School Sport

Debate between Tim Loughton and Gerry Sutcliffe

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Westminster Hall

[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—