Sport in the UK

Ian C. Lucas Excerpts

Monday 4th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[John Grogan (Keighley) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas). I look forward to going to see Yorkshire play Cornwall, one day in the future, at that new stadium in Cornwall. I intend to take as my mantra for my few remarks tonight the words of the hon. Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths), who is no longer in his place. He charged us all to be cheerful and look on the bright side tonight, so that is what I want to do.

As you may remember, Madam Deputy Speaker, I warned the House during the Christmas Adjournment debate that the future of Keighley Cougars rugby league team was at stake. The team that first brought razzmatazz to rugby league was in danger of going under. However, the first good news that I can bring to the House is that Keighley Cougars are now back in safe hands, having been sold to Mick O’Neill and the consortium that first brought that razzmatazz with it 20 years ago. Keighley are an example of a community club that really helps to define a town. I hope that the years to come are good ones and that we can redevelop the site as a whole sporting site, with the Cougars next to Keighley cricket club.

Various speakers have mentioned the soft power of sport. We have heard about the soft power of the premier league. I speak as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Mongolia, as you well know, Madam Deputy Speaker—you have entertained Mongolian visitors on my behalf. There are 1,000 members of the Liverpool supporters club in Mongolia who will be gripped tonight watching West Ham and Liverpool—[Interruption.] I have not yet heard the score, although someone mentioned that it was 1-1 slightly earlier on.

Parkrun has also been mentioned, and that is soft power as well. It started in the United Kingdom, and it has now spread to 20 countries. It reached Keighley last year. The average time for the average parkrun has gone up to 29 minutes and 30 seconds, as more people, and different members of the community, have embraced the parkrun. My average time is slightly faster than that, even though we have three hills to climb on our parkrun in Keighley. So that is another reason to be cheerful.

Canoeing has not been mentioned tonight. I can reveal exclusively that, together with my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas) and colleagues from across the House, I will be tabling an extremely important motion about canoeing tomorrow. In Scotland, people can canoe wherever they like. In England and Wales, there are 42,000 miles of inland waterways, but people have uncontested access to only 1,500 of them. That is unfinished business from the right to roam legislation. In many countries in the world people can canoe, and canoeing is also a great Olympic sport. I would like Ministers to have a look at that issue.

I want to finish on sports broadcasting, which has been mentioned quite a lot tonight. Incidentally, we can look forward to the women’s netball world championships and the women’s football world championships live on free-to-air TV later this year. However, one thing we should be proud of in our country is the listed events regulations. They are an intervention in the market, and I think they are supported by all parties. There are reasons to look again at them to see whether we need to extend them. For example, there is not one women’s team sport on the list. The women’s World cup is on free-to-air TV this year, but as it becomes more popular, it may become tempting to subscription broadcasters.

The Six Nations has been mentioned very much tonight. Last week, it appeared that it was under threat and that it could have gone off to Amazon or Google, in a deal that would have created a new world rugby championships—I thought we had the world cup in rugby and that we did not really need a new one. The good news is that, over this weekend, the chief executive of the Six Nations has confirmed that he wants to keep the tournament on BBC and ITV. He sees value in that in terms of uniting the nations. I commend the Sports Minister on speaking out about this at Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport questions last week. I hope those on the Labour Front Bench—there was no mention of listed events from Labour Front Benchers earlier—will mention them in summing up.

[Ian C. Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is a national tragedy that we will have an Ashes series this year—14 years after the magnificent 2005 victory—that will not be on free-to-air television? Is it not about time that cricket realised how much interest it has lost by making that very bad decision?

[John Grogan]

My hon. Friend makes a great point. To be fair to the England and Wales Cricket Board—the cricketing authorities—I think it is now beginning to realise how much this has cost cricket since that summer in 2005, when the Ashes were, I think, on Channel 4. There was a spike in the number of people participating in cricket. I think the latest figures from Sport England suggest that there are now a third fewer participants in cricket, and that is because it has disappeared. A photo of Joe Root—despite the weekend’s results, perhaps the greatest living Yorkshireman—was shown to a group of schoolchildren not so long ago with that of a World Wide wrestler. Very few of them recognised Joe Root; they all recognised the World Wide wrestler, and that is because of the power of television. One good thing, however, is that some T20 cricket is coming to the BBC next year.

Finally, there is one commitment the Minister could give, either now or in the future, in relation to free-to-air coverage. There has been a lot of talk about bidding for the men’s 2030 World cup. The last time there was a bid for the World cup, the Government headed by Gordon Brown was pressurised by FIFA. It was insistent that for England to have any chance of getting the World cup we would have to scrap our listed events legislation as it applied to the World cup whereby every game would be free to air. But FIFA is now under new management and I hope Ministers will make it clear at the very start of the negotiations that if the World cup is to be in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, it will be live and free on free-to-air TV.