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Don Foster: The race is on to give our children a sporting chance of healthier lives
SPORT – perhaps unlike anything else – has the ability to inspire, entertain, and even exasperate us, in equal measure.
Whether we're shouting at the television as England's last hope crashes out of Wimbledon, working up a sweat playing a game of rugby, or watching a child take part in their first school sports day, there's something very special about the way we respond to sport.
It is often said that sport has the power to unite us where other means fail. Just look at the Iraqi football team who managed to win silver medals at the last Asian Games. The players came from all sides of the conflict in the most difficult of circumstances to achieve a truly great result. Even politicians sometimes put their differences aside for the sake of sport. The cross-party efforts to secure the Olympics were pretty much unprecedented in my experiences of the political world.
The ability of sport to cut across social differences is one of the key reasons I passionately believe in its promotion. People of any age, gender, and all walks of life should have the opportunity to take part in sport – not just at school, but right the way through to their
elderly years.
Politicians can be too quick to point out each others' failings and too reluctant to recognise success. But I think we should give credit where credit is due. The Government has done a lot, especially in its early years, to improve sport in this country – investing significant amounts of money in school sport and radically reshaping the organisations that provide support for sport development.
But the sad fact is that much of Labour's early enthusiasm for sport has now waned. Grandstanding has become the order of the day, with policies being promoted for their headline-grabbing quality,
rather than whether they will make an impact on the ground. When Gordon Brown recently announced that he wants schoolchildren to partake in five hours of sport a week, he failed to mention that up to one million school children are still not doing the previous target of two hours.
So why does that matter? Well, the statistics on the impact of inactivity make worrying reading for anyone concerned with the cost to our health and our wallets. Currently, one in four adults in this country is obese, and if that trend continues, by 2012, one in five children will be as well. The problems associated with obesity are so dire that the Government estimates it could cost us 50bn a year by 2050. That's hardly surprising with up to 50 per cent of people giving
up sport soon after they leave school.
So how can we encourage more people to get down to their local pool or gym, join a local sports team and get active? How can we change the shape of a growing nation?
First, we have to ensure that any money earmarked for sport is actually spent. The Government triumphantly announced 200m for children's play facilities in 2001 and 750m for deprived communities in 2000. Only 10m of the money for playgrounds has been spent so far and the picture for poverty stricken areas is even worse.
The Government claimed that its Sport Action Zones project would help the most impoverished communities close the sporting gap. But less than 9m of that money was actually forthcoming before the fund was closed. It seems ludicrous for money to be sitting idle when it could be put to use across the country.
Second, we must do more to protect outdoor sports facilities. Playing fields lie directly at the heart of community sport. This Government rightly tightened the rules over the sale of playing fields after the massive sell-off under the Tories. But it only introduced protection for fields as large as a whole football pitch.
The failure to protect smaller fields means that many of the scraps of land our children once used, especially in inner-cities, have disappeared. Labour promised to tackle this issue as far back as 2002. Liberal Democrats do not believe further delays are acceptable and would bring in the legislation to protect those fields now.
Finally, we have to find imaginative ways to compensate for the money being lost to the Olympics and increase the funds going to grassroots sport. The Liberal Democrats have long argued that changing the tax regime for the National Lottery would put many millions of pounds back into the lottery good causes that support grassroots sport.
Despite many of the hurdles we currently face, I remain hugely optimistic about the future of sport in this country. The 2012 Olympics provides a once in a lifetime opportunity to transform the sporting landscape. But we need to put the building blocks of success in place now.
The Government will shortly publish their plans to create
an Olympic legacy. We'll be able to judge for ourselves whether the money being spent will deliver all we think – and hope – it can in increasing sports participation.
Don Foster is the Culture, Media and Sport spokesman for the Liberal Democrats.
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