(West Bromwich East)
(Con)
4. What steps her Department is taking to support grassroots
sport.
(Tatton) (Con)
6. What steps her Department is taking to support grassroots
sport.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and
Sport ()
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.
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 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?
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.
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?
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 .
(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?
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.
(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?
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.