Childhood Obesity

Roger Gale Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Justin Tomlinson]

I thank the hon. Lady for that useful contribution. She is right. A lot of what we are doing is putting in the building blocks for a long-term future to tackle health issues. Organisations, such as the sports forum, can talk to people of all ages and ask people to engage. Local authorities and sports groups have a role in that. One of the best things that I saw was Swindon borough council’s Challenge Swindon campaign, which brought together offices, pubs and sports groups and got them all involved in different sports. It aimed to get people to try something and then continue to do it.

We face a number of other challenges. The lack of volunteers is always a challenge, particularly in sport. A huge number of sports groups would like to be able to do something, but there are not sufficient parents with the time to be able to do that—a particular problem for organised sport.

Private finance initiative schools are another challenge: when I was a councillor, the majority of schools in my area were PFI schools. We had a high-density development and a wonderful piece of open space, but a fence and a set of high hire charges blocked children from utilising what was their school until 4 o’clock in the afternoon. Sports clubs came to me on a number of occasions saying that they simply could not afford to use the facilities, which could not be opened because there was not enough flexibility. It was a crying shame that they were left unused.

An issue that I have brought into other debates is the cost of insurance for transporting children. As we push things such as the school Olympics or outdoor active learning, insuring a teacher to take a minibus can cost more than £1,000. I have urged the Government to create a national insurance scheme for teachers and sports clubs using minibuses.

We must not forget the Olympics and the Olympics legacy, about which we had a debate in the main Chamber last week. It is all about the legacy. We will have an enjoyable Olympics, when we are bound to win some medals, but the key will be the lasting legacy. That is why I was so supportive of the principle of school sport partnerships. A big advert for a whole variety of sports that different children will have never thought of trying will be on the television, and the ones we do particularly well in will inspire children to go and re-create them. We must ensure that we do all that we can. Going back to the point about insurance, if we want the school Olympics to work, we need to be able to get children from one school to another in order to compete.

My slightly more radical proposal is to do with how leisure and youth services work in local authorities. In the old days, leisure was very much about competitive sport, with the traditional youth service organising youth activities. The two would never meet in the middle. Times have now changed massively.

I remember that on a Friday night the leisure centre would put on an ice-skating disco for the teenagers—again, not technically a sport, but 600 teenagers building up a head of steam and racing around chasing after the person they thought particularly attractive was a sporting activity. It was absolutely fantastic. Under my radical proposal, the youth service with its mobile buses would have been better off pitching up at that facility, to offer advice, advocacy and support to those who wanted it, and letting leisure be the attraction to bring people in. Likewise with the point made about the Pineapple dance studios and the street dance, often the biggest challenge is to get young girls active, but hundreds of children want to do dance and cheerleading.

Youth and leisure services should sit around the same table, pooling their funds and facilities—the leisure centres often have the better facilities—and working together. They would then be on hand. My hon. Friend mentioned the Get Set programme, and I have written to all the schools in my constituency, encouraging them to do as much as they can.

In conclusion, we need to learn three lessons. First, it is important to have balance in an active and healthy lifestyle. We can sometimes be a bit too zealous in saying, “You should not watch TV. You should not play computer games.” When I was growing up, as soon as the sun was shining, I was charging around outside. I would not have dreamed of watching TV or playing computer games. However, in the evening, that is what I did. That is a fine balance to have.

Secondly, we should allow people to make informed decisions through clear labelling and to do things for themselves. To do that, they need the skills, which is why I am such a fan of the cookery lessons.

Finally, everything should be fun. Children like fun things. Give them the open spaces—as I said, it does not matter if the open spaces are vertical, because children are creative and will come up with their own way of dealing with such things. However, let us at least give them the opportunity to have a better lifestyle.

Several hon. Members rose—

[Mr Roger Gale (in the Chair)]

Order. I expect the occupant of the Chair will wish to call the Front Benchers at five past 12, at the latest, and three hon. Members are waiting to speak. Hon. Members should bear that in mind when speaking.