Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
Main Page: Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth (Conservative - Life peer)
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth (Con)
My Lords, this has been an excellent debate about sport moving forward and volunteering generally. I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Allen, and I am pleased to answer this Question for Short Debate. I am delighted that he has brought forward this question about the social and economic value of sport volunteering. The debate went wider, into volunteering in general, and I shall pick up on that at the end of what I shall say. There are some very important lessons that we can learn across the piece and not only about sports volunteering. However, I shall concentrate, first, on the sports aspect.
Grass-roots sport in this country relies on volunteers. Without people prepared to invest their time in local clubs and activities—to coach youngsters, run the line, paint the clubhouse, keep the books, make the tea and perform myriad other duties—grass-roots sport would simply not survive, a point made forcefully by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, and my noble friend Lord Addington in particular. This applies both to traditional club-based sport and recent innovations such as parkrun.
The noble Lord, Lord Allen, has a wealth of experience in this area. He knows the value of volunteers in running major events, from his role as chairman of the 2002 Commonwealth Games in Manchester and as a board member of LOCOG, the organising committee for the London 2012 Games.
The 2012 Games helped change the perception of sports volunteering in this country, a point referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Allen, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and my noble friends Lord Holmes and Lady Scott. People here and abroad, visitors to the Games and television viewers were bowled over by the sight of smiling Games makers, Team London ambassadors and other Games-related volunteers. We all have our own personal memories of those great Games. I visited events in London and Cardiff and I will never forget the warmth of the welcome, the “can do” attitude of the volunteers and the sense of togetherness and national unity that the Games provoked.
Those volunteers showed how volunteering could be valuable, valued and fun. Games maker-style volunteers have since become a fixture at major sporting events in this country, including the Rugby League World Cup in 2013, the Tour de France Grand Depart in Leeds in 2014 and, later this year, the Rugby Union World Cup.
I am delighted that Join In, the independent charity chaired so ably by the noble Lord, has helped to bring some of that Games maker spirit to the world of community sport volunteering, where historically volunteers have not always felt valued—volunteers such as Dean Scopes from Fareham, Ken from Wigan and Sue from Slough, mentioned by the noble Lord. Join In grew out of the London 2012 Games and the Join In team have built up expertise and knowledge, including a formidable database of volunteers and clubs. I agree with my noble friend Lady Scott that we must ensure the database is widely used.
I am pleased to hear that while the funding for Join In has come from the Cabinet Office, with sponsorship from BT and Intersport, it is able to support clubs and volunteers across the United Kingdom. It also receives funding from Sport Wales to provide specific services in Wales. Join In’s work complements that of other agencies, including Sport England and the county sports partnerships, which promote local sport and sport volunteering opportunities. Sport England has recently launched Club Matters. This initiative, built around a new website, provides free guidance, support and learning for volunteers on all aspects of running a club. Through Sport England’s £4 million Sport Makers legacy programme, 48,000 volunteers were trained and delivered 10 or more hours of sport for people in their local community. Since the end of the Sport Makers programme, Sport England has awarded £1 million to county sports partnerships across England to keep sport makers engaged as active volunteers in community sport at very much the local level.
Sport England’s insight has found that to get the best out of volunteers and to encourage people to take up sport, the right volunteers with the right skills are needed in the right places. Volunteers need to receive a valuable and enjoyable volunteering experience that matches their values and reasons for volunteering. Those reasons are overwhelmingly altruistic, a point graphically made by my noble friend Lord Addington, although of course gaining skills, socialising and contributing to the local community are all powerful drivers, and rightly so. Join In’s research leading to its booklet, Hidden Diamonds, which I have had the benefit of reading, uncovers the true value of sport volunteers in a helpful contribution to the debate on the value of sport volunteering. It helps to demonstrate and quantify the massive value of sport volunteers to the volunteers themselves, the sport participants and the wider community. Its estimate of the annual value of sport volunteering specifically is £53 billion, which is a truly staggering figure, although volunteering more broadly, as the noble Lord, Lord Allen, mentioned in his speech, is well into the three-figure billions. I shall come back to the wider issues on volunteering generally.
I agree that the legacy for local communities is a fundamental part of the social legacy of the 2012 Games. According to the Community Life Survey, volunteering increased in 2012 from 65% to 72% of the population after a period of decline, and the increase has been maintained since. We can all take pride in that. The Hidden Diamonds report helps to demonstrate the value of that volunteering in the sports sector. Of course, as the noble Lord said, many people chase the dreams set by our great Olympians, including Chris Hoy, Victoria Pendleton, Mo Farah and many others, along with our great Paralympians, including Sarah Storey and David Weir.
Volunteers are key to increasing participation in sport and physical activity. The Government and the Mayor of London have committed through the Moving More, Living More initiative to working across departments to increase physical activity as part of the legacy of the 2012 Games. I am pleased that Join In’s chief executive, Rebecca Birkbeck, recently gave a presentation to the cross-government officials’ group responsible for driving forward that initiative to promote the important role of volunteers. I agree that any future report published by the Government to promote the legacy benefits of the 2012 Games should include a strong section on the social and volunteering legacy, certainly including the work of Join In.
Perhaps I may turn to some of the specific points made during the course of the debate. The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, mentioned the percentage of disabled people who are volunteering. We have no separate figures for sports, but on volunteering in general a survey shows that 38% of disabled people volunteer as opposed to 46% of the population at large, although that percentage includes disabled people as well. As I say, while we do not have separate figures for sports volunteering, and without being complacent because it is clear that we need to do more, I have to admit that it is a slightly higher figure than I would have anticipated.
I understand that my noble friend Lady Scott got involved in volunteering, and that is what has brought her to the debate. We should be grateful for that and for her contribution outlining the importance of local volunteering in the context of Needham Market. Those points were well made. It is good to hear from people with broad experience of participating in sport. We heard the stories from my noble friend Lord Holmes and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, of how they would not have got involved if there had not been volunteers. This shows the true importance of volunteering, which has a read-across to other sectors.
This debate has been important for two reasons. First, in a sense, it is the worst of times and the best of times for it. It is the worst of times because it is at the end of this Government, but more importantly it will be fresh and will be there for whichever Government come in. We will make sure that it is there for any incoming Government to look at.
That is also true more widely. I would like to ensure that this debate goes to all government departments with a covering letter to talk about the importance of volunteering more generally. While we have been concentrating today on volunteering in sport, there is a very important read-across into volunteering more generally. I undertake that that will happen. Hopefully incoming Ministers of whatever political persuasion will find that on their desks and will be persuaded of what a good thing this is—and it is a good thing, economically and socially. We will all remember the 2012 Games and know that the pride that we took in them, the national unity and the sense of togetherness had little or nothing to do with money and everything to do with capturing and harnessing the importance of volunteering, and making sure that it was effective. We must make sure that that happens not just in relation to sport but more generally.
I end as I began, by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Allen, for bringing this really important topic to us today and for what has been an excellent debate.