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11.53 am
Mr. Derek Wyatt (Sittingbourne and Sheppey): Before I start I must inform the House that I hold a single share in Richmond football club, which despite its name is a rugby union club--the second oldest in the world--and, on behalf of my son, shares in Charlton Athletic football club. May I take this opportunity to congratulate both Sunderland and Charlton on their amazing play-off game last week and the fans on their exemplary behaviour, especially after the game. I am pleased to report that Charlton is once again a happy Valley.
The most important area of sport and the one that has a deep and lasting impact is what our children do at school in their physical education and games lessons. That is a matter not for the current Minister for Sport, but for the Minister for School Standards. If we are to give sport a chance, we have to look again at how strategy is made in the Government. The Cabinet is structured on a19th century model and bears no relationship whatsoever to how modern states make decisions. If we are seriously to modernise our country, we must look first at our own back garden. No FTSE 100 company has 22 board directors, as the Cabinet does.
We have one example of how we might go forward with the new Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions. That should be our starter for 10. The Cabinet should comprise only eight members and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport should be part of a brand new Department that embraces education, training, employment, tourism, sport, heritage and the creative arts.
Once again, I shall remind the House how important sport is in our culture. FIFA--the governing body of soccer--has more members, with 191, than theUnited Nations, with 125. If we preclude the death of Diana, Princess of Wales last year, the highest ever television audience was for sport, when NBC transmitted the superbowl in January 1996 to an audience of138.5 million viewers. That is how important sport is in our global culture.
We shall celebrate two world cups in the United Kingdom next year--cricket and rugby union, always assuming that the Cardiff stadium is ready. In Manchester in 2002, provided we get the funding together, we will host the Commonwealth games. We may also just nick the world cup for 2006, thanks to the amazing work of our present Minister for Sport. We ought to be laying down the plans to win the 2008 or 2012 Olympics by putting in a joint bid. I propose a joint bid between London and Paris, rather like the world cup in 2002, which is to be shared between Japan and South Korea. That would ensure the regeneration of the whole of east London and would finally resolve the channel tunnel rail link. It would also create a London-Paris software corridor to rival Silicon valley. That is what sport can do in our culture.
The Olympic movement is bereft of leadership and needs our presence. After all, it was an early form of entente cordiale that created the modern Olympic movement. The United Kingdom working party for the Olympics should already be working alongside the new millennium experience to ensure its future use is compatible with our joint bid.
The Minister for Sport said last week in The Observer:
Thirdly, dare I suggest it, but as regards the lottery, could we reconsider the concept of additionality, especially with respect to sport? Fourthly, if it is possible, could a new Select Committee for sport be established in the House so that the world's most popular activity is given its proper political focus? Fifthly, could the UK Sports Institute be allowed to create a new public service sports channel, funded by the lottery in the digital terrestrial environment, serving schools, coaches and all sports, including women's and disabled sports? Our most successful sport in the past 12 years has been rowing--six medals in the Olympics and 17 medals in the world championships--and it received a derisory 11 hours last year on BBC sport. Why has not the BBC announced plans for a digital sports channel and a sports website?
Sixthly, given that more than 1,000 overseas coaches from 19 countries have undertaken the internationally famous Football Association courses, we should bolster that great strength by appointing someone as a full-time worker for the British Council who could be shared with the United Kingdom Sports Institute.
Seventhly, we should take a leaf out of the sport that I know best--rugby union. I mention a club that is not often referred to in dispatches, the Penguins international rugby club, which is now in its 40th year; it is run by the same two old stalwarts, Alan Wright and Tony Mason, who ran it when it was founded in 1959. For most of its history, the team has been run on a shoestring budget; it has survived the professional era thanks to the generous sponsorship of HSBC investment bank. It has just come back from Croatia, where it beat the national side by60 points to 24, despite the fact that Croatia is about to qualify for the rugby world cup.
When it was not deemed politic, the Penguins toured on behalf of the Rugby Football Union places such as the Soviet Union, in 1977. They have played in or against teams from no fewer than 53 countries and have helped countless young people to further their international careers. They have been our greatest international sporting ambassadors, but few know anything about them.
To show how sport can be used, I suggest to my hon. Friend the Minister that we create an overseas system for sport on the lines of Voluntary Service Overseas. We should create, through the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, 1,000 sports scholarships a year for all our sports teams to play, coach, lecture and referee overseas.
It would be remiss of me not to mention sport on television, especially what I believe to be the role of a public service--rather than a publicly funded--broadcaster. A decade ago, the BBC stood back from becoming a core member of the first digital television experiment, British Satellite Broadcasting, which had a dedicated sports channel. When BSB merged with Sky, the BBC lost its greatest opportunity to develop sports
programming. The BBC has never understood how, as a member of the European Broadcasting Union, it could make its share in Eurosport work.
In Japan, the NHK--the Japanese equivalent of the BBC, which, ironically, the BBC helped to set up in 1945--saw its future as a public broadcasting service when, in 1987, it asked the Japanese Liberal Democrat Government for two additional satellite channels, one for education and one, hon. Members will have guessed, for sport. Has anyone at the BBC really understood sport in the past decade?
We need to come clean about listed sport on terrestrial television. Although the world cup and the Olympics have been listed, we do not have not legal rights over them--they are not owned by a United Kingdom entity. Indeed, the EBU, which holds the soccer and Olympic rights, is one of the worst cartels; it acts against the spirit of the Rome treaty, which states:
As we are not giving the England and Wales Cricket Board a special grant of £50 million to develop excellence, we shall handicap the sport for ever. I do not want England to fall further behind other cricketing nations and I do not want Kent county cricket club to be unable to continue its youth policy because it does not receive enough money from its parent body.
"We have to accommodate the political reality, but that doesn't mean we can't produce a"--
sports--
"strategy for the UK".
On strategy, perhaps I may give my hon. Friend seven suggestions. First, can we ensure that he sits as the chief executive of sport and chairperson of the new United Kingdom Sports Institute? Secondly, the institute should become the overall strategy-making body for UK sport
and the chief executives of the national sports councils, who will be the sports Ministers for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and the Minister responsible for the regional development agencies in England, should sit on its board. To save us from too many members of the blazer brigade, those members would be matched by an equal number of sports academicians, who, by their nature, would be former Olympic gold medallists elected by their own members.
"It shall be incompatible with the common market and prohibited in so far as trade between Member States is liable to be affected by it, for one or more undertakings to exploit in an improper manner a dominant position within the common market or within a substantial part of it."
The EBU case is now on appeal at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg; should it fail, the rights to both the soccer world cup and the Olympics will not necessarily be returned to the EBU. It would be in everyone's interests if the Olympics were shared out among all UK broadcasters, just as has been tried with Wimbledon, which has had coverage on two UK cable television channels--first Wire television and then Channel One.
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