Sport, Health and Well-being National Plan (NPSRC Report)

Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2023 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay) (Con)]

My Lords, this has been a spirited and thoughtful debate, following the lead set by my noble friend Lord Moynihan, who opened it brilliantly on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Willis of Knaresborough, to whom we send our best wishes. We have heard from five former government Ministers, whose careers have spanned I think 10 departments, and accomplished players and followers of many more sports, including noble Lords who, between them, have an impressive haul of 32 Olympic and Paralympic medals.

Some of these accolades may still be in store for my noble friend Lord Effingham. He eloquently set out his strong credentials and personal passion for speaking on certain topics, including that before your Lordships today. We warmly welcome both his mens sana and corpus sanum—I believe I have declined them correctly, but he is the classicist and will correct me—to your Lordships’ House and look forward very much to hearing more from him in debates in the years to come.

It has been very clear from all your Lordships’ speeches that sport has a vital role to play in our lives through its power to be a force for good and something which brings people together, as well as an important tool in improving the health and well-being of the nation. The benefits of participating in sport and physical activity are well known. Undertaking regular activity helps improve people’s health, both physical and mental, not just giving them healthier lives but, as the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, pointed out, easing the pressure on our National Health Service. Sport also has the power to bring people closer together by fostering social cohesion and reducing loneliness, an essential part of a healthy and happy life. Research commissioned by Sport England shows that for every £1 that is invested in community sport, there is a return of £3.91 in wider social and economic value. That is why the Government are so committed to ensuring that everyone, across the whole country, has access to high-quality provision.

The noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, was right to point out that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is a former Secretary of State responsible for sport and for health, but even if he were not, the economic benefits are clear. A robust and high-performing sport sector is immensely valuable to our economy, contributing £39 billion a year. In terms of jobs, in the decade and a half from 2003 to 2017, the sector saw employment growth of 42%, with 129,000 new jobs created.

While my department holds the remit for sport, it is the responsibility of many departments to ensure that people lead healthy and active lives. As we made clear in our response to the report of your Lordships’ committee, the Government do not believe that we need a machinery of government change to bring a sharper focus to that work. As we said in our response, sport is a major focus for officials at DCMS, indeed a larger one now that sport accounts for a greater proportion of our work following the machinery of government changes announced this week. I think I am right in saying that my noble friend Lord Moynihan, who was a very effective Sports Minister, did that while working for the Department of the Environment, and we have seen considerable and important work led by Sports Ministers working with colleagues across a number of government departments over the years.

However, the Government agree with your Lordships’ committee on the importance of setting a strategic direction for sport and physical activity. We have been working on a new sport strategy. I have not been involved in that work as Minister for Arts and Heritage, but I can tell the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, that it will be published in the first quarter of this year. We are also refreshing the school sport activity action plan. The new sport strategy will have a specific focus on addressing inactivity levels and the barriers which prevent people participating in sport and physical activity. We will consider the challenges facing children and young people and ensure that facilities are accessible to everyone.

The strategy has been drafted in consultation with key sector representatives as well as our arm’s-length bodies and active partnerships, which enable vital local collaboration. We are confident that this new strategy will address many of the important points raised by your Lordships’ committee, while recognising, as your Lordships have done, that action to address these issues requires a united, cross-government approach, an holistic understanding of physical activity, and strong local leadership.

 I mentioned just now our arm’s-length body, Sport England, through which we annually invest more than £250 million of public and National Lottery funding. We are particularly keen to ensure that less affluent communities are not forgotten, which is why over the past 12 months, one-fifth of Sport England’s local investment has been in projects in the most deprived areas, those classed as IMD1.

Your Lordships’ committee mentioned measuring the impact of Sport England. We agree that that is crucial and can confirm that work is under way to ensure the fundamental alignment of Sport England’s work with the Government’s sports strategy.

My noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond, who is always an innovative thinker, raised the importance of innovation and data. As he would expect of a department that had until Tuesday “digital” in its name, we recognise the importance of digital tools and data in supporting people to be active. Sport England has worked with the Open Data Institute to develop OpenActive, a key programme to help tackle inequalities in activity, and we will continue to monitor how money is spent, gathering data to show impact at a local level, and work with Sport England to include specific key performance indicators to decrease inactivity, particularly among underrepresented groups.

Sport is uniquely placed to help create a more inclusive society, as speeches from noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, reminded us today. It has the power to bring people together, no matter what their background. The Government are working closely with Sport England, UK Sport and the national governing bodies to tackle all forms of discrimination, from grass-roots level to elite level. Our aim is to increase diversity among sporting organisations. By helping the sports sector to become more inclusive, we hope that it will become more welcoming to all spectators and participants, and to the people in its workforce, and that this in turn will enable and encourage more people to get active.

I will turn to some examples of the Government’s work in this important area. We recognise the importance of sport and physical activity for people with disabilities and continue to work with partners to encourage sport to be accessible to all. Indeed, the Government’s National Disability Strategy, published in the summer of 2021, included commitments to improve the accessibility of sport and physical activity, in line with our and Sport England’s ambitions. This will help enable disabled people to live more active and independent lives. Sport England has ensured that each of its programmes has a positive impact on people with disabilities through initiatives such as the Together Fund. It has so far invested £8.5 million in over 2,200 projects that support disabled people and people with long-term health conditions.

Along with noble Lords who have echoed this point today, we strongly believe that there is no place for any kind of discrimination in sport. We know that experiences of discrimination are not only hugely detrimental to people’s propensity to be active; they can also create divisions in local communities. At the Qatar World Cup, my colleague Stuart Andrew, the Minister for Sport but also the Minister for Equality, chose to wear the OneLove armband to support gay, lesbian. bisexual, trans and queer people, and send a positive message that everyone should feel welcome at all sports tournaments.

The noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, raised the importance of safeguarding, and it is vital that everyone participating in sport feels safe and secure, and that, where allegations of inappropriate or harmful behaviour are made, they are taken seriously. There is no place for abuse of any kind in sport and anyone responsible for such behaviour must be held accountable. We have taken significant steps to improve safeguarding in sport, including the revision of standards and protections for children in sport, the introduction of an independent complaints and disclosure system for elite sport, and the strengthening of positions of trust legislation. But we will continue to work to make sport in the UK inclusive and welcoming for everyone, at every level.

A number of noble Lords mentioned facilities, which are indeed fundamental to a strong sporting community. The Government are acting to deliver the right facilities that every community needs across the United Kingdom. We are investing a total of £230 million between 2022 and 2025, and I can tell noble Lords that £43 million of that was delivered in 2021-22. This includes an existing £18 million of annual commitment in England, which is delivered through the Football Foundation in partnership with the FA and the Premier League. This investment will build up or improve up to 8,000 facilities across the country, especially in some of the most deprived areas.

The focus is not just on football: 40% of our investment will deliver facilities that can support multiple sports. We are also investing £30 million, together with the Lawn Tennis Association, to renovate and repair thousands of public park tennis courts, which might be able to host the match between my noble friends Lord Naseby and Lady Sater—I know who my money would be on.

Like my noble friend Lord Holmes and the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, we recognise the importance of ensuring public access to leisure facilities, including swimming pools, which are great spaces for people of all ages and backgrounds to stay fit and healthy. They also play a vital role in their communities. The responsibility for providing access to public leisure facilities, as noble Lords know, lies with local authorities, which the Government continue to encourage to invest in this. We know that the rise in the cost of living, and energy costs in particular, is concerning for many clubs and for local authorities. That is why we supported them through the energy bills relief scheme and continue to provide support under the energy bills discount scheme.

My noble friend Lord Holmes asked what we are doing at a national government level. My right honourable friend the Sport Minister is actively engaging with the sector, including by recently holding a round table to continue to assess the ongoing impact on leisure centres. So that work continues.

I turn to the important role of the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, which was raised by my noble friend Lady Sater and others. It was established in 2021 and works across government, using evidence to influence policy and ensure greater consideration of preventing ill health and tackling disparities in cross-government decision-making. It is taking action on the major preventable conditions that drive ill health and early death, including cardiovascular disease and some cancers, as well as the risk factors that can cause those conditions, including tobacco, obesity, alcohol and drug use. It does this alongside local government, the National Health Service, academia and industry.

As the Government mentioned in our response to the Private Member’s Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Addington —the Health Promotion Bill—social prescribing is an evolving and important mechanism to direct and refer people into physical activity opportunities. The Government are providing £13.9 million to deliver active travel social prescribing pilot programmes to 11 local authority areas across England. The funding will go towards projects including adult cycle training, free bicycle loans and walking groups.

The Government have a particular focus on supporting children and young people to become more active. Quite simply, sport and physical activity are a life-long habit that needs to be carefully nurtured from a young age, as noble Lords raised. High-quality physical education and sport in all schools is fundamental to ensuring that every child and young person has the opportunity to take part in a range of sports, which is why PE is a compulsory subject in the national curriculum from key stages 1 to 4. The PE national curriculum aims to ensure that all pupils develop competence to excel in a broad range of sport and physical activities, are physically active for sustained periods of time, and engage in competitive sports and activities. The noble Lord, Lord Knight, asked when the Sport Minister last discussed the curriculum with the Schools Minister. I can tell him that they discussed it in public just last month, when both spoke in another place in a debate on sport in schools.

On teachers, we are committed to ensuring that evidence-informed training, support and professional development runs through every teacher’s career. The evidence base underpinning the initial teacher training core content framework is the same as that underpinning the early career framework and the new national professional qualifications. This will ensure coherence and quality through teacher training and development that is based on the best evidence of what works. Some 179 providers have been successful, following a rigorous accreditation process designed to drive up the quality and consistency of initial teacher training.

The Government continue to fund the primary PE and sport premium, with £320 million of funding to primary schools confirmed for the current academic year. Since 2013, the total is over £2 billion. The PE and sport premium supports primary schools to make additional and sustainable improvements to the quality of the PE, school sport and physical activity that they provide. The Government are currently considering arrangements for the primary PE and sport premium for the forthcoming academic year and beyond, which will be announced as soon as possible.

Alongside community facilities, facilities on school sites represent an important resource for pupils and their families. The Department for Education is providing additional support to schools to open their sporting facilities outside the core day—at weekends and in the school holidays—which will increase sporting opportunities for pupils and wider community users from parts of the country with low physical activity levels. The Department for Education has procured a national partner to deliver phase 3 of its opening schools’ facilities programme. This phase aims to connect schools to national and local sporting organisations that can offer children and young people more opportunities to access extracurricular activities.

The Government also support physical activity and sport outside the school term through the £200 million a year holiday activities and food programme. All local authorities in England are delivering this programme, which takes place in schools and community venues and which supports disadvantaged pupils and families with enriching activities, including sport, as well as with healthy food. Last summer, the programme reached over 685,000 children and young people in England, including more than 580,000 funded directly by the programme.

Of course, as noble Lords reminded us, getting moving is not confined to playing sport. People can get fitter and healthier through increased walking and cycling in their daily lives. Last August, the Department for Transport formally established Active Travel England as an executive agency. As a delivery body, it will be at the heart of ensuring that the objectives of the Government’s second statutory cycling and walking investment strategy are met, and it will oversee the delivery of funding programmes. The Department for Transport is investing over £200 million on Active Travel projects in this financial year. That includes £161 million on 134 walking and cycling infrastructure schemes across 46 local authorities, including new footways, cycle lanes and pedestrian crossings.

I thank all noble Lords for their contributions and for the lively and passionate debate we have enjoyed today. I echo the tributes paid by the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, to the work of voluntary and community sports groups, as well as all those who work professionally to inspire people to get more active. Sport forms an essential part of our society, and I hope that my response has given noble Lords a clear indication of the Government’s commitment to building a healthier and fitter nation. I look forward to debating the topic with noble Lords as we continue that work.