Soft Drinks Industry Levy: Funding for Sport in Schools

Justin Tomlinson Excerpts

Tuesday 10th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Sir David Amess (in the Chair)]

The clocks on either side of the Chamber are not working, but frankly we are not overwhelmed with people wishing to speak so there will be no time limit on speeches.

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the allocation of funding from the soft drinks industry levy for sport in schools.

May I say what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David? This is a subject that I am passionate about. Since becoming an MP, I have spoken in a number of debates on the power of sport to influence good behaviour, create opportunities and provide enjoyment. I must stress that the purpose of the debate is to focus not on whether we are right or wrong to have a sugar tax, but on how we should spend the levy, now that the decision has been taken. With a £500 million pot, that is a significant amount of money that can make a genuine difference.

I must thank all the organisations that have contacted me in recent days ahead of the debate, including: the Sports and Recreation Alliance, which is understandably keen to see sporting opportunities increase; Sustrans, which wants to see more funding for walking and cycling programmes to and from school; Youth Sport Trust, which has also focused on the sports element and the link between greater physical activity and greater academic performance, which I know the Minister for School Standards will welcome; and ukactive, which has done a huge amount of research, highlighting in particular the cliff edge fall in activity during school holidays, which I will come back to. I was also contacted by health organisations such as: Diabetes UK, which is obviously in favour of reducing the amount of sugar being used; Cancer Research UK, on the same principle; and the Royal College of Surgeons, on behalf of dental surgeons, obviously to reduce tooth decay.

This is an important subject, because one third of children are obese or overweight by the time they leave primary school. To me, that was a staggering statistic to read. When I was growing up, it seemed that all of us were active and charging around, so I was staggered by the figure of one third—one in three. That is not only an alarming figure; social norms start to be created. If an increasing number of children are overweight or obese, that becomes acceptable and therefore it starts to increase. On a topical level, through the NHS we currently spend £6 billion a year helping people with illnesses linked to being either overweight or obese. How we could better spend that money if there were fewer obese people. And an obese child is five times more likely to be an obese adult than an adult who was not obese as a child.

The Youth Sport Trust highlights that only 21% of boys and 16% of girls meet the recommended guidelines for physical activity. I recognise that we are competing with video games, shrinking gardens—back gardens are now one third smaller than they were in the 1960s—and cautious parents. When I was growing up, parents did not think anything of children disappearing on long bike rides, playing in distant parks and going to their friends’ houses far afield, whereas nowadays parents are understandably worried if their children are out of sight. Again, that limits the opportunity to be active.

The Government recognise that we have to do something. In August 2016 they published “Childhood obesity: a plan for action” with the aim of reducing significantly the rate of childhood obesity. The plan included the soft drinks levy, which is worth £520 million a year, and clearer food labelling—something I pushed for in the previous Parliament through my work with the British Heart Foundation—because we have a duty to allow consumers to make informed decisions. Another fact that surprised me—I say this as someone who does enjoy drinking sugar-laced fizzy drinks but who wishes to be informed—was that a five-year-old should take in no more than 19 grams of sugar a day, yet one can of Coke contains 35 grams. How many consumers actually know that? If they did, would they change their habits?

Crucially, the plan was announced as part of a nudge policy, where we gave the industry two years to make changes. I recognise that many of the leading manufacturers and retailers are already making changes—as I said, I am not focusing on whether the levy was right or wrong, but clearly part of the strategy is to influence behaviour—but, as we have recognised that physical activity is good for health and good for improving academic performance, I welcomed that the money would be ring-fenced to spend on activities connected to schools. If we are to have a tax and get extra money, let us ensure that that money is spent in the right way. The best way to do that for children is through schools.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on bringing this important subject to the Chamber. Given his enthusiasm for sport in schools, which I share, would he like to comment on the coalition Government’s decision to scrap the school sport partnerships in 2010, which has had a really detrimental effect on sport in our schools? I do not see the sugar tax as going all the way to replacing the excellent school sport partnership scheme that we had.

[Justin Tomlinson]

Actually, that was the very first time I rebelled—I was rewarded by sitting on some obscure European committees thing for five years to think carefully about my actions. The funding was not scrapped. There was a change and initially a proposal to remove the ring-fencing, but the money was then once again ring-fenced, though schools were allowed to choose how to spend it on sports-related programmes. I supported that because we have got some fantastic school sport partnerships that are still thriving today—including my local one—but there were also some pretty poor ones, which have gone by the wayside, and those schools have now spent that money on individual sports coaches, sports clubs and things like that. We got there in the end, and funding has increased in this area since 2010.

[Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

Before the hon. Gentleman leaves the issue of sport, no one is against using some of the sugar tax revenue for encouraging greater sporting activities, but does he not accept that in his constituency, in mine and in everyone else’s, during the school holidays large numbers of children who would have free school dinners during term time do not get any food from the school or free school dinners? Might not one of the ways of making the sugar tax progressive be to earmark part of the revenue to ensure that schools could at least lay on the facilities for voluntary bodies to provide school dinners during the holidays?

[Justin Tomlinson]

That is a powerful point, and I agree with the sentiment of it. I would not necessarily use the sugar tax money, but that is something that the Government could consider as a wider point. It is a fair point, and actually some of the head teachers in some of the more deprived parts of my constituency have raised similar concerns about what happens to the children not just with regard to eating, but on wider issues throughout the holidays.

As it stands, there will be £285 million to extend the school day in secondary schools in relation to sport, £160 million to double the primary school physical education budget, and £10 million to expand breakfast clubs. That was welcomed by Emma Boggis, the chief executive of the Sport and Recreation Alliance, who said it will

“deliver more opportunities to get children of a young age active”

and

“to stay active in later life.”

That is an important point. We must recognise that the opportunities we create must be regular and sustainable, because we also recognise that if the Government’s intention for the sugar tax works out and all the manufacturers reformulate their products and customers switch from full-sugar versions to zero-sugar versions, the amount of money will diminish. We must therefore ensure that the money is spent to seed regular sustainable activities. This is where I bring forward my rather reasonable—in my unbiased opinion—asks.

This has all come about from a visit to Oakhurst Community Primary School, which hosts the Draycott sports camp, run by Mark Draycott, a PE teacher at the school. The school runs after-school clubs, weekend clubs and school holiday clubs. There are lots of sports camps and I am sure that all of us as MPs have visited them at some point, but this one sets itself apart by a country mile. More than 200 primary schoolchildren were being active each and every single day in the last summer holidays, of whom slightly more were girls than boys—that is something for Sport England and the Sport Minister to recognise and celebrate, because that is a particular area of challenge—and they were engaging in all sorts of different sports.

A summary of how the camps work is that they run during every school holiday from 9 am to 6 pm, costing £12.50 a day, which is probably the cheapest childcare that a parent will find. They create an active environment that is inclusive and engaging for all abilities. That is vital, because a particularly sports-minded child probably has sports-minded parents and will already be signed up to a football, rugby or netball club. The camps are for the vast majority of children who are not necessarily sports-minded and who are the most likely to become obese.

The camps focus on helping children to be more active and introducing them to new sports—not only football and netball, but cricket, athletics, golf, lacrosse and so on—so that they can replicate what inspires them on the television. I visited a camp during the Olympics and saw them recreate the things that were inspiring them on the TV—it was amazing. Because Mark Draycott is a teacher, and because the majority of his support staff have connections to the school or are teachers themselves, they have the expertise to identify and support those children who are starting to fall by the wayside, and who are not naturally gifted or naturally enthusiastic about sports, to make sure that they remain engaged. They concentrate on killing the fear factor that some children have when playing sports and ensuring that they enjoy the activity. They are increasing participation among girls and bucking those national trends.

I highlight that because we have an opportunity to replicate this. As Mark Draycott said when he was interviewed on “BBC Points West” this morning, the camps should be not only at Oakhurst in Swindon, but all over the country; there should be hundreds and hundreds of them. They are sustainable, because the taxpayer is not paying him to do this—he is running the camps as his own organisation. However, the Government can help. First, anybody who wishes to set up one of these camps will need to build up numbers. We could therefore look to incentivise other people to do the same sort of thing as Mark by reducing the charge for hiring the school facilities at the beginning, until they build up the numbers and become sustainable in their own right and can keep going.

We also need to attract more good quality physical education teachers into the profession. We had a chronic shortage of PE teachers, although more are beginning to come in now. The beauty of this situation is that Mark Draycott came from a sporting background—he was a non-league sports player. The coalition Government tried to attract troops to become teachers, but it turned out that there were not millions of troops who wished to become teachers. However, there are many non-league sports stars who are minded and who, with the right incentives and the right instructions, could go on to become very good PE teachers in schools. I urge the Minister to look at that potential wealth of talent from whom, if we advertise to them, we could potentially recruit some very good people.

There could be lots of Draycott sports camps all over the country, which would be fantastic for those who wish to pay and can afford to do so—as I have seen, for 200 children every single day. That is something that we can replicate. However, I wish to go even further. I would also like to see all school facilities made available for free between 4 pm and 6 pm to any voluntary organisation that wishes to use them. For example, if some parents get together and wish to put on a netball, football or basketball club—I do not mind which, so long as it is a constructive activity for young people—between the hours of 4 pm and 6 pm, we should not charge them. Some of the sugar tax money can then be used to compensate the loss of income to schools. That is not a peak time for school hire fees, because school sporting facilities are generally used when offices and factories shut at 6 pm, which is when schools would expect to make their income. I therefore suspect that compensation would be only a modest part of that income, but it would remove the barrier that many enthusiastic parents find.

I know that, because I spent 10 years as a borough councillor in Swindon representing a new build area with private finance initiative schools. There were limited leisure facilities, yet there were fantastic sporting facilities that the taxpayer was paying for but which we could not afford to access at a time when they were simply not being used. That does not make sense. We can find people willing to give up their time; there are hundreds of sports clubs across all of our constituencies that would seize the opportunity to provide constructive opportunities that will make our children active, that will remain in place once the money starts to diminish and, crucially, that will help busy parents.

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that many teachers across the UK are already running voluntary after-school clubs and taking their own time to offer the sorts of activities he is talking about?

[Justin Tomlinson]

I absolutely pay tribute to teachers, parents and people in the local community who are prepared to give up their own time to provide constructive activities for young people. I want the Government to encourage the entrepreneurial spirit that Mark Draycott showed so that others can set up their own holiday camps and there are regular, good and exciting opportunities for young people.

In conclusion, I urge the Government to seize this opportunity. It is not often that a Department is given a significant increase in funding. I know from my time as a Minister that it is normally a case of wondering how on earth we can find money to do all of the worthy things we would like to do. However, this is an opportunity to benefit children by making them more active and therefore less obese, and to improve their academic achievement, because there is a direct link between those who are active and their ability to progress academically. It will also be a welcome blessing for hard-working, busy parents, whose biggest challenge is often what to do with children after school, during the long school holidays and at weekends. This offers the opportunity to deliver those long-term, sustainable solutions. I want every child to have as much fun as those children who go to the Draycott sports camp, and now is the time we can make that a reality.