School Sport

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Westminster Hall

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

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bradford South (Mr Sutcliffe), a distinguished former Sports Minister, on raising this subject. It is an issue to which he is dedicated, and we all appreciate that. I also thank other hon. Members for their well informed contributions. A lot of questions have been raised, and hon. Members seem to have anticipated what I am about to say. Therefore, in order to confuse those pundits, I will not give the speech that I had planned, even though it does not say a lot of the things that people anticipated that I would say.

Several statistics have been used, in particular by the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), who cited a recent survey that shows a downturn in sports participation by over-16s and adults. That, however, is the problem, because after the £2.4 billion spent on the previous Government’s programme since 2003, the idea that sport is a good thing has clearly not embedded itself in the ideas of people moving through school and college and into adulthood. It is not just something that young people do because they have to turn out for an hour or two hours a week on a school games pitch. It is something that they have to do because it is good for them and fun; it is a socialising activity; and it is about teamwork and team building. Young people would want to carry that on into adulthood, so why do the statistics clearly show that it has not been embedded? Despite the best of intentions, spending an awful lot of money has not had the desired effect of ensuring that young people in school want to do sport and carry on doing it into adulthood as something that one naturally does.

While I am talking about the use of statistics, I have to say that all the statistics that are used by the Department and by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State—despite an awful lot of accusations, he is in no way opposed to organised sport; he is a big fan of it—are from the previous Government and have been endorsed by the chief statistician as well.

Perhaps I can take up a few of the points in between the hyperbole used by the hon. Member for Bradford South. I absolutely endorse his comments about the army of volunteers, who are the backbone of sport in the community and sports clubs in our towns and constituencies. We want them to work more with schools, so it is not just a case of sport that people do in school and sport that people do over the weekend at the local football club. We need much more interaction between the two. I am the president of a very successful local football club that typically on a Saturday sees 300 or 400 kids out on the local sports pitches. That is achieved largely through volunteers. The children range in age from five upwards, and both girls and boys are involved. We want to see more of that type of activity. That is one reason why we have given additional funding, through the school games additional funding network to fund further volunteering. I am talking about county sports partnerships recruiting more volunteers to help with the school games and beyond both at level 2, between schools, and at level 1, within schools.

I absolutely endorse the comments from the hon. Gentleman to which I have referred, but he did also make a comment about the school games, which seemed to come under quite a lot of attack. I think that most people agree that the school games will be a good thing as an extra tool to encourage more schools and more schoolchildren to become involved in competitive sport as a matter of routine. More than 11,000 schools have already signed up in the past few months, which is remarkable. We encourage all schools to do that.

[Clive Efford]

I point out to the Minister that the school games did not come under attack. We were merely pointing out that they already exist. To present the school games as some new creation on the back of the emphasis on competitive sport is just misleading people.

[Tim Loughton]

The school games, which were launched last summer, involved more than 10,000 children in the summer pilots. I launched the version in the north-west. They have a particular focus on disability sports, which is something that has very much been missing. They will have a programme of endorsements and accreditations of the schools taking part. That builds on the success of the games that have gone before—sponsored by Sainsbury’s, I think—but is taking it to a whole new level. Surely that should be welcomed, but there seems to be a mindset against competitive sport. I find that extraordinary.

The hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) referred to a quote about learning to “pick yourself up”. Sport is not just about physical fitness, important though that is. It is about life experiences, socialising, working together as a team, and winning and losing and moving on. That is what competitive sport is designed to achieve. The hon. Gentleman’s contribution seemed rather confused. He used the statistic about only 21% of children doing regular competitive sport and talked about wanting to move towards children participating in such activity at least nine times a year. Is it really ambitious to want our kids to be involved in competitive sport nine times a year, particularly after so much money has been spent on trying to embed a culture of sport as a good thing that everyone wants to do on a regular basis in schools?

[Clive Efford]

rose—

[Tim Loughton]

I had better move on or I will not answer any of the hon. Gentleman’s points, but I think that there is a real poverty of ambition.

Let me return to the issue of disabled sport and the charge about the elite nature of the school games. The opportunity to take part in competitive sport is not elite; it is at four levels. It is within schools, where we want every pupil to be able to take part; it is between schools; it is at county level; and it is at national level, with the showcase of the first national championships taking place next May in the Olympic stadium, before it is even used for the Olympics. Within that, I want to see opportunities for disabled pupils. I think that the former Minister for Sport, the hon. Member for Bradford South, would probably admit that we have done very badly on encouraging disability sports in schools. If someone happens to have a disability, PE time is when they go to the library or do something else like that, which is entirely unacceptable. We are far more ambitious than that. Part of the programme for the school games is about encouraging able-bodied pupils to help to set up tournaments and to engage with children who have disabilities, so that they feel every bit as involved at every stage. There needs to be recognition of the various challenges that they will have, but those are surmountable.

[Mr Sutcliffe]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way; I know that he has only a small amount of time left. I welcome what he is saying about disability sport. He is right about that, and I welcome his personal commitment to it, but the transport costs for disability sport outweigh the costs for able-bodied people. Has he considered those transport costs and what he needs to do to help people to get around to the different venues?

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Gentleman raises a good point. That is why, again within the school games, we have made specific money available for promoting disability sport, resourcing the national governing bodies of sports to develop a clear competitive pathway for young disabled people, ensuring the availability of follow-on activity linked to level 3 festivals and resourcing a network of schools to develop and deliver school-centred continuing professional development for teachers as well, and to take into account all those practical difficulties.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), in a well informed contribution, raised a number of important and practical points about embedding sport as a way of turning round poor behaviour. We all agree with that. I do not think that there is any disagreement between us about the many-faceted contribution that sport can make. I set up in my constituency a midnight football tournament. On a Saturday evening, between 10 pm and 12 midnight, when there is not usually sporting activity, we took over a local leisure centre. I worked with the police on this. We had mostly young boys, aged 13 to 17, who otherwise would have been on the streets, getting up to no good. Instead, they were playing football against one another and against the police as well. It was a whole new dynamic. There are so many creative ways in which we can use sport to help with the problems of poor behaviour.

My hon. Friend made good, practical points about insurance and minibuses. I will certainly take those away and consider them further. I am glad that he mentioned the Troops to Teachers scheme. Those teachers will provide a different perspective. We hope that for kids who are more difficult to engage in some of the academic subjects, they will provide the role model and authority figure that is so often lacking.

My hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) mentioned CRB checks. Again, that is something that is standing in the way of ordinary decent people who want to come forward, volunteer and give their time. There is an issue about multiple CRB checks, which the Protection of Freedoms Bill will deal with. We want a common-sense level of health and safety. Things have been regulated out of sight, and we have to get back to where we should be.

We heard the comments of the hon. Member for Eltham. Again, we had the whole business about selling off school playing fields. Let us just remind ourselves that the present Government do not and the previous Governments did not sell off playing fields, because local authorities sell off playing fields. I seem to remember that in the 1990s, when these charges were flying around most of all, Conservatives ran just one council. Rather a lot of those councils were run by the Labour party, which was responsible for overseeing selling off playing fields, so people need to take their share of the responsibility.

On the question of what the Localism Act 2011 will change, there are no intentions to change the level of protection for school playing fields. That may be provided in different ways, but certainly there is no intention to reduce the level of protection as a result of the localism legislation and the planning changes.

An awful lot of red herrings have been thrown about, but the Government are absolutely committed to promoting competitive school sport and embedding it within schools, rather than just assuming that because there is additional money or there are additional co-ordinators, it will automatically happen. Clearly, according to the statistics that the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North cited herself, it has not been embedded. That is a problem that we now have to pick up. We hope that the school games will be a flagship way of ensuring that more people want to become involved in sport not just at school but outside the school gates, and that they will want to carry it on into adulthood as well. That is the most important thing that we need to achieve, for all the reasons that we have already mentioned.

The new Government’s approach to school sports has three important characteristics: decentralising power, incentivising—

[Mr David Amess (in the Chair)]

Order. We now move to the next debate.