Outdoor Pursuits

Lilian Greenwood Excerpts

Tuesday 5th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

I know that the hon. Gentleman and I share a love of the outdoors. I agree with the interesting points that he has been making. Does he agree that volunteers have a vital role to play in making the outdoors accessible, especially to young people? Barbara Green runs a Duke of Edinburgh’s award open group in Clifton in my constituency, which not only provides young people with fantastic experiences, but gives them skills and confidence that can help them to thrive in education, as well as a great love of the outdoors.

[David Rutley]

The hon. Lady—my friend—makes an important point. When we were on Snowdon back in September, we saw a group of Asian girls from London on the Duke of Edinburgh scheme making their first trip up. Those are the sorts of experiences we want to promote and encourage.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hugh Robertson]

It has been quite a day for me, moving from the same-sex marriage debate to Ilkley moor, but I enthusiastically endorse what my hon. Friend says.

Hon. Members will be pleased that mountaineering is receiving £3 million through Sport England’s whole sport plans from 2013 to 2017. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has announced a £2 million fund for the creation of new permanent access rights within a £25 million package to promote rural tourism and support rural tourism businesses, following the rural economy growth review in 2011. The paths for communities scheme funded by the rural development programme for England aims to develop and enhance the rights of way network to the benefit of the local economy by funding projects developed by local communities.

[Lilian Greenwood]

How should people get to those great outdoor places? Rural transport is important, particularly for young people and people on low incomes who might not have access to a motor car. Has the Minister discussed that with his colleagues in the Department for Transport?

[Hugh Robertson]

In all honesty, the answer is no, but that is an extremely good point and I will ensure we follow it up. If the hon. Lady is happy for me to write to her, I will do so. Part of the attraction of many places is that they are remote. It is important that we open them up, particularly to young people, while maintaining the correct balances.

In the past 12 months, the Government have announced that £107 million will be made available during this Parliament for cycling. That included last month’s announcement of a fund worth up to £12 million being made available to local authorities working in partnership with the national parks to improve conditions for cyclists.

What else has happened? Access, through rights of way and open access, is probably the best it has ever been in England. Access is incredibly important for the economy, and we can be very proud of our network of national trails, which can be important generators for local business. For example, university of Exeter research shows that the south-west coast path generates around £300 million a year for the economy of the region and supports around 7,500 jobs.

Natural England is committed to increasing the number and range of people who can experience and benefit from the natural environment, and it is leading on the Government’s ambition that everybody should have fair access to a good-quality natural environment. It is championing “Outdoors for All” and the natural environment on behalf of the Government and ensuring that the green-space volunteering and heritage sectors work side by side with partners to help to improve the quality of everybody’s experience of natural places.

I will touch on two of the issues my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield mentioned in a minute, but first let me say that the Olympic legacy has been making an impact on health and well-being since we won the bid back in 2005. If he had told me that might happen on that happy night in Singapore when we were celebrating the success of the bid, I would have replied that that wonderful ambition was unlikely to be realised, but since the bid to stage the games was won in 2005 we have managed to ensure that more than 1.5 million more people are playing sport regularly. That is a remarkable achievement and one that no other host nation has managed.

Sport England and the Department of Health are working together to align programmes to support those who are least active. We have recently had an opportunity for interested organisations to apply to the “Get Healthy, Get into Sport” fund. The fund is seeking to improve the evidence base on the role of sport to engage inactive people—many of whom, I suspect, would be attracted by precisely the activities my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield is advocating—and produce the right type of information that is of interest to those who commission public health programmes.

Let me touch on two issues my hon. Friend mentioned. I always get asked about International Olympic Committee votes. It is important to say that the only people who vote on which sports go into the mix—he is absolutely right, the vote is in the September IOC session in Buenos Aires—are the IOC members, and they are extremely resistant to pressure from Government to get sports in and out. A number of sports are trying to get in this time around, some of which would do us, as a country, quite a lot of good, so we would like to see them in. The advice to mountaineering—indeed, the advice I would give to any sport—is that it is important to take a strategic long-term view. Mountaineering may be lucky in 2020, but if it is not, the sport’s representatives need to keep plugging away, because the programme changes regularly. Even in London, we could sense that there were some sports that may not have a long-term future in the summer games. There is a case for mountaineering in either the winter or the summer games; as there is a place for it in both, it is well worth plugging away at the strategic level.

I hope that my hon. Friend will take confidence from what I have said. I absolutely acknowledge the opportunities for outdoor pursuits, and I would be delighted to meet the organisations he mentioned. If he does not mind, could he give me a month while we get this uncontroversial little piece of legislation through Parliament? I give him my assurance that I will ensure that the arm’s-length bodies give full support to the Britain on Foot initiative.

Mr Speaker, thank you for remaining with us for most of these seven hours—