Coalfield Areas: Sports Facilities

Lee Rowley Excerpts

Wednesday 24th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) on securing this important and timely debate. I am pleased to follow the important and passionate contributions of hon. Members, which reflect a combined view across parties in this part of the world. I am a near neighbour of those who have spoken, except for my hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Bill Grant), who comes from north of the border but whose points were just as valid.

This issue is close to my heart. I did not have the privilege of being a miner, but both my grandfathers were miners and both of them effectively died from mining. I represent one of the pits that one of my grandads worked down, before he lost his leg and was retired. I have the privilege of representing lots of coalmining villages, including my own, which I lived in and my family have lived in for nearly 50 years. I know that the passion and community spirit is still there and I know how important it is to support that. I know the experience that has been discussed already. I have been to lots of the working men’s clubs and community facilities in these villages over the past few months, because I have been renting them out to hold public meetings and to talk to residents. Huge camaraderie and community spirit remains.

We will not debate this extensively, but it is fair to say that such places had the stuffing knocked out of them in the ’80s, and over the last 30 years or so they have got back on their feet and are moving again. Yet challenges remain, and it is places such as these where the community can still come together. Often some of these communities are somewhat isolated. I represent communities that are not that far away from the main town, Chesterfield, but actually most people look internally within that community—the bus routes are not great and not everybody has cars—because that is what people see and experience day to day. As a Government, we should think very hard about how we can support and improve this area.

There is some fantastic work already going on—I will name a few examples. I recently went to Tupton to talk to the local rugby club, which is doing fantastic work with the local community and is a real asset for the village. I have been to watch Eckington football club pull together dozens of young people every single week, to work in teams and learn to play football. Killamarsh Dynamos is doing the same in the next village. Last Friday evening I was at a local basketball club, Arrows Basketball in Dronfield, which operates across Dronfield, Yorkshire and Killamarsh. I have also seen Killamarsh Juniors, a club that is run to support local activities from a sports perspective. It has its own challenges, not least with npower—something I have been trying to help with over the past six months—which has put in four different smart meters and is getting different answers every time. I know that is slightly ancillary, but it demonstrates how close some of these clubs are to the bread line in supporting the activities they are doing. As a Government, we need to ensure that we recognise the important contribution that they make.

In my section of the party, I am somebody who believes in a small state and in Government only spending where it is necessary, rather than spending badly in lots of places. However, I am a strong supporter of infrastructure spending, and this is social infrastructure. I can see from the places that I have the privilege to represent and the place where I have grown up how important these kinds of facilities are for the communities that we have been speaking about today. If there is something that we can do here, we should consider it strongly.