Community Amateur Sports Clubs (Support) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord on initiating this debate and bringing forward this Bill. By so doing, he has clearly demonstrated the need to support sports clubs up and down the country. I know from other debates on sport in this House how much the noble Lord cares about sports clubs. I share his belief in them and in their contribution to every community in the land—they certainly make a contribution in my area. That is why I readily give up my time to be president of the Football Foundation and an adviser to Tameside Sports Trust. These roles have afforded me the privilege of understanding the problems and pressures facing clubs, their volunteers, committees and coaches. I shall focus on subsection (1) of the new section introduced in Clause 1, relating to utilities, and on Clause 2(2), relating to music usage. The two clauses hinge on the same issue: the failure of some government departments to recognise the very existence of 151,000 sports clubs, 6 million volunteers and their contribution to community life in this country. Otherwise, why would departments such as the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills press regulations which tie up the boot strings and purse strings of those clubs? Earlier this week, I went to the conference of the Central Council of Physical Recreation and heard two powerful speeches on sport, one from its president, Brigid Simmonds and the other from the Secretary of State for Department for Culture, Media and Sport, Andy Burnham. Brigid, while recognising that a great deal more money has gone into sport from the centre nevertheless pointed to a very worrying scenario following a survey of sports clubs conducted by the CCPR during the past few weeks. She said that half of the clubs have already been negatively affected by the recession and predicted that many more would follow as the year goes on. Almost 40 per cent of clubs have seen a reduction in renewals; some 59 per cent believe that membership fee income will fall next year; and almost 60 per cent are considering cutting their costs or have already done so—23 per cent have made cuts in coaching and 23 per cent in community initiatives. Perhaps most worrying of all in the longer term is that 4 per cent of clubs believe that they will have to close altogether. The Secretary of State was rather more upbeat, pointing out that school sport has seen investment of £1.5 billion in the five years up to 2008 and will receive another £780 million during the current three-year cycle. Nine per cent of children are now doing between two to five hours a week of high-quality sport. I went from the CCPR conference to host a luncheon for the Big Lottery Fund here in Westminster, attended by many parliamentarians and speakers from universities such as Loughborough and Stafford Sports College, who have first-hand experience of the problems facing sport. A brighter picture was painted at that gathering. We heard that the Big Lottery Fund had contributed £77.5 million and Sport England £31 million to sport. That was the sunny side all right, but I do not know whether it can be sustained if the Government do not recognise the damage that they are doing unless they scrap the unnecessary regulations to which I referred earlier. The CCPR suggests a moratorium on new regulations, arguing that Ministers can desist from charging hundreds of pounds for licences to play music in sports clubs, recognise that it is unfair to increase drainage costs for clubs, which amount hundreds of thousands of pounds—the noble Lord, Lord Addington, mentioned Carlisle Rugby Club, but there are many others as well—reject the notion of imposing extra charges on rates and ensure that planning regulations do not make it virtually impossible for some clubs to develop facilities such as floodlights. All this could be done until the UK economy picks up. Finally, I must express my admiration for the tenacity of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, in hunting down the individual regulations which have led to this situation. However, it seems to me that his approach will tackle the disease only once it has set in. Once we have resolved the problems noted in the Bill, how can we be sure that other government departments will not immediately create more? Perhaps the noble Lord will consider another clause that requires government departments, perhaps via the Cabinet Office, to consider the impact of the new regulations on amateur sport, with a presumption that they will not apply to it. In this way, sports club secretaries would be able to get on with their unpaid jobs, safe in the knowledge that they would not suddenly be hit by some new legal requirement and financial cost which were never aimed at them in the first place. I would like to hear the thoughts of the Minister on that point. I again congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Addington, on introducing the Bill.