Lord Allen of Kensington
Main Page: Lord Allen of Kensington (Labour - Life peer)
Lord Allen of Kensington
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the social and economic value of sports volunteering in the United Kingdom.
Lord Allen of Kensington (Lab)
My Lords, it is 50 years ago this very month that Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov made the historic first space walk. He created a new world record of immense magnitude. Alexei’s achievement has inspired thousands upon thousands to become cosmonauts, astronauts, engineers and pilots. How did he achieve that remarkable feat? By sheer optimism, effort and the synergy of a team that pushed the boundaries of ambition, technology and physical and mental fitness.
In the memorable summer of 2012, 32 new world records in eight sports were set at the London 2012 Olympics, and an astonishing 199 Paralympic and world records were set at the Paralympic Games. For each of those athletes, achieving that record was the finale of an incredible journey. For many, it started when their talent was spotted by a teacher or a parent who encouraged them to join a local sports club and, as they say, the rest was history.
An incredible part of our sports ecosystem are the 150,000 clubs and community projects, all started by local people wanting to do their bit, helping, supporting and encouraging kids, regardless of their talent, to be the best that they can be. Our little Leos or little Lindas are inspired by clubs to get involved in community sport, and some of them go on to compete at regional and then national events. Ask any of our elite athletes, as I have, and they will tell you that grass-roots sport was a vital component in developing their full potential and broadening their ambition.
That vital component is built on the foundation of thousands upon thousands of unpaid volunteers in every town and village across the country. They are volunteers like Ken, who turns up week-in, week-out, on a wet Wednesday in Wigan to coach at the local running club. They are volunteers like Sue, who on a hot summer’s day in Slough can be found indoors teaching teenage girls synchronised swimming at the local pool. These unpaid volunteers outnumber paid staff by 20 to one, and are often more highly valued. Not forgetting my background as an accountant, to me, “value” is a good word to use, because each volunteer is investing their time to help others achieve their potential.
The Join In Trust, which I have the privilege to chair, and to which I shall return later, recently published some research into the social value of sports volunteering. The Bank of England’s chief economist, Andy Haldane, says:
“Whether seen from an economic or social perspective, volunteering is big business, with annual turnover well into three-figure billions”.
Join In’s research, entitled Hidden Diamonds, shows how huge those figures are. Each sports volunteer creates more than £16,000 of social value every year. That is the equivalent of Croatia’s GDP. Join In’s recruits add the equivalent of the GDP of the Cayman Islands.
Why, if income from drugs and prostitution is included in the GDP figures, is the social value of volunteering not? If it were, the UK would be rated fifth in the world, ahead of Japan, but, of course, that is not why volunteers do the amazing work that they do. Many do it to help their communities. Research shows that sports volunteers are four times more likely to trust others in the community and eight times more likely to feel that they have some influence over their local communities. They are a really important element of community cohesion, which is vital when so many things threaten to tear our communities apart. Many say that they volunteer to give something back because they were helped by others. A few of those volunteers may have gone on to become top-class athletes in their own right, but most feel that they benefit from improved self-esteem, physical and mental fitness or learnt team skills.
Now there is a new generation of volunteers, each creating capacity for more than eight other people to become active—one volunteer creating capacity for eight and a half people to become active. Volunteer Dean Scopes in Fareham, has done just that. Seeing Join In on the telly, Dean logged on to the Join In website and set up a profile to recruit others to help him run a kids football team. They were so successful that they set up not one but two teams. That is important because data from Public Health England show that almost a third of 10 to 11 year-olds are overweight or obese, so getting kids into sport is an effective and inexpensive way of averting the chronic health time bomb that is on the horizon for this generation. The health and emotional well-being of volunteers also benefits, as volunteers are measurably happier than non-volunteers.
We are a nation which loves our sport and whether we wish to participate or spectate, there is so much on offer here in the UK. Following the success of the Olympics and Paralympics in the UK, it is fast becoming the destination for the world’s top sporting events. But hosting these events is a bit like putting a cosmonaut into space; it requires a huge team with many skills and disciplines. For sporting events of this kind, the team will include many volunteers, without whom the event would simply not take place. Join In has helped to recruit volunteers for many events, including the Tour de France, the BBC’s “Sport Relief” and the Invictus Games. It works closely with UK Sport and hopes to continue this role to secure future gold series by building on the success of the amazing 2012 Games makers.
What value can we place on hosting these events? We know that the 2012 Games brought in excess of £14 billion in regeneration but the legacy goes way beyond that. Like many of my generation who were inspired to do incredible things by seeing Alexei Leonov take his historic first step, our young people are being inspired to take up sport by the success of British athletes in major world sporting events. They want to follow in the footsteps of Chris Hoy and Victoria Pendleton, our most successful Olympians. They want to be as good as our great Paralympians Sarah Storey and David Weir, who each won four gold medals on British soil at the 2012 Games. It is really difficult to put a financial figure on inspiration but our generation knows, from the space race, what extraordinary benefits can flow from it.
Finally, I said that I would say a little more about Join In, which started as a project during the 2012 Games. With help and financial support from the Cabinet Office, BT and Intersport, it later became an independent charity. Join In finds and inspires more than 100,000 volunteers per year by running incredible public campaigns. Those volunteers create the social value that I have described today, and without them the nation would be a much worse place. Although around £1.2 billion is invested in sport each year, little of that goes into investing to inspire, recruit and retain volunteers—something that I am proud to say Join In has done so successfully. I hope that the Minister will recognise in his remarks the social value of volunteering and its role in tackling inactivity and obesity. Perhaps he may even be able to pledge greater investment in sports volunteering.