§ Chris GraylingTo ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will list the membership of the Sport and Physical Activity Board; what its terms of reference are; and what projects it is working on. [130114]
§ Miss Melanie JohnsonThe activity co-ordination team (ACT), formerly the sports and physical activity board, is jointly chaired by my right hon. the Minister of State at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr Caborn) and myself. The membership is drawn from officials from the following Government Departments and other organisations:
- Department of Health;
- Department for Culture, Media and Sport;
1352W - Department for Education and Skills;
- Treasury;
- The Prime Minister's Office;
- Department for Transport;
- Home Office;
- Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs;
- Department for Work and Pensions;
- Office of the Deputy Prime Minister;
- Health Development Agency;
- New Opportunities Fund;
- Sport England; and
- Local Government Association.
The terms of reference for the ACT are:
to make recommendations to Ministers on interventions to raise mass participation in sport and physical activity, particularly among economically disadvantaged groups, school leavers, women and older people;to deploy existing funding (for example, local exercise action pilots, sport action zones, new opportunities for physical exercise and sport and new opportunities fund/Sport England partnership fund) and to identify new sources of funding for interventions where there is existing robust evidence of their cost-effectiveness, pilot projects where there is potential to increase participation where the evidence is not yet in place;to identify and co-ordinate existing work and to classify it as delivery elements of the strategy reporting to and steered by ACT, or as autonomous programmes feeding information into and being informed by ACT as appropriate;to ensure effective evaluation of the strategy and communication of results from existing and new national, local and regional projects to inform policy and practice;to make recommendations to Ministers on a methodology to secure better evidence and data on participation and fitness;to develop and oversee an effective communication strategy, in line with Ministers' wishes and agreed as widely as possible both within Government and with outside bodies such as health charities, Sport England, the national health service, the business community and others; andto ensure that the programme of work includes quick wins and easily implemented low-cost interventions as well as longer-term solutions.ACTs work centres on the development of a delivery plan by April 2004, to implement the key recommendation in 'Game Plan':
to increase significantly levels of physical activity and sport particularly among disadvantaged groups".