Finance Bill

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived & 3rd reading
Wednesday 19th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, not wholly surprisingly, I will speak to the impact that this Bill, and the Budget which preceded it, will have on investment in sport and physical activity. I regard this as part of the creative industries of which the noble Baroness, Lady Caine, spoke so eloquently in her maiden speech, not least because the creativity part of sport is the original creation of the sport itself.

From my experience as a former Minister for Sport and chair of the British Olympic Association for the London 2012 Games, I warmly welcome confirmation from the Government that an extra £9 million a year will support athletes ahead of the LA Olympic and Paralympic Games. It is an increase of 10% on the current settlement, which now means a total investment of £344 million over the cycle. This is welcome news, but not surprisingly, I do not believe it goes far enough, because some proposals in the Bill could wipe out the benefits I have just mentioned. The first is the decision set out in Clause 47 to apply VAT to the independent schools sector. The cost savings urged by government on independent schools to pay for the heavy tax increases, set out by my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe, are predicted to have a serious impact on the dual use of their excellent sports facilities by local communities. There is also the loss of sports scholarships and bursaries, which will impact opportunities for talented young people from a wide range of backgrounds.

To demonstrate the scale of this support, I drew the attention of the House yesterday to the 14 athletes on Team GB who came from Millfield School and participated in the Paris Olympics. Thirteen of those 14 came through its means-tested financial support mechanism. Those athletes brought home seven Olympic medals and one Paralympic medal—four gold, three silver and one bronze—yet now, sadly, support of this scale across the independent sector is under threat. At the Paris Olympics in 2024, 33% of Team GB’s medallists attended independent schools, yet just 7% of our pupils go to these schools. This demonstrates again how, through sports bursaries and scholarships, the independent sector has become a cornerstone of the sporting success of which we are so proud and yet is now at risk.

Sadly, the loss of sporting opportunity in the independent sector is not made up by investment in the maintained sector nor in the wider public sector, although Clause 79, referring to the soft drinks industry levy, may help, despite my noble friend Lady Coffey’s strictures. In that context, I ask the Minister to confirm that the increased revenues from the SDIL will, as now, be ring-fenced to fund the PE and sports premium for primary schools. That would be very important, and I would welcome it if the Minister could confirm that when he comes to wind up.

The harsh reality is that we are losing public sector sports and recreation facilities at an alarming rate. This is not a party-political point: 710 local football pitches have been sold since 2010 and ukactive estimates that 400 gyms, pools and leisure centres have already been lost, with a further 2,400 at risk without support. In 2021, Swim England estimated that 1,868 of the 4,336 public pools in England could be forced to close by 2030. State schools continue to sell off their playing fields. As a result, Britain’s prohibitively high levels of childhood obesity are rising and low physical activity levels cost our economy £7.4 billion a year. Surely we can all agree that it is vital we protect the places where local communities can be active.

The top of the sports pyramid continues to do well and is supported by the Budget. Our best continue to perform brilliantly across the world, but the heart and base of the pyramid are fracturing. We have old and out-of-date sports facilities; we have poor participation rates; we face growing levels of obesity. We are becoming a second-tier nation with poor and ageing sports facilities, while failing to support our sport and recreation policies.

I believe that the Government recognise the challenge and, for my part, there should be all-party support for Ministers if it is openly addressed. In the meantime, despite the Bill’s and the Budget’s focus on revitalising the NHS and other public services, there remains a notable absence of the role that sport, recreation and physical activity can play in tackling the nation’s key policy priorities—and that needs to be addressed.