English Rugby Union: Governance

Jonathan Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 11th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Jonathan Davies (Mid Derbyshire) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon) for securing this important debate. It has been a pleasure to hear the passion across the room for this wonderful sport. Few activities have the power to bring people and communities together in the way that rugby can. It instils passion, pride, respect, teamwork and determination, bringing people together from all different walks of life. It teaches young people that, when they persevere, they can achieve so much more as a team than they can alone. It is also a huge contributor to the UK economy. England Rugby estimates its value to be around £20.3 billion during 2023-24, and that includes £770 million to help people to improve their physical and mental health, and for community activities, crime reduction and economic growth more generally. It is an important part of our economy as well as our communities.

Saturday afternoons during the Five and latterly Six Nations were protected time in my household growing up, often with one match being shown on the television while another fixture was simultaneously listened to on the radio. The tournament is part of our national story—a celebration of the United Kingdom through passionate but good-natured competition between each of its constituent parts—but watching the likes of Maro Itoje, Dafydd Jenkins, Sione Tuipulotu, or Caelan Doris will not be possible if the talent pipeline from the school playing field or the community club to Twickenham, Murrayfield, the Principality or Aviva stadiums is not secured.

That talent pipeline was fostered through the years when rugby union was an amateur game—a far cry from other sports that, as the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Luke Evans) hinted, are run as franchises or closed shops for shareholders, rather than for fans and those playing for the sheer love of the game. However, the concern of many amateur clubs across the country is that money that is generated at elite levels is not filtering down to community clubs, leaving those community clubs struggling to invest in future talent and to maintain ageing clubhouses or well-used pitches.

Many of us will have an active rugby club in our communities, backed up by dedicated volunteers, and it has been a joy to hear about some of them this morning. In my constituency, Belper rugby club is well loved by local people and has 250 playing members aged five to 55. I am particularly pleased that local businesses have thrown their support behind the club so that it can continue to bring people together through the power of sport. Morrisons kindly donated £5,500 to the club to part fund the excavation and installation of approximately 250 metres of filter drains along the length of the pitches to mitigate flooding, which is a big local issue. Morrisons said:

“We recognise the importance of the rugby club to the local community, and we understand the impact the flooding has caused. We hope that these works will have a positive effect and mitigate future flooding.”

I thank Morrisons for its support.

Belper rugby club is keen to see more professional input at community level. It has talked to my office about a New Zealand model, where professionals go into schools in the community to support the development of the grassroots game. I strongly support that and urge the Minister to throw her weight behind the proposal in her engagement with rugby’s leaders.

I am pleased that the new Government committed in their manifesto to get more children active by protecting time for physical education in schools and supporting the role of grassroots clubs in expanding access to sport. People’s enjoyment of rugby will be further enhanced by the Government’s commitment to putting fans back at the heart of sporting events by introducing new consumer protections on ticket resales.

As the Government do their bit to bring communities together and support people’s health and wellbeing through sport as part of their plan for change, I encourage all rugby stakeholders to do whatever they can to get behind the grassroots game and fund it appropriately. If we want to see tomorrow’s Will Carling or J. P. R. Williams leading the sport and inspiring the next generation, rugby’s leaders must ensure that the spoils of the elite game are shared with community clubs. Failure to do so would mean the sport faces an existential threat, and we would all be the poorer for it.