Soft Drinks Industry Levy: Funding for Sport in Schools

David Rutley Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[John Mc Nally (Falkirk) (SNP)]

It is Mr John Mc Nally. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David.

I thank the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) for securing this debate and congratulate him on his rebellious nature. We are probably all very grateful for that. He might be welcome in our party in the not-too-distant future.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

He’s from North Swindon, not Scotland.

[John Mc Nally]

Well, you never know. We are growing as we go.

I welcome the introduction of the sugar tax with open arms. I was glad that the Chancellor looked at this issue and introduced this possibility, so that today we can look at how we best use this money. It is one of the biggest changes to benefit our communities in general.

I have to declare an interest. In the first instance, my three great-nieces, Liv, Honor and Celi, were all under the scholarship and tuition of Elaine Wyllie at St Ninians Primary School. I have seen that initiative working at first hand. I have also taken on board what Maggie, MP for Erewash, said about how to put in the proper surfaces—in fact, at that time, I was quite instrumental in helping the person who was laying the surfaces—and how to reduce the number of puddles on the surface so that people can train and walk on it. That initiative has been one of the biggest successes in the whole area, so I am very grateful to Elaine Wyllie.

At the last meeting of the APPG, where I am proud to serve under Maggie Throup, Elaine Wyllie came along to explain how successful the daily mile has been, and not only in Stirling and my own area of Falkirk, where all the schools are participating. I think that Barack Obama became involved in the initiative; it has spread through the whole world. It grips the imagination. We only have to stand and watch the children going to school to see the benefits in how they act. They are eating better and looking better, and their attention to school matters is better. Everything from that initiative is a plus.

We have also had the benefit—again, through Maggie—of the drinks industry coming along to the APPG. It was interesting to hear from a vast company such as Coca-Cola what it was trying to do and the effect that the measure would have in terms of how it reformulates not only its cans of drink, but its whole way of thinking. This is not just a simple step from one thing to another; it is a huge investment that these companies have made, and we must be mindful of that.

There is another thing that Maggie has understated. I know for a fact that she got—

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[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David, and it is an honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), given her experience in these matters. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson). He is not from Scotland, I hasten to add, so I doubt he will be joining the Scottish National party any time soon. He is a champion of many causes, and I know he feels particularly strongly about helping young people in many different ways. I am delighted that he secured this debate, which I welcome.

As co-chairman of the all-party group on mountaineering, I have been doing a lot of work over the past few years to try to encourage outdoor recreation. It is vital to encourage more people to get involved in it, so that we improve participation in sports-related activity and help rural tourism. Most importantly, as I have been working on these issues, it has become clear that outdoor recreation is a vital tool to help tackle obesity and physical inactivity, which we have talked about at length today. That is important for adults and, particularly in relation to this debate, young people. Given the powerful debate we had this morning on young people’s mental health, it is important to add that outdoor recreation and sports more widely can help with young people’s mental wellbeing, which is absolutely key.

Before I go into my suggestions for how the money could be spent, it is worth looking at lessons from other countries. I will focus on Finland for a minute. The Finns feel so strongly about physical activity that it is now deemed, as of 1999, a basic cultural right. I am not sure exactly what that means, but it sounds incredibly important. Their Government have focused on this, as an area for improvement across the board, in a strategy called “On the Move”, which has four guidelines. I will not go through all of them, but the first one is interesting: reducing sitting in daily life, across the course of life. Perhaps we should have more debates standing up. The second one is increasing physical activity across the course of life. They have rolled this down to different age groups. The Finnish National Board of Education has got funding and support available to ensure that many schools have clubs, 85% of which are related to physical activity and sports.

We want to improve participation in sports and physical activity, and the Finns have made huge strides in that arena. As my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes said, the issue is also about active travel and being active in the workplace and the classroom.

I welcome the soft drinks levy; it is an opportunity. Some have said the funds are not significant, but hundreds of millions is significant and can make a difference in the lives of young people. Some may dispute how much of the funding will be put in place, but if it is of the order of hundreds of millions, we need to make sure we use it purposefully and invest it wisely on behalf of young people. I am pleased that it will be focused on primary and secondary schools, particularly in areas that are disadvantaged. It will help secondary schools to have more activities and sports available after school.

I am a big supporter of the daily mile, sometimes called the active mile. I have been working with ukactive to promote this further. It has been referred to several times. It is a simple, basic initiative that encourages and inspires children to take 15 minutes out of the day to run, walk or jog. It is as basic as that. It is fun, non-competitive and inclusive. I support competitive sport, but this initiative is something that everybody can engage with, and it helps to encourage more children to get more of their 60 minutes of physical activity a day done in school. Various initiatives are being taken forward by different providers. The daily mile is promoted by the Daily Mile Foundation and the golden mile by Premier Sport. Of course, there is junior parkrun. I was able to do my first park run with my 10-year-old daughter at the end of last year. There is also Marathon Kids, supported by Nike and Kids Run Free.

The daily mile has demonstrated that children who participate are healthier, less overweight and more alert. As the Minister for School Standards will be pleased to hear, they are also more focused on their lessons, so it is a win all round. My daughter is benefiting from her daily mile at Upton Priory School in Macclesfield. I look forward to promoting the initiative much more actively in March when I work with Active Cheshire to encourage more schools in Macclesfield and across east Cheshire to benefit from the initiative.

I would warmly welcome the Minister or one of his colleagues setting up a meeting with ukactive and the providers of the different schemes to work out how we can encourage more schools to get involved and to adopt daily mile or active mile initiatives during 2017. It is a low-cost programme. If we want to leverage the funds that come out of the soft drinks levy efficiently, I cannot think of a better initiative. It would be incredibly easy to leverage and would help hundreds of thousands of children from a wide range of backgrounds. It would be easy to do. My hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup) raised concerns about some schools not having sufficient space, but let us consider the walking bus or other activities that we can do to encourage kids to walk to school; that is easy to do, and I hope that the Minister takes that on board.

I cannot keep away from active outdoor recreation too long, so I will spend a few moments on that. So often when we talk about sport, it is traditional sport: rugby, football, hockey, netball. If we want to appeal to the widest possible group of kids, we must remember that not every child will be interested in those traditional sports. We have to find other ways of engaging those kids in physical activity. I know that the SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan), has strong views on this; I look forward to hearing from her.

The daily mile is one activity, but “Reconomics”, a very important report taken forward by the Sport and Recreation Alliance, highlights that there is plenty more we can do. There is orienteering, Duke of Edinburgh schemes, walking, cycling, which I know is a passion for the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane), and climbing, which is a passion of mine; they all have a lot to offer. If we want to reach—and that is the operative word—the maximum number of kids, we shall have to think more innovatively about how we spend the money. Traditional sports alone will not do that.

I am delighted that the Government have a new sports strategy—perhaps it is not so new; it is a year old. It is a wide strategy that includes a focus on outcomes—physical, health and mental wellbeing outcomes. Its focus is not just on sports; for the first time, at least five of its 20-odd pages focus on outdoor recreation. This is a perfect opportunity for the Department for Education and the Department for Communities and Local Government to work together to ensure that those health and mental wellbeing outcomes are achieved, through funding from the soft drinks levy.

This debate is important and timely. I encourage the Minister to look at those two areas—the daily mile and outdoor recreation—as well as others that have been mentioned, and at linking these things through. It is vital that we work not only with Ministers but with health-related bodies and third-party sector bodies. We want to make sure that there are genuine improvements in the quality of young people’s lives, and this is the opportunity to do it.