Oral Answers to Questions
Hugh Robertson Excerpts(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)
6. What steps she is taking to increase participation in sport in West Lancashire.
The Minister of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Hugh Robertson)
The latest participation figures show that 37% of people in West Lancashire are playing sport once a week, which is above the national average. In addition, Lancashire is hosting both an Ashes test and the rugby league world cup this year, which I am sure will maintain enthusiasm for sport in the county.
Rosie Cooper
Participation rates in the north-west have fallen and Conservative-run West Lancashire borough council has closed Skelmersdale sports centre with no replacement in sight, provided unplayable football pitches due to inadequate drainage, and has made deep cuts in leisure service provision while sitting on tens of millions of pounds in reserves. Does the Minister think that the borough council’s approach is the right one to achieve an increase in participation rates and honour the Olympic legacy?
Hugh Robertson
The hon. Lady needs to be careful with her figures. If she is arguing that the participation rates have fallen, that is only for the winter. I was told that rugby league, which is big in her part of the world, had a week in which 96% of all its fixtures were cancelled. That explains the drop-off in participation. [Interruption.] Well yes; because when there is snow on the ground you can’t play rugby league. I would have thought that as the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) could have probably worked that out. The fact is that participation rates are above the national average in the part of the world the hon. Member for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper) represents. I encourage local authorities to make use of both the Olympic effect and the many sports fixtures coming to her part of the world this year to drive up rates.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
At best, the active people figure for West Lancashire has flatlined, and participation rates in the north-west have gone down. Overall, the country has seen a reduction of 200,000. It is less than a year since the Olympic games and what have we got? Some 68% of school sports organisers tell us that fewer children are doing sport and that they are spending less time doing it. While the rest of us looked forward to an Olympic legacy, the Government were wrecking school sports partnerships. Now they are blaming the weather for adult figures going down. Rather than riding on the back of fluctuations in the climate, will the Minister get to the Dispatch Box and tell us what he is going to do to deliver a sustainable Olympic legacy?
Hugh Robertson
The first thing is that the hon. Gentleman has got his figures wrong. The second is that anybody with an iota of common sense would accept that if there is snow on the ground rugby league cannot be played, and that if there is ice on the road people are unlikely take their bicycles out. In the period since 2005 when we won the bid, up to the moment when, across two Governments, we delivered the games, London was the first host city to deliver a sustained increase—of 1.4 million—in participation. I pay tribute to the policy devised by James Purnell and carried through by the right hon. Members for Leigh (Andy Burnham) and for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) when they were Secretaries of State. We should celebrate the fact that this country has achieved what no other country in the history of the Olympic games has ever achieved. Ranting and carping is pretty stupid.
Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)
7. What assessment she has made of tourism spend in the UK.
The Minister of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Hugh Robertson)
I meet Scottish Ministers regularly to discuss a range of sports policy issues. Chief among those are the Glasgow Commonwealth games in 2014 and the Youth Olympic games bid for 2018, both of which include swimming competitions.
Michael Connarty
I commend the Government in England for making it compulsory at key stages 1 and 2 to teach children to swim. However, that entitlement does not exist in Scotland. There has been a call from the Amateur Swimming Association not only to train swimmers for the Commonwealth and Olympic games but for better swimming safety. It wants a national entitlement to swimming teaching. In 2011, six children died by accidental drowning in Scotland and 47 in the UK; the figure for adults in the UK in that year was 407. Surely it is a human right for people to learn to swim so that they do not drown if they fall into the water.
Hugh Robertson
I do not know about a basic human right; it is a matter of common sense and safety. There is no doubt that there is a straightforward correlation between young people learning to swim and curbing deaths by drowning. I would encourage anybody to ensure that every single one of our young children is able to swim.
Jim McGovern (Dundee West) (Lab)
10. What assessment her Department has made of the potential benefits to a city of achieving UK city of culture status.
John Pugh (Southport) (LD)
T3. What assessment have the Government made of the impact of TV advertising on online gambling? What is the cumulative effect on the nation of a surfeit of Ray Winstone?
The Minister of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Hugh Robertson)
I am not sure we directly know the answer to that, but I will find out and write to my hon. Friend.
Mrs Linda Riordan (Halifax) (Lab/Co-op)
T2. Will the Minister inform the House on when a decision will be made on the future location of the Arts Council collection, and if northern towns like Halifax will be considered as a home for the collection?
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
T6. The England football team is a valuable national asset, yet of the millions of pounds raised, over 50% goes to the professional game, not the impoverished grass roots; I speak as a director of Warrington Town football club, an example of the impoverished grass roots. Does the Minister intend to follow the Select Committee recommendation and make it Government policy to make a switch in regard to that funding?
Hugh Robertson
The Government can clearly direct funding only when they provide that funding, which they do through the whole sport plans and the football foundations. However, the Football Association is a signatory to the new code we set up in 2010 at the last review of the list, whereby it is pledged to give 30% of its UK broadcast income to grass-roots sport.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
I am sure the Minister will agree that the advice from Derry/Londonderry to the shortlisted cities for the second UK city of culture would be that inclusion, integrity and imagination are key to any successful bid in a given year. Will he encourage the BBC to be as well engaged with the second city of culture as it has been with the first?
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
What support is the Department giving to the Tour de France next year in the Yorkshire stages and the stage from my Cambridge constituency down to London?
Hugh Robertson
I think, in the nicest possible way, that the hon. Gentleman may wish he had not asked me that question. The Government have provided a considerable amount of underwriting. They have underwritten the whole event and provided the balance to make up a budget of £21 million. Unfortunately, Cambridge has yet to contribute at all, and that is one of the issues we will address in the weeks ahead.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)
Newcastle United football club is also a national asset. Does the Minister share my utter bewilderment and that of tens of thousands of Newcastle United supporters at the arrival of Joe Kinnear on Tyneside?
Hugh Robertson
One of the things for which I am eternally grateful is that my job’s remit does not extend to the appointment of managers or sorting out the weekly round of scraps on a Saturday afternoon. I think I will leave that to the hon. Gentleman, if that is all right.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
May I congratulate the Secretary of State on at long last ensuring that all 21 flags of the British overseas territories and Crown dependencies were flown from Parliament square last week for the Trooping of the Colour? However, will she explain to the House why, for the state opening of Parliament, there were 21 empty flagpoles with no Union flags flying for the arrival of Her Majesty the Queen?
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
1. What steps she is taking to maintain existing levels of girls’ participation in sport.
The Minister of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Hugh Robertson)
In a guest appearance—figures released last week show that 6.785 million women played sport once a week, an increase of more than half a million since we won the bid in 2005. Through Sport England, the Government have awarded £1.7 million to the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation to help sports understand which groups of women are most likely to take up sport, and where sport should focus effort to best advantage. Women’s participation in sport is one of the key priorities of my right hon. Friend the Minister for Women and Equalities.
Simon Hughes
Having visited the very good girls’ secondary schools and mixed secondary schools in my constituency, it seems that the crucial time to encourage young women to continue with sport and physical activity is the year leading up to 16, when they might leave school or think of other things. What are the Government doing to make sure that at that stage, they are sold the benefits of staying fit?
Hugh Robertson
My right hon. Friend is absolutely correct: the single biggest issue affecting gender-based participation in British sport in the last 20 years has been the post-school drop-out, which is most severe among teenage girls. The Government have sought to address that in the recent round of whole sport plans by concentrating on those in the 14-to-25 age group; by setting up 500 new satellite clubs, which will help to transition girls out of school and into sports clubs; and through the Sport England College Sport Makers, specialists in further education colleges who will help specifically with that drop-off.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
A total of 36% of the medals won by Team GB were won by women, but women’s sport gets just 0.5% of sports sponsorship. What action is the Minister taking to ensure that this unacceptable situation is adequately tackled?
Hugh Robertson
The hon. Lady is absolutely right to draw attention to the success of the many women who competed for Team GB last year. We tried to put in place a new sports marketing bureau, headed by Sir Keith Mills, responsible for drawing up the sponsorship for London 2012, but I am afraid that the sports en masse did not want to sign up to that and wished to continue to negotiate sponsorship agreements on their own. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport hosted the summit, bringing together people from the worlds of broadcasting and sport, and we are doing everything we can to address the crucial issue the hon. Lady raises.
Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)
A total of 81% of women feel that female sportspeople are much better role models than celebrities. What is my right hon. Friend doing to ensure that female sport is broadcast more widely so that those role models can get the exposure they deserve?
Hugh Robertson
Perhaps I should turn up more regularly to this section of questions; I am being asked more questions than I was during the sports section. My hon. Friend is absolutely right and a key part of the Secretary of State’s initiative was high-quality advice from female broadcasters about how better to package female sport to make it more attractive. I am delighted to say that I have noticed since 2012 that there is much more concentration on it. It is a key part of UK Sport’s plans for the Rio Olympic and Paralympic cycle and we will do everything we can to ensure that those fantastic role models are appropriately profiled.
Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)
While the Leveson inquiry was perfectly justified in view of the scandalous behaviour of some of the press, is the Secretary of State aware that there is a good deal of concern not from the usual quarters but from the regional press, who were not involved in the scandals, from the New Statesman—
Oral Answers to Questions
Hugh Robertson Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)
5. What steps she is taking with her ministerial colleagues in other Government Departments to advance the role of sport.
The Minister of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Hugh Robertson)
The Prime Minister has established the Cabinet Committee on Olympic and Paralympic Legacy, through which all Departments are working together to deliver a tangible and lasting legacy from London 2012. Sport is at the heart of that process.
Charlotte Leslie
It is evident that sport has a vital role in improving behaviour in schools and health outcomes, and in preventing youth offenders from reoffending, as I have seen at Ashfield young offenders institution near my constituency. Will the Minister pledge to work with colleagues from across Departments to ensure that such interventions are available to young people so that they can turn their lives around?
Hugh Robertson
Absolutely. That process is already happening, as is evident from the work that the Department of Health does through Change4Life clubs, the work of the National Centre for Sport and Exercise Medicine, and the cross-departmental funding for the school games.
Gregg McClymont (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (Lab)
13. The Minister will be aware that betting on sport has always been central to the business model of betting shops, but a new development is the use of fixed odds betting terminals. Their high stakes and speed of play have led them to be described as the “crack cocaine of gambling”. In my constituency, there are more than 50 such terminals. What does the Minister intend to do about this problem?
Hugh Robertson
I am not entirely sure what that question had to do with advancing the role of sport. The answer on FOBTs, which emerged in the middle of the question, is that they are subject to the triennial review of stakes and prizes, which has just been launched. The Responsible Gambling Trust is just launching the largest ever consultation into the effect of FOBTs. If, as I suspect, it shows that there is a problem that needs to be addressed, it will be addressed.
Mr Speaker
The Minister rightly implies that there was an elastic interpretation of what constitutes sport. We will leave it at that for the time being.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
Today’s report by Ofsted on sport in schools calls on the Government to devise
“a new national strategy for PE and school sport that builds on the successes of school sport partnerships”.
Those partnerships have been totally undermined by this Government. It is unacceptable that six months after the Olympics, we are still waiting for the Government to deliver a coherent sports strategy. If they continue to delay, they will fail the generation that we should be inspiring. How many more damning reports need to be published before the Minister gets it and the Government deliver the sporting legacy that our children deserve?
Hugh Robertson
First, the Opposition spokesman should not conflate sport legacy with a school sport policy. He is well aware that the sport legacy is going extraordinarily well. He tends never to mention that 1.75 million people are now playing sport who were not playing sport at the time of the bid. There is also a range of international events, and around the globe 14 million extra children have been touched by sport.
If the hon. Gentleman is going to criticise sport provision on the back of the Ofsted report, he should wake up to the fact that it covers 2008 to 2012—throughout the period in which the school sport partnerships were operating. If he wishes to see them reintroduced, he has to explain to the House and others how they would be funded, about which we have heard not a jot from the Opposition since the election.
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
7. What steps her Department is taking to encourage the development of non-league football clubs.
The Minister of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Hugh Robertson)
We have been clear, along with the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, that we expect the Football Association to reform the governance of the game as a top priority. As part of that, we expect the FA to show representative, accountable and strategic leadership and help develop football across all levels including the grass-roots, non-league and professional parts of the game.
David Mowat
I declare an interest as a director of Warrington Town football club, which would not exist were it not for dozens of donors and unpaid volunteers. Other non-league clubs are going bust, yet 50% of the money from our national team continues to be diverted to the professional game, which is really very wealthy. The Select Committee has mentioned that problem. Will the Minister update us on the progress towards fixing that allocation?
Hugh Robertson
There is a fine dividing line here, because it is not for the Government to tell the sport how to allocate money that it raises itself any more than it would be for us to allocate the England and Wales Cricket Board’s broadcast income or the Rugby Football Union’s income from Twickenham. However, my hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the issue. If we can get the reforms at the FA that we and the Select Committee are pushing for, they will empower the board to take precisely the decisions that he advocates instead of relying on an arbitrary 50% split.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)
Non-league football is the bedrock of our beautiful game, and as the hon. Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) said, many community clubs face extinction. Bedlington Terriers, a community club in my area, faces a very uncertain future. How will the Government engage with the Premier League to ensure that the vast riches trickle down to assist the survival of non-league community clubs?
Hugh Robertson
The Government are doing a number of things, and I entirely take the hon. Gentleman’s point. This is one of the key things that we discuss regularly with the Premier League, the Football League and the FA. The FA, of course, receives one of the largest whole sport plan funding awards of more than £30 million, which is there precisely for the development of the game and to encourage more people to play football. He makes a good point, and we will address it in the reform process.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
8. What her Department’s administrative expenditure was in 2010; and how much that expenditure will be in 2015.
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
17. What recent assessment she has made of the process by which public appointments to her Department’s arm’s length bodies are made.
The Minister of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Hugh Robertson)
Ministerial public appointments to my Department’s arm’s length bodies are made on merit, under fair, open and transparent processes, regulated by the Commissioner for Public Appointments under the commissioner’s code of practice.
Tristram Hunt
I thank the Minister for his answer, but there is a crisis in the museum and arts sector as a result of political interference and incompetence in Downing street—a number of heritage bodies and museums have waited months for decisions on trustee appointments only to have them vetoed by a busy-body Prime Minister on political grounds. Will he tell the Prime Minister to butt out of matters of which he has no knowledge and stop gerrymandering our cultural institutions?
Hugh Robertson
As the hon. Gentleman well knows, all such appointments are made under very strict Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments guidelines and can be challenged. In the appointments for which I have been responsible, we have worked extensively across boundaries. We appointed the former Minister with responsibility for the Olympics to the Olympics board and I kept the former Minister with responsibility for sports as a trustee of the football foundation. That arrangement was not extended to the Conservative party when it was in opposition.
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)
T1. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.
Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)
T3. News in January that Seedhill athletics track and fitness centre in Nelson has been awarded a £50,000 grant by Sport England to resurface the running track followed similarly great news for Colne and Nelson rugby club, Belvedere and Calder Vale sports club, and Pendle Forest sports club. Will my right hon. Friend join me in congratulating all the volunteers involved in those excellent Pendle sports clubs on securing their part of the Olympic legacy?
The Minister of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Hugh Robertson)
I join my hon. Friend with pleasure in congratulating those volunteers. I should add to his excellent question by saying that more than 1,000 local community sports clubs have benefited from funding under Places People Play. The funding was made available by the reforms to the lottery introduced by this Government and opposed by the Labour party.
Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)
With the Arts Council cut by 30%; with regional development agencies, which did so much to support the arts in the regions, abolished; with arts donors smeared as tax dodgers; with the Education Secretary trying to squeeze arts out of the curriculum; and with local government, especially in hard-pressed areas, which does so much to support arts in local communities, facing the biggest cuts in a generation, does the Secretary of State not realise that it is her job to fight for the arts for everyone? Will she therefore withdraw her shameful assertion that the arts community is disingenuous and that its fears are pure fiction?
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
T2. A middle-aged constituent of mine, with no previous history of gambling, lost her family’s life savings after being seduced by clever marketing by a television gambling programme. There is a new pestilence of high-speed, high-stakes gambling that has cost my constituents in Newport West at least £2 million. What are the Government doing to stop it?
Hugh Robertson
The hon. Gentleman raises concerns that are felt by a number of hon. Members across the House. The Responsible Gambling Trust has primacy in this area and is in the process of conducting the largest piece of academic research ever undertaken. If further action needs to be taken as a consequence—he and many other hon. Members have made this point powerfully—then the Government will take that action.
Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)
T5. I hear from many constituents who are subjected to a barrage of unsolicited telephone calls on a daily basis, despite the fact that they are registered with the telephone preference service. Will my hon. Friend undertake to look carefully into this situation, because it is causing a great deal of stress and anxiety, particularly to my elderly constituents?
Mr Adrian Sanders (Torbay) (LD)
T8. What discussions has the Minister’s Department had with the Department for Transport about rail links to seaside resorts in order to fulfil the coalition’s pledge in its tourism strategy?
Hugh Robertson
Access to resorts, particularly seaside resorts, is one of the key issues that will drive domestic tourism. The numbers are increasing considerably, but one of the great challenges facing domestic tourism is getting more tourists out of London and into coastal resorts. That is one of the issues we are seeking to address.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
I am sure the Minister will share my disappointment that libraries have become a political football between national and local government. Does he agree that perhaps the best way of safeguarding our libraries is to define more clearly what constitutes a statutory comprehensive library service?
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
Does the tourism Minister have a view on recent proposals by the BAA to raise the per-passenger charges at Heathrow and does he have plans to make representations to other Whitehall Departments to address the potential effect on the tourism industry?
Hugh Robertson
Yes; as my hon. Friend is well aware, if money is raised in one area and there is a cut, it generally has to be found from somewhere else, and of course raising these duties has the perverse effect of encouraging people to take their holidays in this country. There is a balance to be struck, however, and that is what we are trying to do.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Next week, it is the Brit awards, when we will once again celebrate the massive success of our music industry. I am sure the Minister will be in his usual place. He will know of the usual challenges facing the music industry, particularly from illegal downloading and piracy. When can we expect to see the provisions agreed in the Digital Economy Act 2010?
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
I do not believe I have an interest to declare, but if anybody wishes to crawl over my register of interests and come to a different conclusion, I am happy for them to do so.
Is it the Government’s plan to regulate and tax the gambling industry on a point-of-consumption basis? If so, what steps will the Minister take to ensure that the Gambling Commission is prevented from empire building and using that as an excuse to hike up its fees?
Hugh Robertson
As my hon. Friend will be well aware, the point of the proposed legislation is consumer protection and there are no plans at the moment for the Gambling Commission to increase its fees.