Stephen Kerr
Main Page: Stephen Kerr (Conservative - Stirling)Department Debates - View all Stephen Kerr's debates with the HM Treasury
(5 years, 2 months ago)
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Mims Davies
Absolutely. I will build on that thought in my speech. It is vital that we work with health bodies and communities and through social prescribing. It can help to keep our communities fitter, healthier and more connected.
Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)
Does the Minister agree that this is about not just physical but mental health, and will she join me in celebrating the work of Elaine Wyllie, the founder of the daily mile? All over the world, more than 7,000 schools and nurseries practise the daily mile, and the evidence of the benefit that comes to the children who participate is immense. Would she encourage all our schools and nurseries to engage with the daily mile?
Mims Davies
The daily mile has been a revelation in getting youngsters involved. I recently visited a school that was getting involved but which did not have much green space, only tarmac. It was difficult for that school, but the inventive ways in which the daily mile is being used across the country is a sight to behold. I congratulate Elaine on her work.
Stephen Kerr
I forgot to mention that it all began in Stirling at St Ninians Primary School—the most important thing of all!
Mr Deputy Speaker
I have no problem with interventions. The problem is that the people wanting to speak later are cutting down their own time. The time limit was 10 minutes, but it is now down to eight.
Dr Allin-Khan
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. We have made it clear that we need to take the decision away from Whitehall. What the Labour party is proposing with the safe standing system is a one-for-one seating and standing arrangement. There is no plan to cut the cost of a ticket at this point. It is about enjoyment and safety, which is paramount.
We need to take the decision away from Whitehall and devolve it to clubs, fans and local safety authorities, because they know their stadiums better than any of us. To any supporters watching, let me say that we will continue to push for the introduction of safe standing. The Government cannot kick the can down the road on this one. Our second pledge is on the introduction of a “fans fare” travel scheme. It is not right that fixtures are constantly rescheduled, so fans miss out on the cheapest train tickets. In the opening three weeks of the premier league season this year, five matches were rearranged for TV, which made it impossible for supporters to travel to or from the match in time. Fans deserve better—they must be part of the conversation. The Football League, the Premier League, the Rail Delivery Group and fans’ groups are all in favour of the introduction of a “fans fare” scheme, but the Government are dragging their feet. A Transport Minister agreed to meet me, but then cancelled our meeting.
Labour will not sit still. We will continue to push for this. Supporters should not be at the mercy of billion-pound TV deals. The “fans fare” travel scheme would allow them to change the date on their ticket if a match was rescheduled, so they would not miss out on the cheapest train tickets. Those who have tried to attend a match with their partner and two children will know the cost of buying four new tickets to attend a match and see their much-loved football team.
Our third pledge would give fans a say in how their club was run. Overseas investment has revolutionised the Premier League and brought remarkable success for clubs, both domestically and in Europe, but supporters are desperate for a greater say. At the moment, fans are involved in supporters forums, but with clubs increasingly becoming solely owned by rich investors, those forums are becoming meaningless when it comes to making decisions. We would make it mandatory that, when a club was sold, a proportion of the shares being sold should be offered to fans to buy. We would allow supporters trusts to appoint board members who would hold full voting rights, ensuring that fans had a place at the table.
Our fourth pledge relates to gambling. A staggering 55,000 children are problem gamblers, and this is being fuelled by an increase in sports betting. Football stadiums, football shirts and advertising boards are filled with gambling logos and names. This is fuelling a worrying epidemic in children, and not enough is being done. We are pleased that the industry has listened to our calls for a whistle-to-whistle gambling ban across all sports, but we would go further and ban gambling companies from sponsoring football shirts. People who are susceptible to gambling-related harms should be able to enjoy football without having to battle the demons of addiction. That addiction tears families apart and ruins lives. Today and always, our message to the industry is loud and clear: prove to us that you take this seriously by taking real action now, because in government, the Labour party will come down hard.
I have highlighted some of the issues being faced by fans today, but I also want to spend a few minutes talking about the future of sport. We need sport to be run in the interests of those who participate in it at grassroots level, not just of the privileged few. I ask Members to take a moment to imagine two children who were born in the same hospital on the same day. Let us imagine that they were born equal, with the same abilities and potential as each other. The barriers that they might face in life will start the moment they leave the maternity ward. This will be no truer than when it comes to their making a success of any sporting talent they might possess. One child will go to an underfunded state secondary school where PE hours have been cut and the grass field is waterlogged for four months of the year. The other child will go to a private school where there is provision for a cricket coach to come in once a week and for the children to practise indoors during the winter.
Stephen Kerr
Is not the hon. Lady missing a significant factor in the encouragement of children—namely, their parents? I am not convinced that the circumstances she describes are definitive when it comes to whether a child excels in sport, but the encouragement of parents makes a huge difference.
Dr Allin-Khan
I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point. Of course parents’ encouragement is a factor, but we cannot run away from the fact that this Government have cut 35,000 hours of PE from secondary schools. Children do not have a level playing field in this country, and the sooner this Government accept that and do something about it, the better off all our children will be.
Going back to the maternity ward, let us imagine that one of those children is a girl. She will be actively discouraged by society from getting involved in sports. Does she possess the qualities to be a professional coach, a commentator, a physiotherapist or an athlete? Will she grow up to be a role model for other girls? Many girls will never know whether they have the ability to make it to the top of their sport because of the barriers placed in front of them. If she makes it to the top in rugby, football or cricket, will she get a proper contract? Will that contract give her the security to feed her family and reach her potential without having to focus on finding additional work? Will she be given a role on a national governing body that enables her to make the changes necessary to break down the barriers that she herself has faced?
Gavin Newlands
I could not agree more. As the hon. Lady is a former international rugby player herself, her point is even stronger, and I will echo that in my later comments.
I have been seeking an Adjournment debate on this issue without success, so I will outline some of the issues now. The Glaswegian Olympic silver medallist Michael Jamieson spoke about the difficulty towards the end of his fantastic career as he battled depression caused by a gruelling training regime. He made the decision to retire, and it was the right decision for him. After some difficulties, he is now an example of an athlete who has made the transition well, as he has now built a successful career as a leading coach, but his story is by no means the norm. Such difficulties have been relatively common in football, but, since the advent of UK Sport lottery funding, they have become more widespread in other sports, and the current cliff-edge approach to UK Sport funding in no way helps the scenario.
Last year, the BBC reported on examples of athletes finding the transition difficult. Rower Mark Hunter competed at three Olympic games, winning gold in Beijing and silver in London:
“It doesn’t matter how good you are, how much money you earn—you have to learn to cope with that loss of purpose. Athletes think everyone cares about what you are doing but most people don’t care until you are performing at the highest level.
In Athens in 2004 I came last and that was my darkest point. I had no money, I had nothing. I used to drive down back roads thinking, ‘if I crash I wouldn’t care right now.’ I didn’t tell my parents but I was lucky I had so many friends around me to help me escape. I’d gone to the ultimate event and come last. We came last, the funding is cut and it’s like ‘get out’...I had no money, I had nothing.”
Ollie Philips was world rugby sevens player of the year in 2009:
“Because I had to retire through injury, it felt as though I had been robbed of my rights and the dreams that I was hoping to achieve. Once I realised that ‘right I am now not a rugby player any more’, there was a really tough period. It’s such a destructive experience on a personal level—everything is affected by it. That experience of feeling valued and adored. Suddenly you’re not as good; you’re not in the limelight. And as a result you chase highs and ego boosts. They give you a kick in the short term, but the highs are high and the lows are very low and you don’t know how to get out of them.
There were times when I looked at myself and thought, ‘I don’t want to be here.’ I’ve probably accepted not being a sportsman but have I truly accepted that it’s not me anymore? Maybe not entirely.”
Switch the Play, which has presented to the all-party parliamentary group on Scottish sport, is an excellent social enterprise—it is shortly to become a charity—dedicated to improving the support offered to elite and aspiring athletes as they transition to a life outside sport, and it has done excellent work on this issue.
One of those athletes is Beth Tweddle, who most Members will know. She is an Olympic bronze medallist, a triple world champion, a six-time European champion and a Commonwealth champion—the list goes on. Beth made the decision to retire after a glittering career, but she was seriously concerned about what she would do with herself after focusing on gymnastics for 21 years. Switch the Play helped to provide her with training, and she found the confidence to become a company director for Total Gymnastics.
Research by Abertay University’s Professor David Lavallee shows that athletes who engage in planning for their future feel less stressed and are better able to focus on their sporting performance. The study also found that the levels of support provided to athletes in planning their retirement can also influence their performance. Switch the Play and others do excellent work, but we cannot expect such organisations to give that peace of mind and care alone.
Sporting bodies and, of course, the Government therefore have a duty of care to our athletes and must ensure that they have all the support, training and opportunities they require to live life and build a career after retirement, whether that be in their sport or in any other sector. I hope the Minister will meet Switch the Play and me to discuss this issue further.
Most Members, and particularly Mr Speaker, could not have failed to be moved by Andy Murray’s press conference, in which it was clear he is very much struggling to come to terms with his possible upcoming retirement. I am sure the House will join me in welcoming his recent successful hip operation, which at the very least will give Andy a much better quality of life, without pain, to spend with his children. Of course, we all hope the operation will enable Andy to continue playing top-level tennis, but, if it fails, he has an astonishing career to look back on. He is a two-time Wimbledon champion, a US Open champion, a Davis cup winner, twice Olympic champion and, probably most impressive of all, a world No. 1 in the era of Roger Federer, Nadal and Djokovic.
I can only hope that Andy is as proud of himself as Scotland is of him. Without a shadow of doubt, Andy is Scotland’s greatest ever sportsman or sportswoman. What can we say to Scotland’s, and probably the UK’s, greatest ever but thank you? Thank you for the memories, the inspiration and the sheer joy that he has given to the nation.
Stephen Kerr
Sir Andy Murray is the pride and joy of Dunblane and the Stirling district. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, to commemorate an extraordinary career and an amazing contribution to Scottish sport, some form of statue to Sir Andy Murray should be erected in Dunblane?
Gavin Newlands
There is a danger that we might get a bit ahead of ourselves but, yes, I agree that, in the time to come, there should be a statue to Andy Murray in Dunblane, perhaps to sit alongside his gold post box. I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman will commission the statue himself.
That brings me on to the Murray legacy. The staggering success of the entire Murray family is and will continue to be a positive thing for Scottish tennis, as well as tennis across the UK, yet their rise to become the best tennis players in the world has exposed funding and governance imbalance issues that need to be taken seriously, lest we risk squandering the opportunities that their success could provide us with: opportunities not only to nurture future champions, but, just as importantly, to give more people the opportunity to play tennis. To achieve that, we need to be frank about where we are going wrong.
At the age of 15, Andy was advised by one Rafael Nadal that he would have to move away from the UK if he wanted to become a professional. That was 16 years ago, and not much has changed. Scotland is one of the world’s leading nations for tennis, thanks to the success of not only the Murrays, but Gordon Reid, the former world No. 1 in men’s wheelchair tennis, and others. However, it is an indisputable fact that Tennis Scotland has been drastically underfunded by the Lawn Tennis Association. Despite Scotland’s enviable success, the LTA gave Tennis Scotland just £650,000 in 2017, from a budget of £60 million UK-wide. That means that Scotland, with some 8.5% of the UK’s population—and the UK’s best players, Davis cup coach and so on—received just 1% of the revenue funding available from the LTA. In 2018, that allocation was slashed to just £582,000.
Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire (Paul Masterton), and may I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Moray (Douglas Ross) how much I enjoy watching him perform his duties as an assistant referee? We are very proud of what he has done to carry Scotland’s saltire into international arenas. I think I can say, without fear of contradiction, that that is also true of Opposition Members.
It is an enormous privilege to be the Member of Parliament for Stirling, and that privilege takes on even more gloriousness when we consider the contribution that Stirling makes to the sporting life of the United Kingdom. We have already heard about Sir Andy Murray, but Stirling has also produced other great competitors, such as the legendary Billy Bremner. Who can forget how fierce a competitor he was in football? We also have Gary and Steven Caldwell, the famous brothers—by the way, we bought their parents’ house from them. We also have the renowned jockey, Willie Carson, who is also a star of “A Question of Sport” and “I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!”
Anna Sloan is also from Stirling, and she is Scotland’s pride in curling, which I am glad to have heard mentioned so often. The Scottish National Curling Academy is based at the Peak in Stirling and has produced Olympic and Commonwealth gold for Team GB and for Scotland. The Stirling Smith Museum has the oldest curling stone in the world, dating from 1511, and we also have the oldest football in the world, which was found in the rafters of Stirling castle and dates from the time of Mary Queen of Scots.
That is the history, but Stirling also has a proud football tradition. We have Stirling Albion and other great clubs, such as Milton football club, which is based in Bannockburn and plays in the Scottish Amateur Football Association’s Caledonian League and does fantastic work with the community.
When it comes to swimming, Stirling is a superpower. If Stirling had been a country at the Commonwealth games, we would have been in the top five for medals in swimming and 17th in the overall medal table, ahead of 23 other countries.
Basketball has been mentioned a few times. The Stirling Knights have won 19 national titles and produced 30 players for Scotland. They are winners. They have won the Scottish cup, the league cup and a youth tournament in Spain.
Stirling County is an incredible rugby club with an incredible legacy and tradition. It has produced great players for Scotland and has a big Scottish cup game with Hawick, I think, a week on Saturday.
Let me pause on Stirling county cricket club, because I have an affection for that particular institution. My son Jared played cricket for Stirling county. I pay tribute, as did the hon. Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens), to the people who make sport happen in our communities. I want to mention specifically Raymond Bond, who for years and years nurtured the talent of young people in Stirling to play cricket. It is people like Raymond Bond whom I pay tribute to in my speech tonight. They are the people who make this country the superpower that it is when it comes to sport. We should nurture that in our constituencies.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point about people who volunteer and get things going. Will he also congratulate Ammar Ashraf, the community engagement co-ordinator for Cricket Scotland, who is doing an awful lot to bring people into the sport in communities?
Stephen Kerr
Cricket is a fantastic sport for developing so many of the qualities that one needs to be successful in any avenue in life, so I am only too happy to join in that tribute. We should celebrate those who make sport happen—the volunteers, the coaches, the people who give selflessly of their time and their talents in order to foster the talent and enjoyment of others in sport.
