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Now, however, yet again we have the debate on a Friday. I know that the Minister has some sympathy with this line of argument as we both know hon. Members who have committed themselves to constituency engagements who would dearly like to engage in this debate. My right hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) would certainly have liked to have been here, as would the hon. Member for Luton, North (Mr. Carlisle). I absolve the Minister from blame here because I know that he is just as keen as I am to raise sport's profile. It may be a good idea if we both got together to make representations to the Leader of the House to press him for a better spot in future. But enough of that. I genuinely welcome many of the proposals in the document. I know many hon. Members here today are sceptical about the Government's ability to match their fine rhetoric with action. After all, until today, their track record in this area is hardly impressive. I am not trying to be a killjoy, but it is apparent that most of the Government's proposals--and no doubt those ladies at the coffee morning knew about them before the Minister--were stolen from either the Opposition or the Sports Council.I am certainly prepared to give the Government a last chance, but whether my hon. Friends are I am not sure. I am not optimistic, as the Government have a long record of broken promises and the Prime Minister must realise that being photographed at the Oval, Lords or Stamford Bridge is no substitute for a real sports policy. The Prime Minister said:
"the Government and the Sports Councils will, as the paper makes clear, commit extra resources . . . to improve facilities and support for those teachers and others who lead sport."
My hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Miss Hoey) is also very keen on that, as her intervention demonstrated.
What does that mean in effect to the Government? I shall ask the Minister some specific questions and I hope that he will be able to answer them in his reply. They were certainly not addressed by the Prime Minister in his press conference document. Will the Government give extra resources through the Department for Education and Employment? Those cannot come from lottery money through the Sports Council as it is revenue funding. At whom will the resources be targeted? Is this something that we should anticipate in the Budget? As I said, the Prime Minister is full of fine words, but the House has a right to know the answer to those detailed questions. Back in January of this year I asked the Minister how many officials were involved in the preparation of the press conference document. I was told six. It seems that they spent the following six months copying down other people's views--the Sports Council's, previous recommendations to the Government, which they predictably did not enact, and ideas generated by the Opposition. I am only too happy to take this opportunity to notify the Minister of the mass cribbing that is going on in his Department. Perhaps he will look further into that.
Let me illustrate my point. I referred to the only time that sport has been taken seriously in the past 20 years. If we look again at the 1975 White Paper, we will see that it contains some very familiar ideas. Had Labour not lost the 1979 election there would have been no need for "Raising the Game" as the policies would have been in place--my noble Friend Lord Howell of Aston would
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have seen to that. To answer the Minister's argument that such policies had not been put in place, we had four years, but the Government have had 16 years.Under the heading, "Youth Sports Programme", for instance, the White Paper said:
"there is a need for closer contact between school sports bodies and governing bodies of sport, aimed at ensuring that school-leavers are in touch with the junior sections of adult clubs."
That rings a bell, does it not? "Raising the Game" states: "Too many young people are lost for ever to sport because there is not a straightforward and attractive way, through local clubs, to continue playing sport after the age of 16."
Similarly, Labour's White Paper, under the heading, "Gifted Sportsmen and Sportswomen", talks of the need for
"diverting resources to those who are gifted in sport", and
"developing centres of sporting excellence."
But lo and behold, what is the Government's big idea in "Raising the Game"? Hon. Members have guessed it. Under the heading, "The Development of Excellence", it states:
"we want to ensure that talented competitors at every level have the support necessary to allow them to exploit their talents to the full."
The words may be slightly different, but we all know that the meaning is the same. I could go on, but I will not.
Instead, it is worth pointing out that the 1975 White Paper was not merely radical for its own day, but more than 20 years ahead of its time. It talks of the need to redress the balance in sporting facilities in the areas of urban deprivation, to work with local authorities in partnership with Government, to allow retired people to enjoy sporting facilities, to provide for mothers with very young children and to understand the importance of non-competitive sports, such as dance and movement and to take into account the particular needs of disabled sportspeople. Disgracefully, "Raising the Game" is silent on all those issues.
Let me press on, for I intend to return to some of those themes later. I also mentioned that the Government are stealing ideas from the Sports Council. I have here a letter from the council, dated 7 July--just a few days before the Prime Minister's press launch--which runs through its existing policies and, surprise surprise, we find a number of elements that have been copied down as part of the Government's new policies, such as the links between school and club in and out of curriculum time, the provision of international standard facilities for promoting excellence and allowing the council to become a consultee on planning applications. I have no problem with the Prime Minister borrowing--
Mr. Sproat: I did not catch the name of the paper to which the hon. Gentleman referred.
Mr. Pendry: It is a letter from the Sports Council and I will hand it to the hon. Gentleman.
I have no objection to the Prime Minister stealing either our clothes, the Sports Council's or anyone else's. I just wish that they would acknowledge ownership. Instead, the day following the launch, the Prime Minister was allowed to masquerade in the glory of 1,000 press column inches, claiming sole copyright. It is a shame that the Sports Council did not distance itself further from the Government over that but, to be charitable, I suppose that it is after all a Government quango.
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If the House feels that the 1975 White Paper is the only policy statement on sport that we have produced, I must remind hon. Members of Labour's 1992 "Charter for Sport"--the only sports policy produced by any party during the 1992 election. It called for closer working partnerships with the private sector to widen opportunities at all levels, the prevention of further sales of playing fields, raising the status of physical education in the curriculum--on which the hon. Member for Stockton, South (Mr. Devlin) is keen--and opening up school facilities to the community. Those are all themes that were repeated in "Raising the Game".The Government's document also refers to the need for fair play. Unfortunately, their record on stamping out cheating is not a good one. One part of Labour's "Charter for sport" said:
"The present Government has failed to take effective action against drug use in sport. A Labour Government will not shirk from its responsibility."
The Government's press conference document makes just a passing reference to doping. All that it is offering is more education for youngsters on the dangers of steroid abuse. I welcome that, of course, as do other Opposition Members. Many hon. Members joined me just over a year ago in signing an early-day motion calling for just such measures. But when will the Government finally adopt our commitment to outlaw the drugs themselves?
In January 1994, the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs--the Home Office's own group of experts--recommended a legal move to ban the use as well as the supply of such drugs. Finally, in November last year, the Home Secretary reacted to the pressure put on him by hon. Members on both sides of the House, including the hon. and learned Member for Fife, North-East (Mr. Campbell) and the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Mr. Coe). We do work together on a cross-party basis on many issues, as the Minister said.
In his written reply, the Home Secretary promised to impose further controls on anabolic steroids, but we are still waiting for action. Although the new Secretary of State has left her place, perhaps she could make a bright start at the Cabinet table by pressing the Home Secretary to introduce such legislation.
In their document, the Government are keen to point to the deficiencies apparent in our sporting life and keener still to attribute blame for the failures to anyone bar themselves. They talk about
"misguided attitudes and mistaken policies over the last generation".
But who has been in power these past 16 years? I wish that we had had more coffee mornings earlier on in the period of Conservative Government so that Ministers could have been converted to these views.
The Prime Minister claims to
"have been concerned about the growing evidence of a decline of sport in many of our schools. The Secondary Heads Association themselves have produced alarming evidence of this."
Let us consider that evidence. When did this decline occur and who was responsible? The SHA reported that between 1987--I do not think that Labour was in power then--and 1994, there was a huge decline of more than three quarters in extra-curricular sporting fixtures, largely due to the increased work loads of teachers.
Further evidence produced by the Sports Council and the Health Education Authority revealed that between 1977 and 1992 the number of PE teachers fell from
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41,800 to 24,000. Clearly, the sharp decline in school sport to which the Minister referred has occurred in the past 16 years of Tory Government and mainly during the premiership of the current incumbent, not a generation ago as he likes to pretend.Let us look more closely at the Government's proposed solution. They rightly acknowledge the existence of a sporting continuum, stretching from our primary schools, moving through the educational establishment to our universities and colleges, linking it with clubs and societies and finally ending at the pinnacle of sporting excellence. They propose to support each part of the pyramid with new initiatives to bolster our sporting achievements. They are fine sentiments that we certainly endorse, but such policies simply cannot be put in place without the necessary resources--or are we to have another pledge broken, one made during the passage of the National Lottery etc. Act 1993 by the Prime Minister himself and successive Ministers?
Where are the funds for the sport development officers to come from? Where are the funds to ensure that schools can provide adequate sporting facilities by the year 2000? Where are the funds to implement sports mark and gold star and to ensure that an increasing number of schools reach their demanding targets? Where are the funds to overhaul teacher training and coaching programmes? Clearly, the lottery will provide some of the resources, and that is good, but they will be for capital programmes. It must be at the discretion of the Sports Council, which should not slavishly follow the diktats of the Prime Minister or the Minister.
What about the rest? As revenue projects, they are not eligible for lottery funding. The Prime Minister committed himself to giving extra resources. However, he is the man who has presided over huge real terms cuts in education spending, resulting in the loss of at least 3,500 teaching posts this year alone. In fact, the only major spending commitment contained in "Raising the Game" is to build the new British academy of sport with lottery funds, which is estimated to cost some £100 million. I do not complain about such a development. Indeed, as I said earlier, my party developed the idea in our 1975 White Paper. It was yet another of our ideas that was hijacked by the Government, but it is another case of the Prime Minister interfering in the distributive role of the Sports Council.
We can create excellence at the top only if we put the necessary resources into the grass roots of sport. The proposals are clearly based on the Australian institute of sport. The Minister will recall that by agreeing to pair with him to allow him to go to Australia--kicking and screaming, I must say--I was keen to help him to go to that institution. Nevertheless, he must remember that the Australian Sports Commission has the dual role of promoting participation as well as excellence. He rightly said that there is a difference between what he proposes and what the Australians have. It is a very important difference--one is a sport-for-all policy rather than a sport-for-a-few policy.
The Minister should also remember that Australia is rich with first-class sporting facilities. That compares with London's single 50 m swimming pool shared by 9 million inhabitants. The academy has a role to play but only as part of a balanced picture for British sport.
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In issue 5, volume 3 of Public Policy Review , the Minister said:"As Minister of Sport I don't intend to tell sports bodies how to run their affairs."
How does he square that with the statement from his own document which reads:
"The Government has asked the GB Sports Council to . . . invite bids, by 31 March 1996, from the sports world to establish the British Academy of Sport."
In 1994, the Secretary of State's predecessor, with whom she swapped jobs, wrote to me saying:
"It has always been an important principle of the National Lottery that proceeds from the Lottery will be additional to current expenditure programmes and not a substitute for them."
Again, that was repeated by the Secretary of State and the Minister in last Wednesday's debate. They were repeating a promise made to the House during the Second Reading of the National Lottery etc. Act 1993: that the Government would not direct the spending of lottery money--as if it were the Government's own. It was clearly repeated by the Secretary of State on Wednesday at column 1039 of the Official Report .
The pledge was even written into the directions for distribution written by the Minister's Department. They state quite categorically:
"All distributing bodies shall take into account . . . the need to ensure that they do not solicit particular applications." Clearly, that promise has been broken and a new precedent set. As I have said, I welcome in principle the establishment of the British academy of sport, but a few questions need to be answered first. For instance, who will control its operations? Who will direct its resources? Where will it be based? Some of them have already been answered by the Minister and I welcome the fact that, although we hear in this era of leaked documents that there is a healthy punch-up going on between the Minister and the Sports Council, the Sports Council will very soon be issuing its consultative document. It would appear that the Minister favours a private operator developing a green-field site rather than extending existing complexes such as Lilleshall, but what if the commercial interests start to conflict with the interests of sport in the medium to long term? What guarantees will we have if the Minister has his way over the long-term future of the academy? In "Raising the Game", we were promised that the Sports Council would bring forward proposals on the academy, and it is good that they are to come very soon. They were promised earlier--I think that they were given to the Department in the first week of October although we were promised them in September--but, as long as we get them before Christmas I do not think that we shall be quibbling too much.
Let us return to the other end of the spectrum: the plans that the Minister has outlined for in-school sport. In recent years, the amount of sport played in schools has fallen dramatically, as the Minister said. The Government continue not to guarantee two hours for school sport a week. In 1987, 72 per cent. of the 14 to 16 age group had at least two hours of physical education a week. That had declined to just 25 per cent. by 1994-- that is some progress, and all under Conservative Governments.
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I remind the Minister that at present an average of 91 minutes a week is allocated to sport for children aged 14 to 16, leaving just over an hour after changing and travelling time. That is clearly not enough, and I am glad that the Minister agrees with us on that point.In addition, the Government still favour compelling schoolchildren of all ages to play competitive games. Naturally, many youngsters derive great enjoyment--I certainly did--from competitive team games and find them a rewarding experience, but others do not. They are more likely to engage in other activities such as dance, jogging and aerobics which will be sustained throughout their adult life. Surely, by the age of 14, after nine years of competitive games, children are old and wise enough to make up their own minds.
In the introduction to "Raising the Game", the Prime Minister refers to the document being the result of widespread consultation with interested parties. According to the Prime Minister:
"Their advice has been hugely valuable in putting these ideas together".
Clearly, that was not the case with the issue of compulsory competitive games because more than three quarters of the responses that the Minister received from that consultation document were opposed to the idea.
The Minister ignores those voices at his peril because they have been joined by Gary Lineker, Bryan Robson, Kevin Keegan, Trevor Brooking, Paul Gascoigne and Terry Venables, all great sporting competitors who questioned whether youngsters are being taught properly in Britain. They all recognise the wider dimension to developing skills in sports and endorse the system used by Ajax Amsterdam, which focuses on balance and movement skills for youngsters before they go on to the competitive field.
The Daily Telegraph wrote last Wednesday:
"With their determination to promote competitive team games at the expense of all other activities, the Government have clearly got it wrong."
As the House can imagine, I do not always endorse what The Daily Telegraph says, but, in this instance, I support its sentiments wholeheartedly.
Quite the most controversial aspect of "Raising the Game" is the section that deals with school playing fields. We should like to know exactly what the Sports Council will do in its role as consultee to planning applications affecting playing fields. We have seen plenty of evidence of the Sports Council doing the Government's bidding in the past. We really need to know what its attitude to DES circular 909 is and whether it will be repealed.
In any case, should it be the Sports Council that is made the consultee in this instance? What about the Association of Metropolitan Authorities or the Association of County Councils? After all, the amount of money provided by the Sports Council--£49.8 million--pales in comparison with the £2 billion provided by local authorities.
Mr. Harry Greenway: I am keen to retain and expand school playing fields. May I ask for the hon. Gentleman's support in opposing Ealing's Labour council which is attempting to sell the playing fields at Dormers Wells high school for housing development?
Mr. Pendry: I regret any playing fields being sold, but I do not blame any council--Conservative or Labour--for making that choice when it is strapped for cash and
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receives a circular allowing it to make that difficult choice. I regret it. As a Government, we shall remove that temptation.Mr. Greenway: Will the hon. Gentleman support me?
Mr. Pendry: I will support anyone in putting a case for sporting provision in specific places, but I will not make a decision about the priorities of any one council. It is for the elected councils to do so. My argument is that the circular allows local authorities to do that, and that we should take the temptation away.
In a letter to me, the Prime Minister accepts the argument, but he does not go on to allow local authority associations to act as consultees.
It was the Government who introduced DES circular 909, as long ago as 1981, which reduced minimum areas for playing fields and encouraged schools to sell playing fields in the first place. Since then, more than 5,000 playing fields have been sold off so that cash-strapped councils can generate capital receipts. The Minister has never disputed that.
What makes it worse is the fact that school attendances have steadily increased recently--up by more than 10 per cent. in primary schools in the past 10 years. Initially, the sale of playing fields was said to be related to falling attendance rolls; those rolls are lengthening again. At the same time, the fields have gone, largely never to return, as they have been concreted over and turned into car parks and housing estates. Yet the Minister now wants schools to buy them back, as he said on 16 October at column 5.
How will that be done, and at what cost? Perhaps the Minister will tell us that. Obviously, we shall buy back the fields that remain for a larger sum than we sold them for.
At the end of last year, I wrote to the Prime Minister about that subject. I was surprised by his response. Rather than acknowledging that the regulations encourage schools to sell off surplus land, the Prime Minister claimed that they actually protected playing fields. I was staggered by the sheer hypocrisy of the Government. First they urge local authorities to flog off playing fields; then they claim that they have been protecting them all along.
We should also note that the specifications laid out in the regulations are minimum requirements--only 1 hectare for primary schools with 300 pupils, which is not enough by anyone's standards. The Government have done nothing to strengthen the minimum provisions, but have encouraged further sell- offs.
I have before me an extract from a speech made by the Prime Minister only two months after his supposed conversion. Speaking to the Grant Maintained Schools Foundation, he said:
"At present, you can only sell surplus assets with the expectation of keeping half the proceeds. That is fine as far as it goes . . . I can say today that, as from next April, you will be able to retain the full proceeds of such disposals."
If that is not an encouragement to sell off more land, I do not know what is.
The National Playing Fields Association has said:
"Such policies may have an inadvertent negative impact on school playing fields. The simple position is that the only assets which schools have available for disposal are buildings and land and for the major part most buildings will continue to be required." What the document omits is as worrying as what it includes. There appears to be little or no recognition of the importance of parental support in producing first-class sportspeople.
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I am told that somewhere in the paper-- which I ask the Minister to pick up--there is a reference to sport for disabled people. I have read the paper several times, but I am unable to find it. I contacted the British Sports Association for the Disabled to discover whether it could. A helpful spokeswoman there said that she had heard about a reference, too, but that she could not find it.Perhaps the Minister can advise me where to look now and on what page that reference appears. I shall willingly give way to him if he is able to direct me to the relevant page, but I do not think that he can.
Why are there no references to the achievements of disabled sportspeople in that document? Does the Minister not recognise them as important?
The Minister should be aware that, in recent years, Britain's disabled athletes have distinguished themselves in many world sporting competitions. Last year, the Great Britain swimming team topped the medal table at the world championships. Last summer, the Great Britain athletic team came third in the world championships, winning 66 medals, including 22 gold. As a patron of the British Paralympic Association, I am aware that there are high hopes that the team will top the medal table in Atlanta next summer. It is an appalling omission that those athletes receive no recognition in "Raising the Game".
Another major omission is the role of local authorities and especially their leisure and education departments. They are the major providers of sport and leisure in the country, investing almost £2 billion annually, yet they are referred to only twice in passing in the document.
One major surprise to me was the mention--I am sure that it must have been a mistake by the Minister and the Department--in the paper of a school in my constituency, which seconded a teacher to take special responsibility to promote sport for its pupils among local clubs. However, there is no mention of the role of the Tameside leisure department, assisted, one might say, by the local Member of Parliament, who closely supported the school in all that. For example, the Labour council directly grant-aided the school netball and fencing clubs, school coaches attended council training programmes and, as a result of council support, the school secured additional sponsorship for new changing rooms and for five-a-side football and netball areas. Those are only a few examples of that Labour council's support for Hyde high school. It supports many other schools in the district, as do other Labour-controlled authorities throughout the land, which are not mentioned, of course.
We believe that "Raising the Game" has done something at last to raise the profile of sport; we welcome anything that does. It is certainly better than nothing. However, it is a patchwork quilt policy of other people's ideals and ideas, hurriedly put together. It is unlikely to be the panacea for British sport that the Prime Minister portrayed it as. I fear that the sporting world will have to wait for the next Labour Government before there is a coherent sports policy. When that day comes, I hope that the Minister will be as supportive of me as I have been of him in many of his endeavours.
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11.6 amMr. Michael Lord (Suffolk, Central): I am delighted to take part in the debate. I am sorry that Opposition Front-Bench Members could not find it in their hearts to be more supportive of what the Minister is doing. I found his speech invigorating and exhilarating. He understands what he is talking about and really cares for the game. He is giving it the shake-up that it has long needed. The document that we are considering today emphasises that. I wish him all the best in his endeavours, especially regarding schools, where it is most important that we get sport going again. One's school days--and sometimes university and college--are the happiest days in one's sporting life.
In this important debate which touches the lives of so many people, I wish to discuss two topics: the effect of money on sport in general and its effect on rugby union specifically.
At the risk of being accused of being a purist or an idealist or of wanting to turn the clock back, I believe that we need to take a new hard look at the position. Sport at its best has so much to offer, especially to the young: the thrill of competition, being part of a team, fairness, respect for decision makers, self-discipline, honour and, not least, the ability to lose with good grace. But what do we see in so much of our sport today? Here I speak not so much about sport at school or university or at the lower levels, but about sport at the higher levels, which is what most people watch.
In cricket, the practice of sledging--fielders close to the bat making rude remarks to the batsman, constantly to try to talk him out of his wicket--is now commonplace. At test level, people appeal for catches when they know full well that the ball touched the ground. The hon. Member for Vauxhall (Miss Hoey) is or was a well-known athlete. Athletes of the highest level now do not break a record on a Saturday if they can make more money by breaking it on a Sunday. Athletics has become a travelling circus world wide, with appearance money and people making a fortune out of it.
Even tennis, a relatively gentle game, is becoming almost brutal at the men's finals level--bigger rackets, grunting all round, serve and volley, over in five minutes. I understand that softer balls for Wimbledon are being discussed. How long before it will be smaller rackets and higher nets?
The Ryder cup is a stark example from recent weeks of what happens when money is not important. Although professional players took part, they played not for money but for country, honour and pride. The atmosphere of that Ryder cup was entirely different from that of any other golf match the whole year round because not money but something else was the key issue.
I intervened in the Minister's speech to talk about role models. Let us take our national sport of soccer as an example. If we watch it regularly on television, we see referees--who in my opinion are saints--being bombarded face to face with four-letter words by half the players on the field. One top-class player leaps into the stand and aims a kick at a spectator's face. And recently, for the first time, a footballer has been sent to gaol for head-butting somebody. It is difficult to apportion blame specifically, but I believe that most of it is due to the increasing sums of money and the greater importance of money in all games,
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and to falling standards on all sides. How much sport can give to our country, yet how little it is giving at present- -and, indeed, how much damage it does in some respects. Last week a commission on youth said that young people were trying to be too macho. How much of that derives from the role models that young people see in sport wanting to win at all costs and the methods employed to do so?As a young man, my main sport was rugby union and I developed a deep love for the game which I have never lost. Until now, it has been the one major national sport to have stood out against professionalism and said that it would not pay players to play. It was a wonderful example of sport played for fun, with no expectations of financial reward, and that is what gave the game its special ethos and special following.
I do not pretend that everything has been perfect and entirely above board. There were always stories of money being tucked into boots after games, extra travelling expenses and a certain amount of fiddling behind the scenes in some clubs. Many of us deplored that, but it did happen. In recent years, the pressure has increased. We had paid coaches, the formation of leagues, sponsorship encouraged by firms and corporate hospitality at grounds. The World cup has greatly increased the commercial attractions and the television coverage. In many ways, that was commercialisation of the sport but until recently, at least from the players' point of view, rugby union remained an amateur game. Now, however, it has been announced that the game is going professional.
What finally pushed England--I am talking about England in particular today --into making that decision? There were two reasons. The first was pressure from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, which wanted to pay their players--and had, indeed, been paying their players for years. The second was the greed of some of the present crop of internationals, whose shameful part in those events will be remembered long after their rugby achievements are forgotten. It is disgraceful that international players lucky enough to be honoured by selection for their country to play an amateur game should use the amateur image to build up their own reputations and then destroy it in their desire for money. In doing so, they have denied future generations the opportunities and pleasures that they themselves have enjoyed. I recently heard one such player described as a business man in shorts, and that sums it up rather well. Those players, some of whom delude themselves that they individually have the
spectator-pulling power of Pavarotti, have been behind the scenes bludgeoning the Rugby Football Union with the negotiating skills and techniques of Arthur Scargill.
I understand that the proposal for the England squad is to pay the whole squad for the whole season: what a cosy arrangement. Surely the fairest way is to select game by game. What about injuries and loss of form, and emerging new talent? Whatever happened to annual trials, at which current internationals had to prove regularly that they were worthy of their places, and better than those who aspired to replace them? Under the present arrangements it is not surprising that some of our current internationals have 50 or 60 caps.
Rugby union is not naturally a spectator sport. It is only at international level or at the varsity match that the combination of the amateur spirit and fierce competition has traditionally attracted large crowds. Even then, the
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fierceness of the competition, the degree of fitness and the closeness of the marking can make for exciting but not very spectacular matches. Rugby union is essentially a game for playing, not for watching. The kind of people who go to watch rugby do so for all sorts of reasons. Of course they support their side and hope that it will win. They may also hope to see some exciting running--although in that respect they are frequently disappointed. But people also go to watch because of family and friends, or perhaps because their children are playing. They go to meet old friends, and to drink beer. There is a sense of occasion. In rugby union winning is certainly not the be-all and end- all.It has been argued that the Rugby Football Union in England had no choice, that professionalism was inevitable and only a matter of time. Some of the players say that professionalism has removed the hypocrisy. What nonsense that is. The most important hypocrisy was displayed by players posing as amateurs while working hard behind the scenes to get paid for what they were doing and to turn the whole game professional.
Players complain about the pressure of training and keeping up to present standards. Apparently it interfered with their careers, so that they could not train and have a career. Why do they not do what earlier generations did and have an international career when they have time to train, and when they no longer have that time, get on with their career and make room for younger people, whose careers are not yet so important, who have time to train and who desperately need the opportunity?
I have already mentioned the great pressure from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. I understand that those countries already pay their players. At the risk of sounding nationalistic, the game is called rugby and it was created at Rugby school in England. Our national organisation is called not the England Rugby Football Union but the Rugby Football Union, and Twickenham is affectionately known all over the world as HQ. What we needed from the Rugby Football Union was leadership and foresight, and the determination to preserve the game loved by so many people. If the game needs cleaning up, let us clean it up, not simply give way and see it ruined.
What will happen now? What does the future hold? That has not been thought through. I am sure that there are many Members in the Chamber who understand the game, so they will know what I mean when I ask how prop forwards who are paid can pack down against prop forwards who are not paid. How can players ruck and maul--extremely fierce activities--for money? How can amateur rugby clubs be bought and sold, as is now being discussed, and how can players be bought and sold? Cardiff is looking forward to the return of Jonathan Davies from rugby league. I understand that, and I understand his desire to go back into the Welsh fold. But has Cardiff thought about the fact that while Jonathan Davies is coming one way, some of the club's other best players may be going the other, to be bought by Newcastle, Bath or Harlequins? That has not been thought through. There are a thousand and one problems that have not been addressed.
We must realise that we are in danger of reinventing the wheel. The same debate took place 100 years ago, when rugby league was created. Despite what the Minister said earlier, I have no objection to rugby league. It is a fine game and I enjoy watching it. It was created 100 years ago not
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