Youth Sport (Hansard, 16 October 1995)

§ 4. Mr. Hain
To ask the Secretary of State for National Heritage what additional funding she will make available for youth sport. [35901]

§ Mr. Sproat
The Sports Council will make available, additionally to the £4 million already spent on youth sport, an extra £1 million to enable trainee and serving teachers to obtain coaching qualifications. It will also set up a £2 million challenge fund to promote formal links between clubs and schools. Sportsmatch will be earmarking £1 million of its funding for school projects and, within the rules, we intend to make maximum use of the national lottery.

§ Mr. Hain
Are the Government considering additional funding for youth boxing? After James Murray's tragic death—the second death of a boxer in Britain in 18 months, on top of all the other serious injuries—should not the Government insist that the provision of any public money is conditional on a root and branch reform of boxing, which could perhaps include a ban on punches to the head, the prevention of dangerous dehydration and any other measures necessary to put safety first? Without such reform, should not boxing be banned altogether?

§ Mr. Sproat
I certainly do not agree that boxing should be banned altogether. None the less, the hon. Gentleman makes a serious point at a tragic time. The Sports Council does not give any money to youth boxing, although Sportsmatch has given some which has been matched by the private sector. As the hon. Gentleman knows, after the tragedy on Saturday, the British Boxing Board of Control is conducting a full inquiry. After the tragic death of Bradley Stone 18 months ago, an independent working party was set up under the neurologist Peter Richards. It has completed its report and a summary is published today; the full report will be published in November. I think that that would be a good time to look again at the findings of the two reports.

§ Mr. Dykes
Bearing in mind his well-known interest in cricket, will my hon. Friend the Minister, through the Department for Education and Employment and the particular organisers, say something about the programme for reviving cricket in schools in the Greater London area and, indeed, in further education institutions? What progress has been made?

§ Mr. Sproat
In respect of improving the opportunities for young people to play cricket, the paper that we published on 14 July spelled out clearly the fact that cricket is one of the games that we wish to encourage most. I mentioned in my original answer the £2 million that the Sports Council is to make available to promote links between clubs and schools; cricket clubs will, of course, be among those which will benefit.

§ Mrs. Mahon
Further to the original question, which dealt with making more money available for youth sports, does the Minister agree that making that money available, especially in deprived areas, could do much to prevent youngsters from getting into trouble in the first place so that we would not need the rather ridiculous statements 6 made by the Home Secretary to the effect that he wants to lock up people for longer? Would it not be better to make funds available at an early stage and give youngsters somewhere decent to play sport?

§ Mr. Sproat
Yes, I agree entirely with the first part of the hon. Lady's question. In fact, her suggestion is one of the prime moving dynamics behind the consultation paper. I want more young people to have better access to sporting facilities. [Interruption.] I heard someone mention the selling of school playing fields. We are, I hope, going to make the Sports Council a statutory consultee so that no school playing field can be sold without that body having its say. We also intend to allow schools, with their local communities, to buy back land to make even more sports facilities available for young people.