Covid-19: Restrictions on Gyms and Sport

Chris Green Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Mundell. It is fantastic to follow such a good speech from the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell). She captured so much of what the debate is about and what people around the country are feeling. There is a sense that we appreciate something only when it has been taken away. That certainly applies to gyms.

Rather perversely, my attendance at the gym went up slightly with the lockdown, because I had to make an appointment to go and then felt that I had to keep that appointment. It helped to a small degree, but I would hardly recommend having this lockdown approach just for that reason.

A great many of my constituents have been in touch on this matter, which shows how much it affects their lives. It is not just about the obvious effects on physical health, but the effects on mental health. When so much else in society has been taken away, this is one of the areas that could and should have been left open, especially because of the very limited evidence that there is transmission within the pub—[Interruption.] Well, in the pub as well, but there is very limited evidence of transmission in the gym environment. We need evidence-based policy, because that is how we give confidence to people to follow the rules and instructions.

We also need to recognise just how much time and effort gym owners and their staff have put into making these environments covid-secure. It is phenomenal. The people working in gyms and the people attending them are so conscientious in what they are doing. The equipment is spaced out and people clean it afterwards. There are certain things that we would like people to carry on doing after this covid phase has washed through entirely.

There is another indicator of the importance of gyms and why they should be left open no matter what future national lockdowns we have. Other people in the Chamber can speak far more clearly and articulately than I about the experience of the Liverpool city region, but the outcry in Liverpool when the decision was taken to close gyms, in contrast with what happened in Greater Manchester and Lancashire, really showed the importance of keeping gyms open. I am glad that gyms reopened in Liverpool.

From the evidence across the board, it is so clear now that gyms and other exercise venues are incredibly important. This is not just about gyms, but other forms of sport, such as team sports. Golf was already highlighted. I will not use the same analogy as the hon. Lady’s constituent, but people could go for a walk and visit every tee on that 18-hole golf course, which is legal, but they cannot knock a ball, no matter how long it takes, from the tee to the green. That is not realistic. It is not seen as a serious consideration when dealing with covid-19. These flaws ought to be resolved. We can understand why the decisions were made in the short term, but they need to be corrected.

With team sports, those who have been doing the sport for a while share that experience with the next generation coming through. If we put a brake on that sharing of experience, it will be difficult to get those teams back up and running, especially if this draws on and on. There is so much more to say, but I am conscious of time. I am not overly keen on the phrase “building back better”, but we all ought to focus on building back fitter.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Nigel Huddleston)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) for leading this important debate, to the hundreds of thousands of people—nearly 1 million—who have signed the petitions, and to the hon. Members who have spoken so eloquently today, and with whom I have had many conversations over the past few weeks and months.

It is worth noting that since the debate was scheduled, we have entered a four-week period of national measures, which means that almost all businesses, including gyms and leisure centres, have had to close their doors to the public. As all hon. Members present are aware, the national lockdown, with its vital purpose of protecting our NHS and saving lives, will last until 2 December.

As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced in the main Chamber earlier—in fact, I think he is still on his feet—organised grassroots sport will be allowed to resume from 2 December. There will be some restrictions on higher-risk activities in very high alert level areas, and on indoor adult sports, but this is a good day for sports. Gyms and leisure centres will be allowed to reopen in all tiers. As ever, we expect social distancing and the requirements for heightened hygiene to remain in place. More detail will be available on the announcement in the coming days.

The importance of sport and physical activity for the nation’s physical and mental health has never been more apparent, as many hon. Members have mentioned. Sport can be one of the most powerful defences against the covid-19 pandemic, and we will need raised levels of fitness among the population as we prepare to return to our normal lives, now that an effective vaccination programme looks imminent.

As we have said before, nobody, including me as Sports Minister, wanted to introduce further national restrictions, or restrictions on sport. However, as the Prime Minister said when introducing the second lockdown, with the virus spreading faster than expected, we could not allow our health system to be overwhelmed. We introduced very serious lockdown measures; there was no question of making exceptions. We needed to go into lockdown and allow people out for only a very strict and limited number of reasons, including going out to exercise, albeit not necessarily the exercise that everybody would personally desire.

The national restrictions are designed to get the R rate under control through limiting social contact and reducing transmission. For the measures to have the greatest impact, we all need to sacrifice, for a short period, doing some of the things that we would like to do. As the Prime Minister announced today, it will be for a short period; after 2 December, we can go back to some of those activities.

Unlike in the previous lockdown, sport is still taking place behind closed doors. At schools, which are still open—I have spoken, and speak regularly, to the Schools Minister—PE lessons are able to take place. Exercise can be done with one other person; that recognises that we are in winter, and many people, for safety and other reasons, wish to exercise with another person outside their household.

Sport has been and will continue to be a priority. Even during peak lockdown in March, in this country, unlike in many others, exercise was still an absolute priority and could be taken by everybody. That was not the case everywhere around the world, and it shows how important sport and physical activity are to the UK.

There have been many calls, from many sports representatives and the public, for exemptions to the current restrictions, some of them giving highly plausible reasons why their sport should be exempt. I heard many of those arguments again today, and of course the petitions are good examples. I have heard the arguments for gyms, golf, tennis, swimming, basketball, children’s football, parkrun, cricket, rowing and many other sports. That exemplifies why we have had the problem and the issues that we are facing. As I am sure hon. Members will understand, the difficulty is that when we unpick one thing, the effectiveness of the whole package of restrictions is compromised. When we keep taking individual bricks out, the whole wall falls down. Instead of there being one exemption for one person to conduct their preferred activity, all of sudden there are tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and millions of potential additional interactions—the very thing that we wanted to avoid.

The focus had to be on minimising the number of potentially risky interactions. That is not to say that any individual sport is high risk—quite the contrary. If we thought that, we would never have allowed them to take place. The point, as many have mentioned, is that there is a very small risk of the infection spreading in each of those interactions. We therefore had to take action, and the Prime Minister was very clear that there should be no exemptions, for clarity, and to ensure that everybody understood that this is a deadly serious lockdown.

Unfortunately, that meant that everybody had to make compromises. I know that closing these facilities was incredibly inconvenient, compromised people’s health and was very upsetting and disturbing, but there is no doubt that the restrictions that we have all had to live under for the past few weeks, and for the next week or so, will have saved lives, so that inconvenience, I think, was worth it.

[Chris Green]

rose—

[David Mundell (in the Chair)]

Order. Members need to come to the horseshoe in order to speak.

[Chris Green]

A number of colleagues have raised concerns about evidence and data. The Minister talks about the risks that interaction poses. There must now be data and evidence, accumulated over the last nine months. A report could be published and shared on the evidence of the impact that opening clubs and gyms would have on covid transmission.