Tennis

Debate between Rosie Cooper and Meg Munn

Wednesday 18th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Meg Munn]

As an MP representing a constituency even further away from London than the hon. Gentleman’s, I am obviously keen for the legacy of the games to be felt throughout the country. I have spent time in Leamington Spa, but I was unaware of its history, so I am delighted to have been educated. Let us get kids out playing and then teach them the history, but I welcome his intervention.

In 1997, when the Labour Government came to power, school sports were poorly funded and communities relied on badly funded local authority provision and voluntary clubs. The Labour Government set out to create a proper structure to encourage greater participation, which included the Youth Sport Trust, for schools and youth clubs; Sport England, for community support through national governing bodies; and UK Sport, for elite sport throughout England.

In December 2008, Sport England announced a £480 million investment to provide grass-roots sporting opportunities and a lasting Olympic legacy of 1 million people playing more sport. It awarded sports funding based on their expected ability to increase the number of people playing sport and to ensure that young, talented players could be identified and supported to develop their skills.

Through the four-year whole sport plan, tennis received a block grant of nearly £27 million for 2009-13—the fourth largest grant given to any sport—from Sport England. That money is channelled through the sport’s national governing body, the Lawn Tennis Association. It was originally built on a club structure, but there has been a shift to include more local authority-run parks and school sites. Almost 200 park sites, which offer affordable tennis, are accredited as beacons and the LTA also invested £200,000 in revenue funding last year to support free and affordable activities. Sport England targets tennis funding at three areas, for which it uses the terms: grow, sustain and excel. For those of us who do not like such short descriptions, they mean increasing the number of people playing tennis, sustaining their number through measuring existing participants’ satisfaction and helping young, talented players to progress and excel.

[Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

At Glenburn sports college in Skelmersdale, the LTA has invested in developing high-quality tennis courts. It is a new town that has existed for only 50 years, so it does not have the great history that the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) mentioned and had no tennis provision in a town of 40,000 people. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important to ensure that the opportunity to get involved in tennis should be widely accessible, especially in communities such as Skelmersdale that did not have a tennis court? You never know, we may discover stars.

[Meg Munn]

I am delighted to predict that a future Wimbledon champion will no doubt come from my hon. Friend’s constituency. She makes the point extremely well—that is exactly what needs to happen.

The LTA has undertaken significant work in the past 18 months to accelerate growth in participation in park tennis sites, schools and through its “allplay” campaign, launched in summer 2011 to help more people play tennis. The campaign includes a free website to help people to find someone to play against, a local place to play tennis, of which there are about 20,000, and coaching to help people to improve. For future projects, the LTA has invested or committed £19.9 million in total to 159 projects or facilities since 2008. Over £11 million of that comes from Sport England’s whole sport plan funding, with the LTA funding the remainder directly. That will result in 32 new indoor courts, 109 new outdoor courts, nearly 300 resurfaced or reconstructed courts and 294 courts floodlit across England. The LTA investment rightly reaches beyond traditional clubs— £7.9 million has gone into community facilities, such as parks and education sites, and no doubt that includes my hon. Friend’s constituency.