Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, whether she has made an assessment of the potential impact on the health of people under the age of 18 of having access to free sports facilities for at least two hours a week.

We know that active people are fitter, happier and healthier - which is why in our new Sport Strategy - 'Get Active’ - we set out an ambitious strategy to boost our national health by getting 3.5 million extra active people by 2030. This includes bold targets to reach communities with the lowest levels of physical activity.

As part of this strategy, we have set up a new National Physical Activity Taskforce to ensure we meet these targets, and will work closely with Sport England to track and measure the impact of our interventions. This will include measuring the progress made in tackling inactivity annually through the Active Lives Children survey, and in real time by seeking new sources of data that allow us to monitor progress.

Schools play a key role in allowing all children to have high quality opportunities to take part in PE and sport. In July we published an update to the School Sport and Activity Action Plan. This builds on the announcement we made in March that set out new ambitions for equal access to PE and sport and guidance on how to deliver 2 hours of quality PE a week, alongside over £600 million funding for the Primary PE and Sport Premium and the School Games Organiser network.

The Department for Education will be introducing a new digital tool to support schools with their reporting requirements for their PE and sport premium spend. This will hold schools accountable for how they use their PE and sport premium funding allocation to measure and improve the quality of PE and sport they provide.

Alongside this, the government is also investing over £300 million in grassroots football, tennis, swimming pools and multi-sport facilities across the UK by 2025 to increase participation and ensure physical activity should be accessible to all, no matter a person’s background or location. The historic level of direct investment to build or upgrade thousands of grassroots facilities across the UK and support swimming pools in England, will also increase access for thousands more young people.