Queen’s Speech

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, the commitment to ensure that children get an active start to life through an investment programme in primary school PE teaching, and ensuring that the subsequent improvements are delivered, is a welcome nod to the Prime Minister’s commitment to the benefits of sport, which were also seeded in the excellent work that he undertook as Mayor of London when delivering his part in the London Olympic and Paralympic Games. I am glad that the Government want to go further in helping schools to make good use of their sports facilities and promote physical literacy and competitive sport.

The most important step in that direction would be to take sports policy away from the DCMS, and to fold up that department, which has become a distant planet on the edge of the galaxy of Whitehall. It makes far more political sense to place departmental responsibility for sport firmly in the powerhouse of sport in this country: the Department for Education, which has oversight of physical literacy in all its forms in all our schools. Get sports delivery right in our schools and sport will flourish in this country. Link that to a proactive health policy and you raise health levels throughout the United Kingdom.

In so doing, the Government will be better equipped to deal with participation in sport, the quality of PE teaching at all levels, access to outstanding school facilities—which in the independent sector should be a condition precedent of charitable status—assistance with transport, insurance, the costs of keeping facilities open for school children, and summer camps and links with local clubs, so the significant drop-off in participation of school leavers at present can finally be reduced.

I also welcome the additional £3 billion over this Parliament to support the creation of a national skills fund, also to be overseen by the Department for Education. This is a necessary and excellent initiative to ensure that communities benefit from the skills our country needs and recognises the importance of maximising opportunities to improve our skills and employment system. Declaring an interest as the patron of Create, the UK’s leading charity empowering lives through the creative arts, I know of the vital work the charitable sector can and must contribute to the national skills fund. I hope my noble friends in the ministerial team will look closely at the work undertaken by Create and others to enable the most disadvantaged and vulnerable children and adults to take part in sustained, inclusive, collaborative creative arts workshops, tackling isolation and loneliness, and building skills and promoting well-being.

I also welcome the return of the Birmingham Commonwealth Games Bill to your Lordships’ House. There have been a number of welcome improvements to the Bill since we last considered it. However, there is a major issue, which many of your Lordships will have watched with concern since we last discussed the Birmingham 2022 legislation. The concern surrounds the possibility—albeit, I hope, declining in recent weeks—of a boycott by the Indian team in response to the decision not to hold shooting events as part of the programme.

On Boxing Day, it was announced that the National Rifle Association of India had expressed its commitment to hosting a shooting competition before Birmingham 2022, to allow medals there to count towards the overall Commonwealth Games table. In essence, these medals would be treated in nature as an opening balance for each competing nation to build upon during the Games. Commonwealth Games Federation President Louise Martin was reported as saying:

“We look forward to supporting”


the Indian proposal, which she saw as an “innovative proposal”. I would be grateful if, during the proceedings of the Birmingham Commonwealth Games Bill, or earlier if possible, the Minister could enlighten the House as to whether any further progress has been made.

On Brexit and sports policy, there is much work to be done, from football clubs currently recruiting without restriction in the European Union to the potential loss of Kolpak players under the Cotonou agreement—a rule that may have far greater importance for clubs such as Saracens than the sanctions taken against them this season. Then there is the loss of article 19 of the FIFA regulations on early transfers of footballers within the European Union from club to club, the impact of EU state aid legislation and free movement of labour to the future of the Tripartite Agreement for racing, and of course the Bosman ruling.

This will prove a decisive year in forming the future of the sporting landscape in the UK. We in the House have started well, with the presence of the Secretary of State responsible for sport on these Benches. Now the hard work begins. In all, it was a comprehensive and constructive Queen’s Speech, both for sport and for the future of the United Kingdom.