School Sports Funding

Karen Buck Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I will accept a package that keeps the basic infrastructure in place and keeps school sports co-ordinators in their jobs. I have said that I will accept a reduction, but it is the Secretary of State’s job to put forward a package that does just that.

What the Secretary of State has done is a senseless act of vandalism defying all logic, leaving people speechless. The Australian sports commissioner has asked how this country could dismantle a “world-leading” school sport system. The chief executive of the Canadian Olympic committee has taken the unusual step of writing to the Secretary of State to ask how, months away from a home Olympics, we can have this wholesale change in sports policy. We have called this debate because we want the Government to listen, to change course and to protect a basic school sports structure before it breaks down.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend was very supportive of me in his previous incarnation at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport when I came to talk about school provision in inner London. Is he aware that the school sport partnership in the London borough of Westminster, which is set to lose £400,000 a year, has, since 2005, increased from 55% to 100% the number of young people taking part in at least two hours of sport a week, including the promotion of inter-school competition?

[Andy Burnham]

They are astonishing achievements, particularly in an area such as the one my hon. Friend represents, where traditionally there have been difficulties accessing good-quality sports provision. I remember those discussions. For the children living in that inner-city environment, that is an unbelievable achievement, and they should be congratulated on what they have done.

Ministers do not seem to understand why people feel hurt and angry. They use provocative language and selective figures, and they seem not to understand what has happened on the ground in their own constituencies—or, worse, they do know what has happened, but they are not prepared to acknowledge it because it does not fit with their political purpose. Either way, it is very bad. If it is the latter, it is appalling.