Oral Answers to Questions

Harriet Harman Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Hugh Robertson]

I thank the hon. Lady for that one: enter the controversy on day one! One thing that we learned from the Olympics last summer is that one of the very best ways of getting more young people to play sport is to put role models in the shop window. The honest answer to her question is that it is a combination of the two things. If the England team can win a World cup by 2022, which I hope very much it can—it would be nice if it won one in 2014, actually—that will be of enormous benefit. The Government contributed to the new National Football Centre, precisely to achieve the objectives that she shares.

[Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)]

Despite the good work that is obviously going on all around the country, participation in sport is falling, especially in school sport. [Interruption.] The Minister says that it is not, but the Chance to Shine survey shows that half of all pupils are not even doing two hours’ sport a week, the Smith Institute survey shows that 68% of school sports staff report a decrease in participation, and his own Department’s figures show a 10% fall in the number of primary school children taking part in sport. That is very worrying indeed. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) mentioned the Secretary of State for Education, and I am sure that the Minister will agree that as in so many ways the Secretary of State is making matters worse here. So often, sport is teamwork. For the sake of sport, may we have some teamwork across Government? A year on from the Olympics, the price that is being paid for this Government’s dismantling of the programmes that the last Government put in place is now becoming clear.

[Hugh Robertson]

Nothing could be further from the truth. The last active people survey showed that since we won the bid in 2005, against an exacting target, 1.4 million extra people were playing sport who were not doing so in 2005. As for dismantling the target, I seem to remember that it was the Government in which the right hon. and learned Lady served who cut the amount of funding that sport gets through the national lottery from 20% when they came into power in 1997 to 13.7% when we took power in 2010—something we have now reversed.

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