previous ministers

tessa jowell

Speech to the Central Council of Physical Recreation

09 May 2007

"2012 is a heaven sent opportunity to break through the hardest barrier of all – increasing sports participation.

2012 is a heaven sent opportunity to break through the hardest barrier of all – increasing sports participation.

There are risks to be avoided, as previous Games have shown.

And nobody underestimates the experience of the last 5 years – moving from winning the bid into staging the Games – where we have become students of the experience of previous Games and learned both the essence of success, as well as what hasn’t worked.

The Olympics won’t make a long term difference to people’s behaviour by itself.

And we have to be realistic. Simply winning the Games on its own will not have a lasting effect on sport.

Neither can Government just make it happen.

We have to choose to do it and, together, pursue the means to make it happen - a unique combination of resources from the Government, commitment from the sporting community and from participants themselves.

The use of the Olympic brand to energise the whole country is vital. I’ve been saying so, as have LOCOG themselves, for a while – there is a real hunger for the brand to be established, and we can expect progress from LOCOG on that soon.

So today I want to talk through what more needs to be done to break down that barrier.

And to do that, I have to start 10 years ago, when the road to 2012 began.

Looking at the state of sport in this country, and talking extensively to many of you, we agreed back then to focus on two of the most immediate problems.

Firstly, the condition of our facilities.

There is clear evidence that people are encouraged through state-of-the-art modern facilities.

But local authority facilities are an average of 26 years old.

You won’t need reminding of that. Up and down the country, years of neglect had seen local swimming pools and sports halls becoming more and more decrepit.

Local authorities were redirecting resources away from sport and the result was a maintenance bill of £500 million by 2003 just to keep the stock in working order.

Meanwhile, local sports clubs struggled to break even.

Some problems can’t be solved with money. This wasn’t one of them.

10 years ago, we set up an investment programme worth over £1 billion, shared between the Government and the lottery.

This has led to over 4,000 sports facilities being built or refurbished. Within that, 3280 facilities attached to schools, funded through the new opportunities project.

From the state of the art gymnastics centre in Gainsborough, to the brand new all weather sports pitches in Braunstone, to the 5 new leisure centres in Wolverhampton, Lewisham, Brent, Breckland and Amber Valley - this investment is making its mark.

And for the second year running, more playing fields have been created than lost; more local authority pools have opened than closed - with 800 local authority pools have been built or refurbished in the last ten years.

But the answer wasn’t only in new capital projects. We have taken action to help community clubs through the introduction of tax relief as well as specific club investment programmes.

I’m very grateful for all the support that everyone at the CCPR has given to the sector in making these programmes work so well.

But no-one can be complacent. Only 10% of community based clubs have taken up tax relief. There is further investment to be realised here through campaigning

The second problem we set out to tackle together was the seemingly inevitable drop in school sport.

I remember as a parent feeling like a one woman pressure group to ensure my sports mad son had opportunities in sport at school. And I was struck when I started this job by meeting a PE teacher who said teaching school sport felt to him like the management of decline.

I could see his point. In 2002 only 25% of school children were doing two hours of PE and school sport a week.

The plan to turn this around took a while, but it has borne fruit.

There were no networks - not one - of school sport coordinators and primary link teachers.
Now there are over 20,000 people across our schools, dedicated to ensuring that children in schools get 2 hours a week.
Together we can be proud that today 80% of pupils are participating in at least two hours of high quality PE and school sport in a typical week
3 million more young people are offered, on average, the opportunity to participate in at least 16 sports
One million young people playing and competing within local sports clubs

And when I speak to staff in primary schools, they agree this is a system that is working.

And while schools across Europe are dedicating less time to PE, schools here have been increasing it.
This approach - and what it has achieved - contains valuable lessons for us as we look now to the future - towards the next set of challenges for sports policy to 2012 and beyond.

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Building a sustainable school sport network has taken time. But, we are increasingly a model for other countries, which is a huge tribute to all those working in the field.

And working together we are now in an infinitely better condition to take advantage of 2012 than anyone thought possible just a few years ago.

And it is 2012 that can yield the greatest prize – a nation of the sports mad, not the spectating mad.

Over the coming weeks I plan to make a series of Olympic Legacy Promises ways that we as a nation can harness the power of the games to achieve great things for this country.

These Promises will underline the paramount importance that legacy holds for me - it was a major motivation in wanting to bid in the first place.

And there are three ambitions in particular – 1) to inspire a generation through sport, 2) the regeneration of the East End of London, and 3) the unique sense of national pride that the Olympics can bring.

Today, I can announce our ambition for sport: to use the Games to make the UK a world-leading sporting nation.

How? With three pillars: school sport, mass participation and elite success.

Too often, sporting success is seen only in terms of medals.

To be a world leading sporting nation we have to excel across all three. Each on its own is necessary but not sufficient.

On school sport the progress we've made together, both in terms of investment and our success, is already making us the envy of countries both in Europe and further afield.

And we will go further. By 2010 all children will be offered at least 4 hours of sport every week.

On elite success, the investment behind our ambition in the UK today is unprecedented

£600m will be going into high performance sport between now and 2012, dedicated to supporting over 1500 elite athletes.

Already it is paying off.

At the last World Championships, our track cyclists and our paralympic swimmers came top of the medal table, as did our athletes at the European Indoor Championships. And at the Youth Olympics our finalists won gold medals in sports which for years we have conceded to other countries.

As Chris Boardman, said recently,

"The most amazing thing is that we are limited only by our imagination. If we had more money, we couldn't do things better. It's an incredible situation to be in."

And we only have to look at Australia to see what can be accomplished.

They were 10th in the medal table at the Barcelona Games in 1992, 7th in 1996, and came 4th in Sydney in 2000.

But, of course, the whole point is that elite success is not the only measure of a nation’s sporting achievement.

If we are to be a world-leading sporting nation, we need to address the third pillar, mass participation, as well.

Only then – with school sport, elite success and high participation going hand in hand – will we be able to rival other countries.

Sport England’s ambition is to get 2 million people doing more sport by 2012, and we will hear more from Derek Mapp on this today.

That will bring our participation rates closer to those of the best countries in the world.

Comparisons are always tricky – one country’s physical activity is another country’s sport. We do recognise the importance of both sport and wider physical activity and I’m pleased Caroline Flint is here later today to underline the importance of physical activity to the Government’s wider health agenda.

But the bald fact is that today, just 21% of adults regularly participate in sport.

I want us to emulate the success of countries such as Finland, where they have achieved an annual increase in participation of 1% year on year.

So how can we achieve this?

Across the world, different strategies have been employed with varying degrees of success.

What the research tells us is two things.

Firstly, the reasons people want to get involved in sport vary considerably – one size does not fit all.

And secondly, although we can learn much from other countries, often the successful strategies are very particular to that country.

In China, motivated by the Beijing Games, the drive to get people active has led to street gyms being built on every street corner.

At morning rush hour, you can see suited businessmen doing frantic workouts with their briefcases at their feet.

And in Finland, a major plank of their successful participation strategy was based on cross country ski-ing.

Sport England will publish further details on how the Games will impact on people’s participation within the next month – and I think a clear sense of direction is emerging.

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If the last ten years were notable for their focus on capital resources, I believe the next ten years should be about human resources.

There’s no doubt about it – facilities investment has improved the sporting experience.

But new buildings alone don’t make a successful sporting nation.

It’s the coaches, the youth workers, the PE teachers, the dedicated staff and volunteers at local clubs who take that raw enthusiasm and mould it into a confident participant – for the millions of people who coach, the reward is watching people achieve.

So the major focus has to be on people – coaches and volunteers.
Could we achieve all this ambition without 2012?

In my view the answer has to be ‘no’.

But there are, I believe, 4 essential elements that will contribute to a successful sporting strategy for the 2012 legacy.

Firstly - discipline.

Having 2012 as our deadline – and the eyes of the world upon us – will focus minds like never before.

And as the drumbeat to 2012 grows louder, the demands for action will also grow – Government won’t be allowed again to forget or neglect the importance of sport.

And I know the CCPR, as they never have, won’t let me down here.

Second – inspiration.

We all know as parents, teachers or coaches today that fighting to capture and keep our children’s interest is an uphill struggle; there are so many competing sedentary attractions.

And of course for adults the pulls on our time are even greater.

The Games gives us a unique opportunity to rival the success of the mass participation campaigns run in Finland and other countries.

But, just as we have been patient in building school sport, we should be patient in building up mass participation – there is no quick fix.

The third condition is engagement.

Real legacy is about everyone getting involved and playing their part – simply taking part is achieving a legacy in itself and that’s what embodies the Olympic Spirit, so we need to work hard to bring everyone together.

But this won’t happen by accident.

The final element needed to create a sporting legacy from 2012 is having a plan.

We cannot rely upon a prolonged ‘Wimbledon effect’.

We have to choose to make increasing participation the goal of the 2012 Olympics, and not just in the official Olympic sports but across all sports

It does happen.

Look at Barcelona: in 1992 the city had 20,000 members in its public sports facilities, by 2001 that had increased to 150,000. It takes time, but the results are clear.

So - we have to set out a clear plan to make it happen, with a step-by-step assessment of progress along the way.

We are working with LOCOG and the ODA to harness their plans and investments to squeeze out the maximum benefit for our communities.

For example, the 2012 Roadshow will, this year, focus on building sports participation. The Roadshow last year focussed on awakening local communities to the potential benefits of the Games. This year the focus will be on participating.

There will be professional sport advisors at hand to encourage involvement and signposting new participants to local clubs and activities – already showing how 2012 can benefit grass-roots sport.

In addition, we are working with LOCOG to find a way to harness the London 2012 brand values to inspire and stimulate people throughout the UK – and Bridget is right, we need to continue to engage with communities on the unique opportunity the Olympic brand will offer.

The brand – launched this summer - will have a range of commercial, and critically, non commercial uses.

The official London 2012 sponsors are of course paying for the rights to use the brand – and this is an important source of financing for the Games – so commercial use will obviously be very carefully controlled.

But proposals are in development right now to ensure that communities can also access the brand in an appropriate, and non commercial way.

Full details will be available in the summer shortly after the brand has been launched

To keep us focussed on achieving these ambitions, we will publish an Action Plan this autumn which we will report on annually to set out:

A clear set of aims
A timetable for action including annual milestones so we can all track our progress
And finally, the way in which – through combined resources - we will deliver. Here we will work closely with regional and local agencies to identify who will be responsible for achieving each element.

Sport England will publish further details of how they plan to play their part in driving up participation later this year, articulating their central core purpose.

All of this of course requires funding.

I do not believe that putting money into the Games is a loss to sport.

Quite the opposite; it is an unprecedented investment

It provides us with a uniquely motivating and galvanizing moment, that no traditional funding programme can rival.

A pound invested in a programme linked to the games must surely be worth much more than if invested at any other time. Why else would commercial sponsors be so interested in getting involved?

We will, in short, be getting much more bang for our buck, thanks to the association with the magic rings and all the financial and inspirational benefits they bring.

But I have to address what would otherwise be an elephant in this room – the lottery.

Tim Lamb has warned us off – in the strongest terms - using it as a piggy bank. He’s right to chide us if that’s what we were doing.

But it isn’t a piggy bank.

For the Olympics, it is venture capital for a once in a lifetime opportunity.

For communities, for big capital and for all of sport. And that capital should be available for projects like 2012 that benefit the whole nation.

What I have tried to do today is set out how it will benefit grassroots sport, and inspire a generation to participate in sport.

And I am adamant that the additional Lottery money being invested in the games need have no impact upon current lottery funded projects.

So no currently funded community sport project need lose funding.

And in addition I have agreed with Ken Livingstone a profit-sharing arrangement to enable the lottery to benefit from the returns on the investment that we are making in the Olympic park when the land is sold.

The enthusiasm for the Games amongst the UK population is gold dust itself.

In an age of scepticism, people look for something they can be proud of – an ambition.

When I went to the Sports Colleges Conference in February with the Prime Minister and Kelly Holmes, it was obvious who the cheers and autograph hunters were looking for. And that’s just as it should be.

And when I go to schools up and down the country, every child is convinced they are going to compete in 2012.

The UK School Games - last year in Glasgow, this year in Coventry and then to Bath & Bristol and other towns after that - has already seen a huge level of interest all over the country and has created a revolution in school’s competitive sport structure.

We owe it to this generation to capitalise on that, and to turn as many of these dreams as we can into reality. "

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