Young People: Sporting Activities

Lord Cryer Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Baroness makes a very important point. It partly relates to the extent to which we can provide a whole range of opportunities for people to engage in activity, and the way we use the new partnership arrangements locally to see what sort of provision is available and how we can link schools more easily to that local provision, which may well come from and be promoted by different parts of the community. This must be an approach that ensures everybody has the opportunity to benefit from the obvious advantages that come from being more active and taking part in sport.

[Lord Cryer (Lab)]

My Lords, for many years now, schoolchildren have been losing access to swimming pools; pool time has been in decline. That is clearly not the fault of the present Government. However, we are where we are. We need to stop that decline and reverse it so that schoolchildren increasingly have access to pools, not just to create the champions of the future but to save lives, because swimming is the one sport that might make a difference between living and dying.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My noble friend is absolutely right. That is why it is a key part of the national curriculum that children should be able to swim before the age of 11. It is why the ongoing commitment to the primary PE and sport premium, which is funded for the next academic year at £320 million, can also be—and has been—used to ensure that there is access to swimming facilities and water safety in the way my noble friend outlined. We also need to ensure that local authorities recognise the importance of swimming pools so that everybody can benefit.