Oral Answers to Questions

Stuart Andrew Excerpts

Thursday 27th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)]

6. What steps her Department is taking to support grassroots sport.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Stuart Andrew)]

Supporting grassroots sport is a key priority for the Government. Last year, Sport England received almost £350 million to fund grassroots sports projects. We are also supporting community participation, with more than £300 million between 2021 and 2025 to deliver up to 8,000 multi-sport facilities in communities across the UK.

[Nicola Richards]

I thank my right hon. Friend for the support he has provided to the campaign to confront the ownership of West Bromwich Albion, working with Andy Street and supporters groups. We have seen the huge step of the release of the football governance White Paper. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that he will continue to monitor the situation at clubs such as West Bromwich Albion and Birmingham City, and ensure that the new regulator will have the ability to take action to protect the clubs that support grassroots sport in the west midlands?

[Stuart Andrew]

May I praise my hon. Friend and her colleagues for the tremendous amount of work she has done in standing up for the fans of the clubs she has worked with so closely? Frankly, too many clubs face financial troubles, and we continue to monitor situations across the football pyramid. We have set out the reforms that will protect football clubs so that they can meet their day-to-day liabilities and preserve the clubs for the future. That will include sanctions, where necessary. We will introduce new owners’ and directors’ tests, including a fitness and propriety test and enhanced due diligence of owners’ sources of wealth, and we will require owners to demonstrate robust financial plans to provide people like her constituents with the assurances they need.

[Esther McVey]

In Wilmslow in my Tatton constituency, we have a football academy run by Erik Garner, which will be putting on a girls’ world cup for primary age children this summer. That is possible only because town councillors stood in to give funding to ensure the maximum number of girls can participate. Given that women’s football is still growing, will the Minister explain how organisations that do not have parish and town councils that can step in can access financial support from the Football Association for similar events, to help to inspire the next generation of Lionesses?

[Stuart Andrew]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend’s constituent for the work he is doing. We are all proud of the Lionesses’ success and the inspiration it has given. The majority of funding for grassroots sport is delivered through Sport England. We invested £21 million in 2021-22 and £46 million in 2022-23 in grassroots sports facilities in England. We suggest that organisations hoping to run similar events contact Sport England or the FA, and many community groups that do not have parish councils do so. We are also carrying out an in-depth review of women’s football, chaired by former Lioness Karen Carney, which will report this summer.

[Mr Speaker]

I call Clive Efford.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker—[Interruption.] I will pop round with a cup of tea later, Mr Speaker.

Over the years, many hundreds of thousands of children up and down the country have learned to swim in their local swimming pool, and the clubs that provide those facilities are quite often very grassroots and local. However, our local swimming baths are under threat. The energy they consume is enormous and they are extremely expensive to run. The £63 million announced in the Budget is welcome, but we have yet to see the detail of how that money will be rolled out. Can the Minister tell us when it will be rolled out and when we will know the criteria?

[Stuart Andrew]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising this important issue. I have spent a lot of time listening to local organisations making the exact same points. That is why, as a Department, we lobbied the Treasury heavily to get that £63 million. That will not only help with the current issue of the costs swimming pools are facing, but address some of the long-term issues to make them more sustainable. We are working through the detail and will make an announcement in due course.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

A key element in ensuring the success of grassroots sport is having a good pool of talent and enough participants. However, one problem is that a number of young people, once they leave school, do not continue participating in either team sport or individual sport. What is the Government’s strategy to ensure that as many young people as possible continue to do some sort of sporting activity when they leave school?

[Stuart Andrew]

Again, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise that issue. Participation in sport and physical activity is a key piece of work that we are looking at. It is good to see that it has recovered to pre-pandemic levels, but we need to go even further. We are working on the sports strategy, which will address some of the issues he has raised, and I hope to make an announcement on that in due course.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

5. What steps she is taking to support musicians from Ukraine and Europe to tour in the UK.

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[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)]

7. What steps she is taking to support cultural and charitable organisations with increases in the cost of living.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Stuart Andrew)]

As announced at the spring Budget, we are providing £100 million for charities and community organisations in England. It will support frontline organisations experiencing increased demand and higher delivery costs, and will provide some investment in energy efficiency measures. Charities and cultural organisations are also receiving support for their energy bills until March 2024 under the energy bills discount scheme.

[Mary Kelly Foy]

While the Government continue to fail the most vulnerable in our society, the charity sector is left to fill in the gap. In my constituency, we are very fortunate to have the County Durham Community Foundation, which has raised £900,000 through its Poverty Hurts appeal, allowing many fantastic local projects to literally keep their lights on during the cost of living crisis. I welcome the Government’s recent announcement of support for charitable organisations, but what steps is the Department taking to establish a wider and longer-term funding commitment to the sector?

[Stuart Andrew]

I spent 16 years of my life working in the charity sector, and I cannot praise it enough for the tremendous amount of work it is doing. That is why I spent time speaking to the sector, to listen to its concerns about the cost of living issues, hence why we have announced this £100 million, which I know the sector has warmly welcomed.

[Simon Fell (Barrow and Furness) (Con)]

One of the cultural cornerstones in Barrow and Furness is CandoFM, a fantastic local community radio station that I was fortunate enough to bring to Downing Street to meet the Culture Secretary last week. It walks like a charity, talks like a charity and supports the local community, but because of its licensing arrangements, it is not allowed to hold charitable status, unlike hospital radio stations. I wonder whether the Minister might look into that, because it would be a route for funding hard-pressed organisations such as CandoFM.

[Stuart Andrew]

My hon. Friend raises a very interesting point, and I would certainly like to praise CandoFM for the work it is doing. Obviously, there are conditions for achieving charitable status, but I would be more than happy to meet him to discuss what might be possible.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

T1.   If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities. [R]

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Stuart Andrew)]

This Government have given significant support to organisations up and down the country to help with cost of living issues. That is on top of the programmes that we are providing, including the ones that I was talking about a moment ago, for grassroots sport. We are putting more money into grassroots sport now than has been put in for probably decades.

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

British motorsport, in order to stay at the cutting edge, wishes to transform itself to use synthetic and sustainable fuels, but the taxation regime disincentivises that. Will the Minister work with me and colleagues in the Treasury to ensure that the use of sustainable fuels is incentivised?

[Stuart Andrew]

I completely agree about the importance of motorsport in this country, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his commitment and hard work in this area. We already support sustainable and synthetic fuels under the renewable transport fuel obligation scheme. Tax policy, as he knows, is a matter for the Treasury, but I will of course work with him and ensure that his ideas are shared across Government.

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

T5. The reputation of the BBC has been dragged through the mud by the grubby loan deal that Richard Sharp made with a former Prime Minister, which allegedly was to curry favour to become BBC Chairman. Does the Minister therefore think that the current Prime Minister’s pally-pally relationship with Sharp is why he has not sacked him yet?

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[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)]

The Rugby Football Union has announced groundbreaking policies on maternity, pregnant parent and adoption leave, which have been said to normalise motherhood in sport. Will the Minister encourage more sporting bodies to introduce similar inclusive policies?

[Stuart Andrew]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right to raise this. One of the key elements that we will be looking at in the sporting strategy is how we increase opportunities for women and girls in sport. I am pleased to say that we have made significant announcements about equal provision in our schools—but yes, we absolutely push the governing bodies to do all they can to increase opportunities in the way the hon. Lady suggests.

The hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire, representing the Church Commissioners, was asked—