Lord Addington
Main Page: Lord Addington (Liberal Democrat - Excepted Hereditary)
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, when you find yourself speaking at the end of a debate, it is a real occasion. Everybody has said all there is to be said, but I have not said it personally. So I now find myself running down the list of who I agreed with, although it is a rather boring way of speaking.
I have to start with the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan. When he starts talking about sport, I find myself agreeing with about 95% of what he says. That is better than most colleagues on my own Benches—quite a lot better, to be perfectly honest.
Much of the tone of this debate is recognising that all this is, as the noble Lord, Lord Haselhurst, said, “a Good Thing”—something that adds to life and makes it slightly better. It is positive and active; it makes you interact with people. The most unexpected bit of briefing I got was from the Royal College of Psychiatrists, which said that visiting a museum or gallery makes you something like 48%—I do not know how it came up with 48%—less likely to be depressed, if you are over 50. I should pop into one on the way home. Something there goes in.
All forms of sporting activity and the arts, certainly at an amateur level, have far more in common than any of the groups involved likes to admit. You have to get together as a group, organise and get people there on time; you need a secretary and a treasurer; you have to deal with a little bit of internal politics; you build links, and often it is an employment exchange; there is social interaction—it is all there. All these things come together for a common purpose, so I think it is very good that we bring them together.
The one thing these all have backing them, the one almost universally praised bit of legislation on this, is the National Lottery. It is coming up for a quarter of a century old. Whatever else happened in Sir John Major’s life, that was “a Good Thing” that I do not think anybody will argue with. One or two people still say that the Government should have funded these as core activities, but they never did. They never gave that solid base for all these activities. Without the National Lottery, we would not have had the Olympics or the incredibly positive experience of the Paralympics, which have changed entire attitudes towards disability. The numerous speeches I made on the subject in here were swept away by that opening ceremony. The lottery gave us the base to prepare properly for it.
I had a briefing from Camelot, which is very concerned about the Postcode Lottery and had been very concerned about the Health Lottery. It does not want anybody to bite into their thing, and it is smaller now. If anything is going to damage the National Lottery and that central pool of funding, we have to look at it very carefully. If we destroy this great pool of funding, it will come not with one blow but with many. I ask the Government to monitor the situation. How about even suggesting that anybody who wants to run these synthetic lotteries, as they are rather rudely called, and gets to a certain level takes on some of these responsibilities? That might be a nice idea. “If you are going to raise billions of pounds, you take on some of this work”. I think we might have a change and a different relationship with what is going on. This building block for our society, which has been very necessary, could be damaged, so I hope the Government monitor this and make sure that they keep an eye on it in future. If it goes, we are back to square one, where sport has to scrabble around for support and cannot build long-term projects or get good funding for a development programme.
We relied on the lucky and the brilliant to get medals in the past—a policy that will always give you some success, but never consistent success. The same will be true of the arts. When the right reverend Prelate spoke about it being a lifetime of commitment, he reminded me of Jack Nicklaus. I think it was he who, when asked why he got lucky, said:
“The more I practise, the luckier I get”.
You have to work at these things to find excellence.
I ask the Government to look at how they make sure these wonderful amateur structures are supported and helped. Local government has given help in the past and is under pressure at the moment. Local government is one of the key elements here that has not been mentioned much—although local structures have, and I thank my noble friend Lady Scott for mentioning volunteering, which runs through everything we are talking about here. How can local government be seen, supported and helped? The National Lottery can do lots of things, but it cannot do all of it. It can help, but it cannot do everything. If you put up a pavilion on local authority land that is not maintained, you will not get the best out of it. You may well not be able to use it at all.
We have a situation where there is much that is good. We are enabling ourselves to do very good things. We have a structure, based on volunteering, that is not doing it all but is helping. How do we get more people involved? It comes down to education. The pressure provided by the baccalaureate and the pressure on academic attainment seem to be squeezing out the introductory process at an early age. We all have wonderful stories about finding people and bringing them in from the outside. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, spoke about sports projects. I am involved in the Atlas Foundation, which takes rugby union’s All Schools project out and gets people involved in education. This is wonderful, but it is repairing damage. We should not have to do that as much. We should use the education system to get people their first taste and make sure it goes through. As we look to the future, I hope we concentrate more on making sure that these things in the education system are valued and actively supported.
Once again, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan. We should make sure that those schools that have an abundance, often in the private sector, support the state sector. Ultimately, you are helping yourselves. If you are on a football team, you need someone to play against. You need to expand your base. Recreational sport needs this. Sport itself is reacting. Older groups in society are often learning lessons from the younger ones—if you cannot run around for 80 or 90 minutes and take all the knocks and bumps that you used to when in your prime, there are ways of carrying on doing something in later life. I plead guilty to golden oldies rugby, which I describe as a methadone project for those who were heavily addicted in their youth. The same is true of walking football, et cetera—making sure that people carry on.
We learned these lessons from having introductory games and versions of these sports when younger. I think rugby union developed mini-rugby when it became apparent that, in an under-nines game at 15-a-side, all that the winger was tested for was how he endured hypothermia. We have to make sure this goes through. Unless we support and give introductions, and have places in local clubs which are doing most of the work for us, which can take this on, we will not get it through.
The same is true of the arts. I am told that, in many a dance studio which is badly maintained, the question of hypothermia becomes relevant again. But they all need the same thing. They need to be introduced early and supported.
I hope that the Minister will be able to give an assurance that the Government are taking this seriously, will make sure that the structures that we have within the public sector are strong and will be protected, and that we support and help those who are doing most of the work for us, basically because they enjoy it.