also to his life chances.

We cannot get away from how to fund such activities. My worry today is that cuts mean that organisations and programmes such as Kickz and Leyton Orient’s community sports programme are under pressure as a result of some of the Government’s choices. If we all accept the case that good sports activity can provide that longer-term function in young people’s lives, we should be fighting for resources to go to those organisations and making the case for investment now and in the future, as a way to protect longer-term achievement.

The issue is not just the practical provision of services, but how that can help to reduce crime. The Minister may not be responsible for the allocation of budgets to the Department for Communities and Local Government, but he is responsible for community safety grants. We have seen a massive slashing of those grants and the very money that was helping the police and local authorities to work creatively with local community groups to provide outreach activities. For example, in Lambeth, one of the boroughs that was affected by the riots, the community safety grant has been reduced from £691,000 in 2010-11 to just £276,000 in 2012-13. Hounslow is facing a 32% cut in its youth offending budget next year. That matters because the funding allows people to think creatively about how to engage with young people and to do more than just tackle crime; it can prevent it by funding work with those young people, but that is under threat.

I want to flag up for the Minister the fact that the funding cuts for local government are a real risk to some of their key provision of facilities. The hon. Member for North Swindon spoke effectively about the importance of school buildings. The extended schools programme was doing exactly what he was asking for. It was encouraging schools to consider how to open up their facilities. I represent an area in north-east London, and I am conscious of the lack of space to undertake sporting activities. There is a relationship between playing sport at school and taking part in sporting events organised by voluntary organisations outside the school, but somewhere is needed to do that work. Will he make a case for revising that decision? I am sure that he will ask where the money will come from.

May I encourage the Minister to talk to his colleagues in the Department for Education about the national citizen service? There are questions about the scheme’s value for money, and the Education Committee has highlighted concerns about the costs versus outputs that we will get from the service as it is currently constructed. If the Minister recognises the social return on investment in sport in tackling youth crime and also in delivering achievement, I suggest that he work with his colleagues across the Government to make the case for a better use of the funding that is available for youth provision.

[Charlotte Leslie]

Does the hon. Lady recognise that much of the purpose of the citizen service scheme is to engage young people in the idea of volunteering and getting involved in their communities? On no planet will the Government be able to fund the entirety of amateur youth sport across the country. The national citizen service scheme plays a valuable role in introducing young people into their communities, so that they too can coach young people and play an active part in their community. It cannot be measured in the simplistic terms suggested by the hon. Lady.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Herbert]

One departure from an otherwise consensual debate was the utterly predictable statement made by the hon. Lady when she laid at the door of the Government cuts that, in her assessment, will mean that none of the positive activities under discussion can take place. She described the choices that the Government are making, but we make such decisions because the economy is in difficulty and we inherited debt from the previous Government. Some contrition and responsibility for that on the part of the hon. Lady might make her position more credible. Like any Government, we have to find savings. When it left office, the hon. Lady’s party was committed to £40 billion of unspecified spending reductions and knew that savings had to be made. So far, the reduction in front-line policing numbers has been just 2%; there is no need for the front line to be affected, provided that police forces make savings in the right way. Such partisan points do not assist the debate.

Several hon. Members mentioned the importance of the Olympics in offering something of lasting—rather than just temporary—value to this country and its young people, and we want to harness the power of the games to provide new opportunities for young people to take part in competitive sport. My hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon mentioned the school games, and such activities will be particularly important. Since the issue of funding has been raised, I will point out that over £128 million of lottery and Government funding is being invested to support school games, and that is underpinned by continued investment to increase the numbers of new clubs, coaches and volunteers working in sport with young people.

[Charlotte Leslie]

Will the Minister recognise the work of the Football Foundation? It carries out fantastic work not only by efficiently using funds to renovate community sports facilities but by putting structures in place so that those facilities are more self-sustaining and do not require so much Government funding. That is the kind of long-term legacy that it would be good to see more of throughout the country after the Olympics.

[Nick Herbert]

I am happy to recognise that; there is clearly a role for civil society, sport clubs and organisations, as well as for the Government and bodies that provide public funding. My hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe mentioned Kickz and Hitz as examples of programmes that are driven by national sporting organisations and have a real impact on the ground. StreetChance is an initiative that promotes cricket, and StreetGames works with national governing bodies to support athletics, table tennis, handball, gymnastics, badminton and rowing. Through the initiatives of such national sporting bodies, it is possible to reach out and offer young people the opportunity to engage in a multitude of sports.

In the remaining time available, I wish to pick up on some specific points raised by my hon. Friend. He was clear that he was not calling for a general increase in sporting participation, and that targeted intervention—rather than just dealing with crime—was the objective. I agree with him. He specifically called for robust data on such interventions, and for research to identify whether they provide value for money. That general call is welcomed by the Government. The whole thrust of our criminal justice reform programme is to move to a situation in which we are much clearer about the outcomes that programmes deliver. When resources are tight, it is particularly important to ensure that money is being well spent, and that is why we are increasingly moving towards payment by results in the delivery of criminal justice interventions, so that we can be certain that we are getting the outcomes we need.

In spite of the challenge of public spending, Government- funded programmes are continuing, specifically in relation to youth crime.[Official Report, 20 December 2011, Vol. 537, c. 8MC.] The Positive Futures programme will continue until the end of 2013; thereafter, elected police and crime commissioners will have a budget that they can distribute for similar programmes, should they so choose. The Positive Futures programme delivers sports and arts-based activities that target and support vulnerable 10 to 19-year-olds in some of our most disadvantaged communities.

Although I accept my hon. Friend’s injunction about targeted interventions, it is important to ensure that school children have access to sporting facilities—my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon also raised that point—and that physical education is valued in schools. Physical education will continue to be compulsory for all pupils following the review of the national curriculum, and we are taking action to ensure that young people in local communities are not deprived of access to playing fields and sporting facilities.

As part of Sport England’s £135 million “Places, People, Play” legacy programme, the Minister for Sport and the Olympics, and Sport England, recently launched a protecting playing fields initiative—a £10 million fund to protect and improve sports fields across the country. The programme will fund projects that create, develop and improve playing fields for sporting and community use, and offer long-term protection of those sites for sport. Sport England will run five £2 million funding rounds over the next three years, investing between £20,000 and £50,000 in schemes such as buying new playing field land, improving the condition of pitches through drainage, or bringing disused sports fields back into use. That is important; the issue is not only about role models, access and funding schemes; we must also ensure that facilities are available both inside and outside schools.

Again, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe on securing this debate. The Government accept the value of sport in reducing crime, and that responsibility is shared by them, local authorities, and by members of civil society and sporting organisations. I am sure that all hon. Members will have listened carefully to the contributions made by my hon. Friend and others during the debate today.