Sport and the 2012 Olympics Legacy

Debate between Damian Collins and Angus Brendan MacNeil

Wednesday 24th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Damian Collins]

No, according to the figures I have seen, participation in football, athletics, cycling, rugby and cricket was up in the last two comparable years.

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

The hon. Gentleman mentions football, but does he not think that we have things to learn from other countries? I believe that in Belgium the aim is that any 19 or 20-year-old from across society will have touched the ball in football about 200 million times. That is building quite a high pyramid of talent, as we have seen in the Belgian national team at the moment, from what is being done at the grassroots. We could and should be learning from other countries.

[Damian Collins]

I agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman says. Last Friday, I was in Folkestone to see the opening of the new 3G football pitch at Cheriton Road. We want to see more investment in such pitches. The Government have provided an additional £8 million for such facilities, but we should see more. I agree with the hon. Member for Rhondda that with all the billions of pounds coming into football we should get more of that money into the grassroots. We all want to see that. In his excellent book, “Bounce”, Matthew Syed gives a clear analysis of sports participation. Proximity to good coaches and facilities and the opportunity to engage increase the number of people who will participate and makes it more likely that we will find elite performers from almost any walk of life. It is a question of getting the combinations right.

Participation, which was mentioned by the Secretary of State, is important. The participation figures, as they are collected by the national sports bodies, are something of a blunt tool. One person who participates in three sports might decide to concentrate on one and spend more time on that one sport than they did on the three, but that is shown as a net drop in participation even though the hours involved in sport might have gone up.

We should be targeting interventions to get people who do no sport at all to start doing something, and we should focus on the most deprived communities, where people do not have access to facilities, coaches or the opportunities to participate. That agenda was set out by the previous Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, and I think that it will be an important step forward in how we incentivise investment to get people who play no sport to play some sport.

We should question whether voluntary groups and charities should be able to access some of that funding and whether they are better placed to tackle some of the harder-to-reach places than the national governing bodies. Some of those organisations are supported by some of the national sporting bodies. For example, the Rugby Football Union’s HITZ programme has done a fantastic job in supporting young offenders and focusing their lives around sport. Kicks, the Premier League’s programme, has done a fantastic job. There have been some excellent studies of its benefit in London in reducing crime and antisocial behaviour. That should be our priority and our focus.

School sport is important, but encouraging people to partake in sport outside school is even more important. There will only be a certain number of hours in the school day, so participation outside school is significant. A lot of good work has been done by the school sports partnerships, but the link between schools and sports clubs in the community is important.