Active Citizenship

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for initiating this debate. It will surprise nobody that I will concentrate on the sporting sector, particularly voluntary sports clubs.

The amateur sports sector is one of the most established parts of the big society or voluntary sector that there has ever been. It embodies the idea of doing something for yourself, and then gaining a benefit from something you enjoy doing. A lot of people ask why people get involved in various types of voluntary activity, and we usually then hear a long list of things with songs about the benefits. Sport is something you get involved in because you enjoy the process, and you get something good out of it for yourself. However, to do this, you need to bring other people with you. Effectively, it is a voluntary thing that is quite selfish but is hugely beneficial at the same time; an odd dichotomy.

The amateur sports clubs and the British mania for regulating sport have led to sport being a growth area. In many sports, groups often provide their own facilities, structure and coaching. They get involved across the board and are self-sustaining and self-generating. What do they need from the state? Some would say they need very little and should be left alone. Others would say the state should get involved in pump-priming. The question we must ask is: what is available at the moment?

Despite the fact that past Governments tried—the previous Government tried very hard—to provide better facilities, we are in a situation where what the state can most immediately do is probably to look at where it can reduce the burden of activity on these groups, and where we can pull away and allow them to function better. Effectively, if you make the lives of secretaries of sports clubs easier, you will make the lives of sports clubs much easier. Those volunteers have to deal with the paperwork and go through the checks. CRB checks have already been mentioned but there is also the regulatory and licensing process. If you make that easier, you will guarantee that they get more involved.

There are two ways of doing this. One is to get the Government to do it for you. The other is to strip away the regulations to the bare bones of what is acceptable in our society. I know that the current Government are starting to look at this. I know because certain organisations that, two years ago, helped me to present a Bill that did some of this have been talking to them. When will we establish exactly what is the minimum of regulation and responsibility that we want for these groups? I encourage my Government to answer that question clearly. Also, I expect the Government to assist by checking what works within this sector.

Those who have heard me often will start to get feelings of déjà vu here. There have been many schemes to do with recruiting youth. When politicians get involved in sport, they say, “Let’s get the kids involved”. They forget that getting kids involved is very easy. You simply do it in school time and organise it through the school. It is dead easy; we have done it dozens of times. The problem is not school-age sport or sport in schools; it is sport when people hit the age of 16 or 18 or 21. That is when it matters. We have not really addressed the problem of the drop-out ages from education. That is when it happens. Unless we address that, we will have problems.

Can the Government look, as they have looked at what has happened in the past few years, at which of the schemes for recruitment, retention and reinvolvement have worked properly? Enough groundwork has been done by the previous Government. They may have been looking for a magic bullet. They may have found a decent gun with which to fire it. We do not know. Let us have a look at what has been done and build on it. Can we have an answer as to what has been the best scheme at certain points? With fewer resources available, targeting or showing people models around which to build their work is something that could easily be done. If we do not have a system for retrieving that information, God help us.

Finally, when we deal with this process of stripping away various areas in which clubs find their lives being made difficult, can the Government assure us that they will try to co-ordinate what is required to get people trained and functioning in these groups? That is, will we get a system that makes it easier to get, for instance, good coaching qualifications? Will we address ways to make it less expensive to do this? It could be done either by governing bodies purchasing services en masse or by trying to get some reduction in cost for those that are taking it on. If we want society to function properly in its voluntary groups, the Government have a duty to make sure that they do not put any impediments in the way. If we can take such impediments away, we will go some way towards achieving a good big society.