UK Sport: Elite Sport Funding

Lord Thomas of Gresford Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2018 Grand Committee

[Lord Thomas of Gresford (LD)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Addington for focusing this debate on the proper relationship between elite sport and grass roots sport in this country.

The National Survey for Wales 2016-17 found that of the 700,000 population in north Wales where I live, 190,000 people—27%—aged 16 and above are not currently active but want to be more active. So, this very day, Chwaraeon Cymru—Sport Wales—is launching Sport North Wales, pioneering a new model. It is seeking longer-term funding from the Welsh Government who currently provide £3 million annually across the six local authorities. Sport North Wales will lead and co-ordinate sport throughout the region with a single mission and purpose; precisely how is yet to be revealed by today’s press release, but I hope that it follows along the lines outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, to preserve community sports facilities. In my own home town we have lost two swimming pools and nothing has replaced them.

I have always been involved in very muddy grass roots sport in north Wales, having played rugby until age disqualified me, coached my team as a WRU qualified coach to win the North Wales Cup, and then refereed from Blaenau Ffestiniog to Rhosllanerchrugog. My noble friend Lord Addington knows of my afterlife of refereeing parliamentary rugby, which is much slower but more violent, from North Island in New Zealand to California in the United States.

I am delighted that Rygbi Gogledd Cymru 1404, the date that Owain Glyndŵr beat the English, which is based at Colwyn Bay is currently heading the Welsh Premier League, the most senior league under the four regions in Wales. In my youth, north Wales was regarded as soccer territory. Wrexham Football Club was founded in 1864 and is the third oldest professional rugby club in the world. So a protestant Caernarfonshire and Anglesey supported Everton in Liverpool, for goodness’ sake, but what happened to bring rugby players such as Robbie McBryde and George North out of Anglesey? It was the elite Welsh rugby team of the 1970s with Gareth Edwards, Barry John, Phil Bennett and Ray Williams from Wrexham. It became patriotic to play rugby, particularly in the Welsh-speaking areas. So I have lived to see how sporting success breeds grass roots participation, with clubs springing up in Bala, Harlech and Menai Bridge. I once had to delay the kick-off in Nant Conwy because Twm, the star flanker, was still shearing his sheep on the hill. These and many others were clubs that simply did not exist in the 1960s.

But I have also been lucky enough to be able to take part in the United Kingdom’s premier Olympic sport of rowing, not so much at grass roots as more semi-submerged. The great Sir Steven Redgrave and Sir Matthew Pinsent scored Britain’s only gold medal in the Atlanta Olympic Games of 1996 at Lake Lanier. I rowed on that lake with my Chester-based club, Rex, the following year.

The tally in 1996 over all sports was 15 medals and Britain ranked 36th in the world, which is something that I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Wasserman, would not approve of. With the leadership of Redgrave and Pinsent, with professional coaching and facilities, and with the backing of National Lottery and government funding, the sport of rowing grew and flourished. Elite success led the way. Every time we had an Olympic success, we had recruits to my Chester club. Indeed, my club captain’s son, Tom James, won three Olympic golds in three successive Olympics. Another club member’s daughter, Vicky Thornley, won a silver medal along with Katherine Grainger in the Rio Olympics. Such is the increase in the grass roots membership of the Rex Rowing Club. I can assure your Lordships that we are not called Rex for nothing because we are about to launch four new boats at the weekend after next—one, if I may say so modestly, with my name upon it. I believe it to be very positive that some noble Lords have been encouraged to row in the annual Parliamentary Boat Race and have voiced a number of issues raised by British Rowing through the APPG.

I appreciate the single-minded purpose of UK Sport to produce medals and glory for Britain at the forthcoming Tokyo Olympics. That is its mission statement and it fulfils it very well, but I am not sure that reducing the number of sports being supported and cutting off the rest without a shilling is the right way forward. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, that there should be a base level of funding for national governing bodies in all Olympic sports otherwise the development of important areas of sport will be lost. Perhaps in 1996 tae-kwon-do would not have appeared on the list of supported sports, but Jade Jones MBE was introduced to the sport by her grandfather at the age of eight in the little village of Bodelwyddan in Denbighshire and now has two gold medals under her belt in successive Olympics.

There is today a thirst for fitness and activity among young people. Just go outside and see the peloton of cyclists swooping past this House, risking the life and limb of every noble Lord. It is absolutely clear that investment in sport will pay back in the future by reducing obesity, diminishing diabetes and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, said, lowering dependency on the NHS.

If lottery proceeds are falling, there is an obligation on the Government to step in and invest wisely. So where is the money coming from? Some sports do not require support. Football’s income from television is obscenely high and distorts wages and the transfer market. Gambling produces obscene profits for gaming companies without their employees even having to kick a ball or jump a fence. So it could come from, maybe not a tax, but certainly sponsorship. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Wasserman, wants to get money out of the Home Office and the Foreign Office and I wish him the greatest luck in that, but it is very important that sport is supported. In the interests of a healthy society there has got to be a rebalancing of resources. Is it not time to be thinking radically?