Sport and the 2012 Olympics Legacy

Karen Buck Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point and I hope the sports Minister was not booing in disagreement, because she made that point herself on 18 December 2013. I look forward to her joining us in the Lobby later this evening.

This is not just about every region in the country; it is about every sport. Participation is down in non-Olympic sports, including cricket by 73,200 and squash by 79,900. Participation is also down in Olympic sports, including archery by 23,600, badminton by 119,800, basketball by 46,900, football by 121,400 and table tennis, or whiff-whaff, as the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson)—who bears some responsibility for all this—has often referred to it. Most striking of all, participation in the one sport that is participated in equally by men and women and boys and girls—it is the most popular sport in this country—is down by a massive 818,500. Thirty-three out of 45 funded sports have seen a fall or practically no increase at all in participation since the Olympic and Paralympic games.

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

On the schools sport partnership, it is a fact that low sports participation is heavily correlated with deprivation. One of the greatest problems in recent years is the decline in participation in areas of deprivation, which is exactly where the schools sport partnerships were doing such a superb job, including in my own constituency and in parts of London where space and external space are at a premium and where we have to work hard to overcome that.

[Chris Bryant]

We should rename my hon. Friend Mystic Karen, because that is the exact point I was going to come on to. She is right. It is one of the most depressing factors—[Interruption.] I can hear some chuntering from the Government Front Bench. Yes, it is true that trampolining figures went up a little bit, but the problem with trampolining is that you always come back down.