School Sport

Debate between Gerry Sutcliffe and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Gerry Sutcliffe (Bradford South) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Amess. I am delighted to have the opportunity to discuss an important issue that I feel passionately about.

It has been more than a year since the Government first announced their intention to dismantle the sports infrastructure put in place by the previous Labour Government to deliver our commitment to increase participation in sport and physical activity. It had a clear structure—the Youth Sport Trust was set up to deal with school and youth sport; Sport England was set up to deal with community sport through national governing bodies; and UK Sport was set up to deal with the elite level—and it was renowned around the world. It has also been more than a year since the Government announced that they were ending funding for school sports partnerships and scrapping ring-fenced funding for specialist sports colleges. Next Tuesday will be the first anniversary of the partial U-turn on school sport, when the Government were forced to introduce a hastily cobbled together package of funding.

Why did I call this debate? Twelve months on, the threat to the future of school sport has not dissipated. In fact, the cuts announced last year will devastate the national sport structure that was the envy of the world, and new threats have emerged within the past 12 months that have the potential to create a perfect storm for school sports.

The army of volunteers within our schools and sports clubs are getting on with making the best of a bad deal. We take that army for granted, but on their shoulders rests much of our country’s sporting life. Those volunteers might not be the type to march on Whitehall, but they are still angry, confused and frustrated by the Government’s seeming indifference to their work. Their voice deserves to be heard.

If we do not hold the Government to account at every step, we risk losing the massive strides forward that we have made over the past decade. There has been a fog of misleading statistics, reviews and cross-departmental hand-wringing. If we do not question and challenge the Government every step of the way, we will wake up one day to find that we have abandoned a generation of young people to substandard sport and physical education.

Why does it matter if our kids do not play sport or do PE at school? Children who play sports do not only benefit physically, because research shows that involvement in sport helps general educational attainment. Sport helps young people to develop self-discipline and to learn how to get along with others. Involvement in sport can help tackle antisocial behaviour and youth crime and overcome psychological problems and loneliness. It can also help to tackle problems of bullying in school and help youngsters with disabilities enjoy sport with other children. Furthermore, children get those benefits whether or not they excel at sport. They do not need to be part of the sporting elite, because merely participating makes children healthier, happier and better pupils. The present Government’s policies threaten young people’s chances to take advantage in school of the enormous benefits offered by participation in sport and PE.

We cannot have a debate about any aspect of sport, particularly sport and young people, without mentioning the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics. In Singapore six years ago, when London was awarded the games, we made a solemn commitment to the international community and to the people of this country that we would use the games to inspire a generation of young people through sport. It was a crucial element of London’s bid and set us apart from our main rivals, Paris and Madrid. How can we be serious about that commitment if we dismantle the structures that will help us deliver it and send a message to our young people and our army of sporting volunteers that we do not value sport and are downgrading our commitment to sport in schools?

London 2012 has given us an once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to leave a lasting sporting legacy, not of stadiums and facilities, important though they are, but of a new generation of young people for whom sport and physical activity are an integral part of their lives. The Government should not have decided to drop the commitment to involving 2 million more people in sport and physical activity. However, it is not too late. The situation is not irretrievable, but the threats to school sport are so great and serious that Ministers must ask themselves how they intend to meet the commitments to ensure an Olympic legacy if they maintain their current course.

I was proud to serve as Sports Minister from 2007 to 2010. It was one of those jobs in government to covet. I was proud of what we achieved in those three years, but I was even prouder that we made sport a cross-departmental policy priority during our 13 years in government, and made massive progress in putting sport at the heart of Government thinking, especially through our investment in school sport and PE.

Let me remind Members of what we inherited when we were first elected in 1997. It is no exaggeration to say that school sport was in a dire situation. PE and competitive sport were often seen as optional extras, and many schools had substandard sports facilities, if any. What sport took place in schools relied almost exclusively on the good will of dedicated teachers, parents and volunteers. Only one in four schoolchildren took part in two hours of quality PE per week. Playing fields were too often seen by local authorities as development opportunities. An astonishing statistic and a damning indictment of the previous Tory Government’s policy on education and sport is that between 1979 and 1997, 10,000 playing fields were sold for development. That is more than 10 every week for 18 years, which is shocking.

The new Labour Government acted quickly to rectify the situation. The School Standards and Framework Act 1998 introduced the toughest ever protection for school playing fields. Further legislation in 2004 made the sale of playing fields an option of last resort, and local authorities were compelled to use the receipts from any sales to improve existing sports facilities. In contrast to the 10,000 playing fields lost between 1979 and 1997, just 192 were lost between 1997 and 2008, and in the majority of those cases, although the playing field was sold, the site benefited from increased sports provision.

Our physical education and sports strategy, which was supported by £1.5 billion in funding between 2003 and 2008 and by a further £755 million from 2008, enabled us to put in place a network of 450 school sport partnerships. Partnerships were centred on specialist sports colleges, which were linked to local secondary and primary schools and sports clubs. By 2010, thanks to the work of the SSPs, 90% of pupils in partnership schools were receiving two or more hours of high quality school sport.

We hear much from coalition Ministers about competitive sport and how Labour supposedly did not prioritise it. I am sure that we will hear the Minister repeat misleading statistics on competitive sport and participation—I hope we do not, but I think that we might. The lead academic evaluator on SSPs criticised the Prime Minister for a

“selective use of statistics that ignore the tremendous improvement over the past decade”.

Competitive sport was increasing under Labour. The number of children taking part in competitive sport, not just between schools but in schools, increased from 58% in 2006-07 to 78% in 2009-10.

Labour did not emphasise sports participation and physical activity because we were a Government of sports fanatics, although there are a few of us about. Sport was a cornerstone in tackling numerous key policy issues, such as obesity and related health issues, antisocial behaviour, educational attainment and citizenship. It was a genuinely cross-departmental priority. Interestingly, there was general cross-party consensus that Labour got it broadly right on school sport, and certainly cross-party support for school sport partnerships. There was no indication that Opposition parties had an alternative agenda.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and for focusing on a very important issue for local schools. Although sport and education are a devolved matter in Northern Ireland, the same principles apply. Does he feel that school sports should be twinned with the issue of diet control, obesity and eating habits? Does he feel that the issue is not just about getting fit, but about weight control, too?

[Mr Sutcliffe]

Very much so. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. He will know about the statistics on obesity in young people and about the health risks. He is right that sport is an integral part of life skills. Not everybody can be a champion, and not everybody can be elite, but we can be the best that we can be. I do not look like a healthy specimen, but my own involvement in sport through the parliamentary football team, school sport, the friends that we make through sport and the life skills that it gives us, all show that sport is an integral part of what we should be trying to achieve.