Sport: Team GB and ParalympicsGB

Debate between Louie French and Toby Perkins

Thursday 10th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

It is my pleasure to open today’s debate on behalf of the official Opposition. I start by welcoming the new Secretary of State and Ministers to their place on the Front Bench. I look forward to what I am sure will be plenty of robust but fair debate in the weeks and months ahead. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) on her unopposed return as the Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. I agree with the Secretary of State’s remarks a few weeks ago that the mark of any good Government is the ability to welcome challenge. I am sure that as the official Opposition, we will provide just that, alongside the Select Committee, in the spirit of healthy competition and in the national interest.

Own goals, knock-ons and false starts are sporting phrases that could easily describe the shambolic first 100 days of this Labour Government. Thankfully those words not do reflect the performances of our Olympic and Paralympic athletes in Paris, who did their country proud again this summer. While there was a reduction in the overall amount of British gold—not for the first time under a new Labour Government—the 327 athletes who made up Team GB at the Paris Olympics delivered a respectable seventh-place finish in the medal table, winning a total of 65 medals across 18 different sports.

We saw Ellie Aldridge become the first Olympic gold medallist in kite surfing. Kate Shortman and Izzy Thorpe won Team GB’s first ever Olympic medal in artistic swimming—not something I know too much about—while Toby Roberts became the first medallist for Team GB in sport climbing, winning gold in the boulder and lead combined. Who can forget the emotional scenes of watching Andy Murray’s last appearance on court after a fantastic career, the breathtaking drama of the athletics relays, GB rowers surging to victory near the finish line or, my personal favourite, which the Minister has already referenced, the sprint finish of Alex Yee, who reminded the world not to write off us south-east Londoners?

The same spirit was clearly demonstrated by our fantastic Paralympic athletes over the summer, with Great Britain finishing second in the medal table on 49 gold medals, making it the third consecutive second-place finish for Great Britain at the Paralympic games. That is an achievement I know the whole House and country will celebrate. With eight more gold medals won than in Tokyo three years ago, the ParalympicsGB team also equalled another record set then, winning medals across 18 of the 19 sports in which the team competed. That is still the highest number of any nation ever, and more than half of the 215 athletes in the team reached the podium.

While Labour MPs were busy shaking it off to Taylor Swift, Dame Sarah Storey was on her bike adding to her personal medal haul with a level of consistency and performance similar to that of England’s now all-time leading run scorer, Joe Root. Who can forget the incredible personal achievements of Paris swimmers Poppy Maskill and Alice Tai or wheelchair racer Sammi Kinghorn, who all left Paris with five medals each?

As any athlete or sport enthusiast knows, sport is nothing without the fans, coaches and thousands of volunteers across our great nation who help to support our grassroots clubs and top-class athletes to achieve their dreams and inspire the next generation. This summer was no different, with excellent coverage from the likes of the BBC and Channel 4 allowing an estimated 56 million viewers to witness another triumph of British sport and our athletes once again showcasing the best of British endeavour, character and competitive spirit. Britain

“invented the majority of the world’s great sports....19th century Britain was the cradle of a leisure revolution every bit as significant as the agricultural and industrial revolutions we launched in the century before.”

Those are the words of the former Prime Minister, Sir John Major, and they still ring true today. The Conservative party has maintained his commitment to our athletes, from the grassroots all the way to the elite athletes competing at the international level.

Before I move on to talk about the Conservatives’ proud record of supporting UK sport, I must highlight the crucial role of national lottery funding. The national lottery, established by a Conservative Government, has funded elite-level sport for more than three decades. In fact, from 2013 to 2017, the national lottery donated £337 million to the funding of UK Sport. According to that fantastic organisation, since national lottery funding began for the Olympics and Paralympics, British athletes have won a total of 863 medals. That funding has transformed British fortunes from finishing 36th in the Olympic medal table at Atlanta in 1996 with just one gold medal, to today, when we are undoubtedly an Olympic and Paralympic powerhouse.

More broadly, since its creation the national lottery has invested more than £49 billion into good causes across the country, with more than £14 million of that going into my constituency of Old Bexley and Sidcup. I am pleased that so many right hon. and hon. Members were able to meet some of those excellent organisations in Parliament just yesterday.

Over the last 14 years, the Conservative party, working alongside many fantastic sporting bodies, has backed our elite athletes. We have seen the Lionesses win a European championship and our men’s team reach a major final for the first time since 1966—we will not talk too much about the result. We also brought football home with the Euro 2020 final played at Wembley stadium. We have secured the competition’s return in 2028, when the UK and Ireland will host the European championships.

At the London Olympics, we all watched as our British athletes led the pack in swimming, cycling and so many other sports, alongside the fantastic Commonwealth Games in both 2014 and 2022, which have combined to inspire a new generation of athletes to greatness on our watch. Whereas Labour delivered the so-called austerity Olympics in 1948, we delivered the best Olympic games for a generation—I personally believe they were the best that the world has ever seen. Who can forget the incredible opening ceremony and the role played by Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II?

The Conservatives committed more than £9 billion so that, as a nation, we could ensure that the games were the most inspiring for our constituents that they could be, despite the financial challenges inherited from the Labour Government in 2010. The then Prime Minister Lord Cameron correctly believed that hosting the Olympics would secure a range of benefits over and above the intrinsic impact on sport, embracing trade, regeneration and national wellbeing. He was undoubtedly correct.

After we delivered the London 2012 Olympic Games for the nation and the world, we promised not to stop there. We committed to delivering an Olympics legacy that the country could be proud of for the decade following the games in five key areas.

[Mr Perkins]

The hon. Member is talking about the post-London Olympics legacy. One legacy is that the amount of physical education taught in in schools went down by 45,000 hours under his Government, and the gap between the number of state schools and independent schools doing team sports rocketed. Is the real legacy of his Government not that school sport was massively diminished, and should he not actually be apologising for their record in that regard?

[Mr French]

It was only a matter of time before those on the Labour Benches came out swinging. What I would say is that we could look at the record of the previous Labour Government, who sold off sports pitches, and have a much longer debate about whose legacy is worse.

The previous Conservative Government began to deliver on the Olympics promise right away. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport’s 2015 report, “A Living Legacy: 2010-15 Sport Policy and Investment”, confirmed that 1.6 million more people were playing sport once a week than when London won the Olympic bid under Labour in 2005. To build out that significant improvement, we backed our up-and-coming athletes with more than £1.35 billion for grassroots sport facilities across the country to ensure that they had the best facilities possible to achieve their potential. Funding from Conservative Governments has also seen over £320 million invested in grassroots sports across the country between 2021 to 2025 to build, renovate and maintain grass pitches and multi-sport facilities. That included up to 8,000 new and improved multi-sport grassroots facilities and pitches across the whole of the UK, helping the next generation to avoid the waterlogged and muddy pitches that I remember not so fondly from my experiences growing up playing football and rugby.

Between 2022 and 2024, £21.9 million was provided to renovate more than 3,000 tennis courts across Scotland, England and Wales. More than £60 million was provided by the last Government through the swimming pool support fund in 2023 and 2024 to support public swimming pool providers in England with immediate cost pressures and to provide investment to make facilities sustainable in the longer term. As most people will appreciate, swimming is not just a fantastic sport but a key life skill. Communities across the country have also benefited from the last Government’s community ownership fund, which helped save more than 330 pubs, sports clubs, arts venues and other precious community spaces. Also, we must not forget the £30 million Lionesses futures fund, which is helping to provide opportunities for the next generation of Lionesses. That £30 million is being used to build approximately 30 new state-of-the-art pitches and accompanying facilities. The sites will be designed to prioritise women and girls’ teams across England.

Importantly, the prominence of female athletes such as the Lionesses, Dame Kelly Holmes and Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill has helped to increase the number of women in England who participate in sport and physical activity. That legacy continues, with 550,000 more women participating than did eight years ago. Of course, there is more to do, but the steady improvement in participation shows that creating the legacy of the London games is a marathon, not a sprint.

It is not often that I will be positive about Arsenal, but the Prime Minister will be pleased that Arsenal women’s team is leading the way in women’s football; role models such as Leah Williamson are helping attendance at the Emirates to grow to record levels. The women’s team sold out the Emirates several times last season, and average attendance at their games was better than at 10 premier league clubs.

As we move on from the Paris games and turn towards Los Angeles in 2028, another round of great British athletes will inspire more of the next generation. While nothing will compare to the home games delivered by my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash (Jeremy Hunt) and Boris Johnson as Mayor of London, the most recent games will surely be a springboard allowing a new generation of athletes to begin their ascendancy to the peak of world sport. The official Opposition will hold the Government’s feet to the fire to ensure that they support our athletes all the way from Sunday league to the premier league, so that they continue to perform at the pinnacle of world sport, as they have over the past 14 years. In doing so, we remember the crucial role that sport plays in our communities and for our health; I agree with the Minister’s comments on that.

I hope that today we will all finally learn more about Labour’s plans to fund support for great British sport, and to continue the strong Conservative legacy that the Government have inherited, because sport is about much more than just free tickets.