UK Sport: Elite Sport Funding

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2018 Grand Committee

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, there seems to be a theme coming through and I simply want to add my voice to the expression of it. Incidentally, with the previous speaker in mind, I say that one former Welsh rugby union referee is following another in this debate, and no doubt some quite heavy influence will be cast upon the outcome of the debate as a result. I have to say, however, that I can trump a few aces, because I in fact played with Barry John at the University of Wales—I want that on the record of course. I also played at Lampeter, where the first rugby game was ever played in Wales—it was brought there from Cambridge, shortly after it originated in Rugby. I played in the centenary game with a whole host of Welsh international stars playing against us. I went down for the 150th anniversary just last year, where I kicked off the ball—that was the limit.

It is interesting, as my life has unfolded, that the great sports that I have played—cricket, badminton, rugby and anything else that was going—have gradually become more sedentary, ending with snooker. I have even given that up, not so much because my sons began to beat me at it but because they began to pretend that I had beaten them—that is a much more serious position, I can assure noble Lords.

As far as I see and hear it, the real key to this discussion is that we have to decide at the beginning of our thinking—our conceptualisation—whether to look for a solution to the admitted need to encourage activity in this sector at the top, through pump-priming in order to set examples that others will follow and to inspire through great success, or at the bottom. The noble Lord, Lord Wasserman, talked very eloquently about that second approach; I have heard him speak on basketball twice now.

All my sporting activity was in the pre-professional days, before pay, and there was an entirely different approach to it. Burry Port, where I come from, has had no medals in anything, but the playing fields of Burry Port, like those of Eton, were full of people striving to beat local opponents. There were revenge matches with Tumble over the hill and Pembrey down the road. My brother was in at 16 playing for Pembrey youth and I played for the University of Wales later on. It was all without any money being exchanged at all. Really, it is about the balance between putting money into activities that generate success that then inspires others and looking to develop communities with these local rivalries, competitions and the spirit of fellowship—is there anything better than taking to any field of endeavour with the idea of really knocking your opponents for six, only to enjoy a pint in the pub with them afterwards as you recount tales of derring-do in days gone by? There is nothing more sensible than that as a pattern for the way you live. Here, of course, I would draw a distinction between the crowds at football and rugby. The crowds intermingle at rugby, and you make jokes at each other’s expense and that of the opponents around you, whereas in football the police help to separate them off from each other.

I wonder about the way such resources as we have get channelled out. Why do we favour sports that are very low in terms of participatory potential, such as equestrian sport, when sports such as basketball—which, in terms of social cohesion, bring people together across all the divides that afflict us socially—are left out of the equation? I wish we could recalibrate the way we look at how we distribute such resources as are available. Whether it is everything as it was last year, less or whatever, how do we prioritise? The whole business of medals leaves me cold. I love having medals and cheering competitors on, but I cannot see that that must be the sole criterion when we look at a formula for distributing the cash that is available.

Tomorrow morning, I will receive a protégé of mine who got a job a couple of years ago with the Rugby Football Union. His job is to animate communities throughout north London and to interest schools that do not have a tradition of rugby, and communities that have no playing fields, in the possibilities of playing it, especially helping women to play. The Rugby Football Union no doubt gets some government money; I do not know and do not really care—it is the activity I want to exalt. It is about taking it out of a sporting base—where the newspapers are full of the rivalries, the need to win the Six Nations Championship and all the rest of it—and into the grass roots, where people play on muddy November days. The noble Lord, Lord Thomas, and I have refereed matches in Wales where you could not see the 25—when it was called the 25. The rule about kicking into touch left us totally lost: when we took our spectacles off you could not see whether the ball had bounced into touch or not.

For all of that, it seems to me that public money should be put into sporting activity for reasons that go well beyond sport, which have been mentioned in this debate: for health, community cohesion and well-being. All these things, and not just medals, must be a product or an outcome. In all those ways, I support those noble Lords who have made this point very eloquently and from very different positions in these fields of endeavour.

I finish by remembering the film “Invictus”, which showed South African rugby and Nelson Mandela and all of that. The great moment for me was when the rugby players in the South African team—all white—were taken in their bus by the captain of the team to a township. They did not know what to do or why they had been brought there, but they showed kids who kicked a bit of rag around as a football the glories of passing the ball and playing rugby. Now the South African team has black people in it, and I am sure it arose from those sorts of beginnings. Participation, revitalising communities and spreading money out with that must be the sole and overriding objective. I look forward to what the Minister is going to say about who he played rugby with in his day.