Young People: Sporting Activities

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Moynihan]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what is the timeline and budget to deliver the Prime Minister’s commitment made at his meeting with the Lionesses football team on 19 June to ensure young people have equal access to high-quality sport and extra-curricular activities.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

My Lords, we are committed to breaking down barriers to opportunity and supporting more children to access high-quality PE and sport. The new commitment, outlined by the Prime Minister as he wished the Lionesses good luck in their future tournament, is to create links between schools, local clubs and national governing bodies of sport to help deliver this. We are working with the school and sports sectors to design the partnerships. Further details, including funding, will be outlined in due course. Following a commercial process, we expect these partnerships to be in place from autumn 2026.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

The announcement by the Prime Minister that every child across the country will be given equal access to high-quality PE and sport, as the Government have indicated, will be welcomed across all sides of the House. However, in view of the fact that some 3.9 million children—an increase this year to nearly 40% of our schoolchildren—do not meet even the Chief Medical Officer’s basic recommendation for daily physical activity, let alone have access to high-quality PE, and given the Government’s 15% cut to DCMS’s administration budget by 2030 in the spending review and their plan to remove Sport England’s role as a statutory consultee in the planning process, leading to Sport England’s view that this will have a negative impact on physical activity with the loss of yet more school playing fields, does the Minister agree that a clearly costed, additional multi-billion pound budget will be essential to avoid falling massively short of the delivery of the Prime Minister’s laudable aspirations?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Of course it is important that there is a fully funded and costed programme, but when we talk about the facilities that are so important for enabling young people—in fact, all people—to engage in sport, I point the noble Lord to the increased capital investment in schools announced as part of the spending review, part of which can be used for maintaining their facilities, and DCMS’s announcement of an additional £400 million for community sports facilities. It is also important that where we have strong local clubs and national governing bodies—which are, to give them their due, providing lots of opportunities for young people—we also need something to bring those things together to ensure that, however much investment we make in the system, we maximise it for children to be able to benefit. That is the intention of the new partnership.