Oral Answers to Questions

Simon Hart Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

We are certainly promoting research on new generations of renewable energy, and the hon. Gentleman will be aware of the new centre in Glasgow established specifically to look at tidal and wave power. I do not recognise his figure of £20 billion of subsidy for the nuclear industry. I am sure we are not going there.

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

T4. Will the Secretary of State join me in congratulating Sam Davies from Whitland in Carmarthenshire for doing so well in the “We Made It” competition recently? Will he also get behind that competition, as it encourages so many young people into STEM-based jobs?

[Michael Fallon]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Yes, we welcome the “We Made It” competition. Manufacturing offers young people enormous scope to do something really worth while and to be well rewarded in the process. Through programmes such as See Inside Manufacturing, we are ensuring that young people see for themselves the wealth of career opportunities in manufacturing, and understand how studying science, technology and engineering at all levels leads to well-regarded career opportunities.

Oral Answers to Questions

Simon Hart Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)]

There has been a large written campaign about religious education and I should make the point that we regard RE as a very important part of the curriculum, as it provides a rigorous subject. However, its study is compulsory until 16 and we were concerned that if we had included it as part of the humanities element, weaker schools would have dropped history or geography and focused only on RE. We want a broad and balanced curriculum taught in our schools, including not only a humanities subject, such as history and geography, but RE.

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

T3. The National Audit Office’s conclusions about apprenticeships are very welcome indeed, but can the Minister assure the House that young people who live in truly rural areas are also benefiting from the scheme?

[Mr Hayes]

My own constituency is one of those truly rural areas—true in every respect—that have benefited. In my constituency, the figure is 86%, in Banbury 33%, in Suffolk Coastal 56% and in Mid Norfolk 59%—across rural Britain, apprenticeships are growing.

School Sport

Simon Hart Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Sutcliffe]

Very much so. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. He will know about the statistics on obesity in young people and about the health risks. He is right that sport is an integral part of life skills. Not everybody can be a champion, and not everybody can be elite, but we can be the best that we can be. I do not look like a healthy specimen, but my own involvement in sport through the parliamentary football team, school sport, the friends that we make through sport and the life skills that it gives us, all show that sport is an integral part of what we should be trying to achieve.

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

Of course, we all agree about the benefit of sport, but does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is about a bit more than that? It is also about getting kids out of classrooms—not necessarily on to a sports field—and into different areas of the great outdoors, which relates to the benefits that he has mentioned. That has been held up as a result of extreme regulation and red tape. Does he accept that the Government have made some progress in stripping away that red tape to get children from the classroom to the outdoors?

[Mr Sutcliffe]

I am grateful for that intervention. I understand the hon. Gentleman’s premise in terms of getting youngsters outside. School sport was fairly stereotypical in that girls played netball and hockey, boys played football, rugby and cricket, and basically that was it. The previous Government were proud—the Government’s misleading statistics come into play—of being able to widen the range of sports on offer. Mountaineering, canoeing, sailing, cycling and so on get people out into different environments. People who are not good at ball skills can get into cycling and other sports. We worked with those sports’ governing bodies to develop this framework. I am sad that that seems to be being reversed. I do not think that that is irreversible, and it can be put right.

There was a cross-party consensus to see that delivered and developed. It was only after the election in 2010 that that consensus seemed to disappear. Labour’s record was rubbished by Ministers as a justification for implementing a scorched earth policy promoted by the Secretary of State for Education, who is known to be hostile to the very concept of organised sport. The school sports partnership network, the cornerstone of school sports policy, was decimated to the astonishment of experts around the world all to save £162 million. The vast majority of that money had been spent on pupils in schools. It was seen as a world-class model and the shock throughout the sporting world was genuine. The director of community sport at the Australian Sports Commission said:

“I am absolutely devastated to hear of the cuts to the School Sport Partnership models. I am astounded that such an amazing and world-leading initiative has been lost to the communities they serviced.”

Labour’s then shadow spokesman for education, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), begged the Secretary of State not to dismantle the SSP network. He even offered Labour support for a reduction in funding to SSPs, as long as the infrastructure was kept in place. I am afraid that his pleas fell on deaf ears.

Within weeks, the Government were forced into a partial U-turn because of an unprecedented backlash against their proposals—a backlash lead not just by politicians, but by Olympians, sports bodies, sports journalists and the grass-roots volunteer army. What we got was a cobbled together set of announcements that still leave the future of school sport in jeopardy. SSPs and school sports organisers have been told not to expect funding beyond August 2013. Those cuts will effectively mean an end to the infrastructure that supports the school sport network at the very time that we should be seeking to increase activity in the run-up to next year’s Olympic games and Paralympic games. What makes matters worse is that the Secretary of State has removed the need for schools to collect data on pupils’ progress. That will make it almost impossible effectively to monitor future participation rates and the effect of those cuts.

The much heralded school games, the new flagship Government policy, in actual fact already existed in the guise of the UK school games, which were supported by Sainsbury’s. The funding for the school games represents a massive 60% annual cut for school sport, which is well above the average for departmental cuts imposed as part of the austerity measures. Are we really saying that an annual competition, which is most likely to be of real value only for children at the elite end of their sport, is a replacement for a whole school sport network that improves the life chances of all children? This cobbled together funding has left school sport in disarray and left school organisers, clubs and volunteers with no idea about what will happen after 2013.

There is nothing wrong with competitive sport in schools. I speak as someone who spent a large part of my childhood, and indeed early adulthood, playing competitive sport. I completely understand the benefits of competitive sport, but competitive sport alone does not constitute a holistic Government policy towards PE in our education system. I will tell the Chamber why that is, and it goes to the heart of the problem. There is a fundamental lack of understanding about sport at the most senior levels of Government policy making. The Secretary of State for Education and the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport simply do not comprehend that successful participation in competitive sport can be achieved only by first mastering the basics of sport and PE. As the Youth Sport Trust has said, high quality physical education is essential for developing the necessary skills and confidence to participate effectively in competitive sport. Simply throwing all pupils into competitive sport, without first building what the Youth Sport Trust refers to as “physical literacy”, is both unfair and unrealistic, particularly in larger schools. Current Government policy, with its fixation on competitive sport at the expense of all else, is building our sporting future on sand.

What of that future? Talk to people involved in grass-roots sport—in schools, clubs, community sports networks and the national governing bodies—and they will tell you that there is deep concern and confusion. I thank the national governing bodies that have been in contact with me—rugby league, rugby union, tennis and other sports—to talk about how their sports are helping the wider environment. Our sporting volunteer army and our dedicated PE and sports staff in schools are an innovative lot. They will be looking at ways of maintaining the networks that we created over the past decade to ensure that the enormous progress that we made is not lost. In many places, they will succeed. If they do, it will be because of the enormous dedication and passion of those involved. If they succeed, it will be despite Government policy, not because of it. However, I fear that in some schools and communities, school sport will cease to be a priority. As if they did not have enough to contend with, there are threats on the near horizon that could create a perfect storm for school and youth sport.

In January 2011, the Government announced a comprehensive review of the national curriculum. The review is likely to see a slimmed down curriculum for sport in schools. Although PE is likely to be retained as a compulsory national curriculum subject, there is no guarantee that the two-hour offer, never mind the five-hour offer, will be retained. A recent review of global policy in schools showed that all the countries it looked at provided PE time targets, following this country’s lead. How sad and ironic will it be if, after leading the world on increasing children’s participation in school sport, we abandon one of the key mechanisms by which that was achieved?

The national curriculum review will not be completed until September 2012. That creates more uncertainty for all those involved in school sport. Steve Grainger, the then chief executive of the Youth Sport Trust, in response to the review, said:

“The quality and quantity of PE and school sport that is now being offered in schools has improved vastly in recent years. Ensuring it remains a vital part of the national curriculum will allow young people to continue to enjoy the many benefits that sport and physical education can bring.”

I appreciate that the review is ongoing, but will the Minister outline current coalition thinking about exactly what a “slimmed down” sports and PE curriculum would look like? What assurances can the Minister give that the slimming down of the sports and PE curriculum will not lead to the Government abandoning the two-hour commitment?

The coalition Government’s national planning policy framework will undo the protections for playing fields that the previous Labour Government put into place in 1998 and 2004. The Football Association stated, in its written evidence to the NPPF, that the proposals put

“playing fields and facilities at great risk”.

Are we going to see a return to the ’80s and ’90s, where playing fields were seen merely as development opportunities to be sold to the highest bidder? Will the Minister give a categorical assurance that measures contained in the NPPF and the Localism Act 2011 will not relax the restrictions on decommissioning school playing fields introduced by the previous Labour Government? Will he give an absolute assurance that the sale of school playing fields will be allowed only as an option of last resort?

What of the Government’s free schools policy? How will the Government meet the sports and PE offer for pupils attending free schools? How can the Government remain committed to sport and PE, if they are willing to allow free schools to open in buildings where there is no space for outdoor recreation? Will the Minister give a categorical assurance that free schools will not be exempt from providing sport and PE as part of their curriculum?

As hon. Members can gather, it is a source of great personal sadness to me to see much of the work on school sport that we did in government undone in such a brutal and senseless fashion. That has been sanctioned by people at the top of Government, who have little or no understanding of the power of sport to change lives. What has happened particularly saddens me because, during my time as Minister for Sport, there was a general cross-party consensus about sport and school sport in particular. I worked closely with the then shadow Ministers—the right hon. Member for Bath (Mr Foster) and the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Hugh Robertson), who was my successor as Minister for Sport—to ensure that sport was not used as a political football, if hon. Members will pardon the pun. Despite their public pronouncements, I cannot imagine that either of those hon. Members is personally happy with the Government’s direction on school sport.

Next year, London will host the largest sporting event ever held in Britain. That should be a catalyst for embedding participation, commitment and aspiration into a generation of young people. However, we risk losing that opportunity because we are sending out a mixed message to young people. We tell them, “Get involved and participate,” but we are taking funding away from them and from the networks that facilitate their participation. The year before we host the Olympic and Paralympic games, we have ended the ring-fencing of sports funding for specialist sports colleges. Yet, last week, I was amazed to hear that an extra £40 million could be found for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic and Paralympic games, which is one quarter of the budget for school sports partnerships. What message does the Minister think that that sends out to the hundreds of SSP staff losing their jobs, to the volunteers who give their time and money, and to the pupils hoping to emulate their Olympic heroes?

As I have said, playing sport was a major part of my childhood and early adulthood, and I made many friends through sport. With the decade of sport that we have in this country—the Olympic and Paralympic games next year, the rugby league world cup in 2013, the Commonwealth games in Glasgow in 2014 and the world athletic championships in 2017—we have a wonderful opportunity. These should be inspirational times for our young people, but they will not be if we cannot develop school sport in the way that we did.

I hope that it is not too late and that Ministers will listen. I do not expect the Minister to give in completely to me this morning, but I certainly hope that he will acknowledge some of the points I have raised, that he will have discussions with his colleague, the Minister for Sport, that he will look at what is happening and that he will listen to those parents, teachers and people involved in school sports partnerships who were getting to the primary schools that, in many cases, did not have the facilities for sport. I also hope that he will listen to the young sports leaders whom I met as Minister for Sport who were going into primary schools and helping PE teachers. There is a great opportunity here. I hope that it is not lost, that the Minister listens and that we can have a sensible debate on the way forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Tomlinson]

I absolutely agree and I will build on that point shortly.

Schools have some opportunities at present. The school Olympics principle, for example, is fuelled by next year’s Olympics, which will give us a wonderful opportunity to drive up participation, particularly because they will advertise on the television a huge variety of new sports for people to try. When I was growing up, we very much followed the television. We played football predominantly, but out came the cricket bats when the cricket was on and out came the bikes during the Tour de France, and when Wimbledon was on, the tennis rackets would come out for the three days that the British participants lasted.

I have a slight plea on this issue. It is not just about getting people to be healthy and active, although that has to be the priority. There is a chronic shortage in this country of coaches and—this is often overlooked—of volunteers. When I talk to sports clubs, they tell me that they can normally find somebody to organise things, but that they cannot find a club secretary or treasurer, or someone to sort out all the insurance.

[Simon Hart]

As a former parent governor of my local school, Tavernspite, and a keen volunteer cricket coach at it, one of the obstacles that I came up against was the Criminal Records Bureau checks. There was one CRB check to be a parent governor and another to be a cricket coach. For all but the very determined, it was difficult to volunteer.

Oral Answers to Questions

Simon Hart Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2011 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

1. What assessment he has made of the social and economic value to schools and pupils of learning outside the classroom.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)]

The Government fully support learning outside the classroom, and whilst we have made no formal assessment, we recognise the important contribution it can make to engaging and supporting pupils in their education. We believe that schools should have the freedom, however, to use their professional judgment to determine how learning outside the classroom best meets the needs of their pupils.

[Simon Hart]

Will the Minister give an indication of whether his Department will look at allocating a percentage of the pupil premium for this particular area?

[Tim Loughton]

The whole point of the pupil premium is to give extra resources for schools that can be used exactly as they see fit for their own pupils. If a school wants to use a large or a small part of the pupil premium for that activity, that is entirely a matter for the head and the school.

Outdoor Learning

Simon Hart Excerpts

Wednesday 15th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

May I say what an honour it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Benton, and not for the first time?

I start by declaring an interest. My enthusiasm for this subject started in previous years when I was involved in the creation of a charity, the Countryside Alliance Foundation. That fuelled the fire for this debate and since then, a number of organisations have come on to my radar and helped enormously in shaping my views. I will quickly list them: the Field Studies Council, in particular its excellent staff at West Orielton in Pembrokeshire in my constituency; the National Trust, its Outdoor Britain campaign, and particularly the help of Jonathan Hughes; the English Outdoor Council; the Bushcraft Company; the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds; and the Council for Learning Outside the Classroom. One of the encouraging things about preparing for this debate was the common ground found between so many different organisations.

This debate is not about urban interests versus rural interests; the subject is important to everybody, wherever they come from and whatever their background and aspirations. Nor is the debate aimed at persuading urban children to go out and do things such as skin rabbits; this is about getting everybody—whether teachers or pupils—out of a classroom and into a new environment so that they can find something somewhere that excites them and in which they can excel. In short, the debate is about outdoor education, not outdoor entertainment.

When I looked into this topic, I was struck by the fact that these days only about 10% of children play outdoors, although about 40% of their parents used to do that. A survey conducted a few years ago by Country Life magazine illustrated the challenge that confronts us. A group of children was asked why, in their view, it was important that gates were closed in the countryside. The most popular answer was, “To keep the elephants in.” They were asked why it was perhaps more enjoyable to live in rural rather than urban areas, and the equally depressing, but slightly telling, response was, “There are fewer coppers.” Those are the challenges and the facts that underpin part—although not all—of this debate. We have a big mountain to climb, but we have the consensus and enthusiasm to climb it.

Emerging evidence suggests that outdoor learning meets every social target set. It is good for education, health, behaviour, community cohesion and, of course, for the natural environment. Everybody who takes part, not just those from a disadvantaged background or those who may not excel in a traditional classroom, benefits from the process. Outdoor learning teaches people, in particular teachers, to understand risk.

Depressingly, 76% of teachers turned down the opportunity to go on a field trip because of fears about health and safety. Such learning, however, is low risk and high reward, and the statistics back that up. Over a 10-year period, only 364 legal claims were tabled because of children injured at school, and only half of those cases ended in any kind of payment. On average, most local authorities paid out £293 over that period.

[James Wharton (Stockton South) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate on a topic that I know is dear to his heart. Does he agree that the health and safety culture in this country is hugely damaging, not only in relation to this debate, but overall? A bit of common sense and some good, sensible reforms to encourage people to take reasonable risks when dealing with children, or any other matter, would be of great benefit to our education system and the people of this country.

[Simon Hart]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. The difficulty with health and safety legislation is that we are trying to create a society where risk is eliminated, but no such thing is possible; risk can be limited and managed, but it cannot be eliminated. My hon. Friend highlights that point well.

In 2008, the most recent year for which we have decent figures, 53% of six to 15-year-olds did not go on a single school trip. A further depressing thought is that over the past 10 years, there has been only £4.5 million of funding for that concept. That is in stark contrast to the music manifesto, for example, which attracted £332 million of funding in 2007. About 97% of teachers believe that it is important for children to learn about the countryside within the national curriculum, and 85% of young children and their parents agree.

Some teachers cannot do what they would like because their school or local authority will not fund their cover when they take children on a trip. That is the “rarely covers” conundrum, and perhaps it goes to the heart of the debate. Under qualified teacher status 30, trainee teachers are asked only to “recognise opportunities” for out-of-classroom learning. It is a weak standard, but even that is not being reached by some initial teacher training providers.

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the barriers that stops teachers having the confidence to take kids out of school and into the countryside, to pursue an education about rural life, is that they do not have access to resources and knowledge? Is he aware of the charity FACE, Farming and Countryside Education, based at Stoneleigh in Warwickshire? It offers teachers resources, knowledge and teaching aids to help them form educational lessons and partake in rural education.

[Simon Hart]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I am aware of that charity and the good work that it does. I am also aware of countless other charities that offer similar, if not identical, services.

I stated earlier that this debate was not about the town versus the countryside. Indeed it is not, and we must be careful not to fall into the trap, as I have myself, of seeing the only benefit of outdoor learning to be that of teaching urban children about rural ways. My hon. Friend’s intervention makes it clear that plenty of people are enthusiastic about reaping the benefits of outdoor learning, but cannot do so either because of insufficient funding through the charitable sector, or because of obstacles due to health and safety legislation, bureaucracy or Government funding.

I have two questions for the Minister. First, will she consider reviewing whether current teacher training provides new teachers with the skills to lead outdoor learning activities in the first place? Secondly, will she review the “rarely covers” guide to residential visits and fieldwork, and look at whether part of the pupil premium may be used for that purpose?

Emerging evidence points to the direct and indirect health benefits of outdoor learning, including personal well-being and—the latest catchphrase—“happiness.” The current gaming epidemic does not lend itself to our mission of stirring a child’s interest in the outside world. A staggering 53 computer games were released on to the market in April 2010, and it is easy to deduce that we cannot leave it to the children to discover the outside world. It is our responsibility to take them there.

Activities such as walking, cycling and riding can burn up to 380 calories an hour. Green spaces can stabilise anger in young people, which can help prevent antisocial behaviour. Outdoor education could therefore play a key role in reducing the amount of permanent and fixed exclusions for physical and verbal abuse in schools, which currently run at the eye-watering level of 300,000 cases per year.

Outdoor learning could also help to reduce the cost of youth crime and obesity, which is estimated at an even more staggering and depressing £5 billion per annum for the taxpayer to pick up. Of course, evidence is an essential prerequisite of any progress that we make on this topic. I shall start with what Ofsted had to say about it. In 2008, Ofsted published a thematic report that stated:

“When planned and implemented well, learning outside the classroom contributed significantly to raising standards and improving pupils’ personal, social and emotional development.”

It went on to recommend that schools and colleges should

“ensure that their curriculum planning includes sufficient well structured opportunities for all learners to engage in learning outside the classroom as a key, integrated element of their experience”

and

“ensure equal and full access for all learners to learning outside the classroom”.

In a similar study in 2006, the National Trust stated:

“We looked at whether schoolchildren’s learning about their local environment would influence the way they treat it.

We found that not only was this the case, but high-quality out-of-classroom learning also influenced how children behave and the lifestyle choices they make.

It shows the potential for school trips not just to change children’s lives, but the lives of whole communities.”

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

I, too, congratulate the hon. Gentleman on the timeliness of the debate. Does he agree that in addition to the issues that he is outlining from those surveys, the battle against childhood obesity can be taken further by learning outside the classroom? It can contribute to that battle, which unfortunately as a society we do not seem to be taking seriously.

[Simon Hart]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. There are direct and indirect health benefits to be gained from this educational concept. The direct benefits are simply from getting people out of a windowless and joyless classroom environment into an environment that is more interesting and more demanding physically. That is a good thing, but outdoor education can also teach people about the value of a different and varied diet, the process of food production and the attractions of exercise and entertainment, in whatever form they might come, in open areas.

Of course that will have a positive effect. That used to be just conjecture on our part and on the part of the experts; there is now evidence to support the view that that is the case. That is what is encouraging: we are going beyond just speculating to being able genuinely to point to evidence that supports that view.

The Select Committee on Children, Schools and Families also came up trumps. It stated:

“Learning outside the classroom is important, and the Department must provide adequate funding to achieve maximum impact…there should be an individual entitlement within the National Curriculum to at least one out of school visit a term.”

On the back of those third-party endorsements, I shall pose two more questions to the Minister. Will the Government reconsider plans to include an entitlement to outdoor learning for everyone in the curriculum? Also, can outdoor learning be included as part of the Ofsted inspection protocol? There is a feeling among members of the teaching profession with whom I have contact that if it is not inspected, it is not important. It is clearly important; Ofsted and the Select Committee have said that it is important. If it is important, let us include it in the inspection protocol, so that everyone knows that it is important and we can cement that in the minds of those responsible for outdoor learning projects.

I represent a seat in west Wales and should therefore like to consider for a moment how the Welsh Assembly Government view the issue. It is encouraging that they are a few lengths ahead of Westminster on this topic. I recognise that the matter is devolved, but we can learn lessons from the Welsh Assembly in this regard. The foundation phase is the Welsh Assembly Government’s approach to learning for children aged three to seven years. My own children have benefited from initiatives such as the Forest school. That involves a perfectly non-contentious regular monthly trip into the great outdoors of Wales, which benefits children from quite a young age in many different ways. The Welsh Assembly Government recognise that. Their framework states:

“The Foundation Phase environment should promote discovery and independence and a greater emphasis on using the outdoor environment as a resource for children’s learning.”

They say that they will aim to

“Provide opportunities for children to experience the outdoor learning environment and to become active learners through the play-based Foundation Phase curriculum.”

I say to the Minister that if that is good enough for the Welsh Assembly, surely it is good enough for the UK as a whole.

To conclude my short contribution on this important topic, I shall make these points. We can now prove that outdoor education improves health, education and social benefits for children, young people and society as a whole. We can increasingly prove that if we can obtain those benefits for children and young adults, the economic benefit for the taxpayer in the long term could also be huge and well worth the investment required now.

I want to finish with two case studies. In my last job, I was involved with a project called Fishing for Schools. We took people who often had severe disadvantages and just put them in an environment that they were not used to. We used to marvel at the way in which lives could be transformed as a consequence of that simple project. We had one pupil called Zach on that programme. His teacher wrote to us after the course had finished and said:

“Zach had been suffering from bullying and was often in trouble with regard to behaviour in school, but since the course he has worked hard, been positive, behaves well and is a more mature and sensible young man—wow, what a difference.”

Alex McBarnet, founder of The Bushcraft Company, came into the world of outdoor education as a result of difficulties that he had had in traditional education. Using his own get-up-and-go spirit and his own inspirational zeal, he started his own company. He said:

“Children who struggle a bit more in the classroom have an opportunity here to shine, and you can actually watch their self esteem grow by the day, which is fabulous.”

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there are many outside bodies that can contribute to outdoor learning? One is the Countryside Alliance, which the hon. Gentleman might have an interest in. Does he see a role for such bodies, whether we are talking about the British Association for Shooting and Conservation or the Countryside Alliance, that could help to benefit young people?

[Simon Hart]

The hon. Gentleman makes a point that he knows I will approve of—and I had deliberately not been making it, for exactly that reason. I think that any way in which we can take young people into interesting, challenging, different and adventurous environments and teach them skills that they do not know and introduce them to ways of life, people and communities that they may not usually have any contact with, must be good.

The more of that we can do, the better. I do not say that just as someone who had a personal and professional interest in it, and to some extent still does. I say it because I have seen many examples of people who have benefited. They are not just rural or urban or suburban people, or people from poor backgrounds or rich backgrounds. Everyone who has had the fantastic privilege of coming into contact with the outside world, whether formally or informally, has come away feeling that they have gained something that traditional education could not provide to them. We all have a social responsibility to encourage youth in that respect, but we need help from central Government to break down the barriers that sometimes prevent us from being able to do that.

That leads nicely to my final question to the Minister. I and other hon. Members and organisations out there in the real world think that outdoor learning could bring benefits to the nation and benefits to people who sometimes struggle, through no fault of their own—and often through no fault of their local authority’s or the Government’s—to obtain benefits from the type of education system that we have.

We have a golden opportunity now to improve the lives of people in a number of communities through a few simple initiatives. Of course, that requires funding, but it does not require obscene levels of funding. In fact, it is not funding but an investment, because the downstream economic consequences of doing it will be profoundly beneficial to the nation. It will save us millions of pounds in the long term if we get it right.

I hope that the Minister will grant an audience with herself and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, not only for hon. Members who may be interested in the issue but for representatives of the wide range of outside bodies that have contributed to the debate and made strides in the right direction. If we could get together early in the new year to see whether we could convert what at the moment is a struggling dream into a deliverable reality, this debate will have been a worthwhile use of our Wednesday morning.