Oral Answers to Questions

Luke Evans Excerpts

Thursday 20th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

The shadow Secretary of State will know that the Prime Minister has identified the creative industries as one of the five sectors of growth that we are supporting as a Government, because they are really important. She mentions GCSEs, but I do not think we should just have music and arts at GCSE. We need them at T-levels, we need apprenticeships and we need them in primary school. She will know, because I have talked about it incessantly, that that is exactly what we are doing and that is what is in our creative sector vision. I will just point out—because I was reminded of it the other day—that a Labour Secretary of State for Education and Employment, David Blunkett, slimmed down the statutory curriculum for creative education and told headteachers to teach fewer creative subjects at school.

[Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)]

10. What progress her Department has made on publishing a sports strategy. [R]

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Stuart Andrew)]

The Government have committed to delivering a refreshed sports strategy that will set the long-term strategic policy direction for sport. The strategy will outline the Government’s future ambitions and how we will support the sector to achieve them, and we intend to publish it as soon as possible.

[Dr Evans]

I am grateful for the Minister’s answer. With many more people getting into sport, there is also a temptation to get into image and performance-enhancing drugs. We have seen an explosion in that, with estimates of between half a million and 1 million users—and that is an underestimate—from academics, UK Anti-Doping and organisations such as ukactive, which I have met with. Will the Minister look at putting a policy in the sports strategy to gather more data on image and performance-enhancing drugs in sport?

[Stuart Andrew]

I praise my hon. Friend for being a doughty campaigner on this important issue and thank him for that. He has rightly raised this with me on a number of occasions. The safety and wellbeing of everyone taking part in sport is hugely important. That includes looking at image and performance-enhancing drugs. Since I last met him, I have raised this with UKAD. We must bring about better collaboration across the Department to ensure that we tackle this issue.