It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Weir. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) on securing this debate
and all colleagues across the House who supported the application for it. We have heard some important contributions by hon. Members from all parties.
I should like to take this opportunity to thank the many organisations that are doing an important job to get Britain moving—hon. Members mentioned many of them—including ukactive, Sustrans and StreetGames. I had the pleasure of joining Living Streets on a walk to work back in May, to celebrate national walking month and the benefits of walking to work, so I have seen first hand the fantastic work that it does. I also thank my hon. Friend for mentioning pedometers. Many hon. Members measure their steps on a daily basis. I am just on 2,000 already today and on my way to securing my 10,000 a day.
I share hon. Members’ concerns about the place of physical activity in our society. Just a few generations ago, physical activity was an integral part of daily life, yet today it is becoming ever less a part of our daily routines. The opportunity to move and be active in modern life has declined dramatically: advances in technology mentioned by hon. Members, the rise in passive entertainment options, community safety concerns, roads that are not safe for pedestrians and cyclists, and limited playgrounds and green spaces are just a few of the reasons why.
We have heard the statistics, but they are worth reiterating. In some parts of the UK, more than 40% of the adult population is classed as inactive and a quarter of all adults in England are failing to do enough physical activity to benefit their health. Nearly half of all 11 to 25-year-olds in England—more than 4.5 million individuals —fail to achieve the chief medical officer’s recommended levels of physical activity. This is deeply concerning. Our nation’s children and young people are not getting the activity that they need to stay strong, fit, healthy and happy, which is something that will inevitably affect them in later life.
As we heard, insufficient levels of physical activity are estimated to cost more than £7.5 billion nationally. Other figures have also been mentioned. That sum is broken down to just over £1 billion in the NHS, £5.5 billion in lost productivity and £1 billion in premature mortality among the working-age population. My hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) also mentioned the staggering 16 million days lost in the workplace, which we must be concerned about and take action on.
More than 1 million children are classed as obese and a third of children leaving primary school are classed as obese or overweight. We know that the status quo is not working. If we are to make the NHS financially sustainable in the 21st century, it follows that we need to have the most ambitious plans for physical activity, to contend with those lifestyle diseases that the NHS is increasingly responding to.
We know that physical activity is the simplest and cheapest route to good health and staying well. Moving from inactivity to activity is one of the easiest first lifestyle changes to make. This has been looked at academically and found to be easier than altering diet, stopping smoking or reducing drinking—and it can cost next to nothing, too. However, the issue is about more than health; it is also about people fulfilling their potential and making the maximum contribution. We know that children who are more active are more likely
to achieve better exam results and earn more throughout their lives. I echo the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent about lower levels of physical activity in more deprived communities. I should be keen to hear the Minister respond to that issue.
Put simply, physical activity and sport builds strong people and strong communities. Yet for an activity that brings such universal health benefits, there seems to be very little centrally driven support for its promotion. We have neither a way of accurately measuring the physical activity people take, nor consistent messages about what level of physical activity people should be taking. Until recently, the guideline for adults was for them to take 30 minutes or more of physical activity of moderate intensity on at least five days a week. That is a minimum of two and a half hours of physical activity per week.
In 2008, the health survey for England measured physical activity among adults by means of a questionnaire. Some 39% of men and 29% of women reported that they met the recommended minimum level of physical activity. However, when accelerometers were used on a group to measure their physical activity objectively, the real percentages were actually 6% and 4%. That was complex enough, but to make things more challenging, in 2011 new guidelines were produced by the UK’s four chief medical officers that are particularly complex—I shall not read them out; I struggle to understand exactly what the recommendations are.
There are other issues to consider, too. The active people survey does not actually measure activity and does not include recreational walking or recreational cycling. We no longer even have a way of measuring children’s participation in school sport, because the school sports survey, which measured the proportion of pupils receiving two hours of curriculum PE and the proportion participating in at least three hours of “high quality” PE a week, was scrapped in 2010. So, too, were the regulations that previously tracked schools’ travel patterns. Will the Minister share with us any plans to clarify this confusing picture and introduce a more consistent way of measuring physical activity? Are there any plans to reintroduce the school sports survey and school travel survey?
Again I share concerns raised by hon. Members about the Olympic legacy in our country, despite the huge progress made under the previous Labour Government. In 2002, just 25% of children undertook two hours of PE and sport in school, but by the end of the previous Labour’s Government time in office this had been raised to 93%. The previous Labour Government also created 422 school sports partnerships and 2,300 school sport co-ordinators, covering every school. It was my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) who promised a “golden decade of sport”, kicked off by the Olympics and Paralympics in 2012. Yet a series of decisions has meant that these ambitions have not quite been realised under this Government.
The school sport partnerships—the local networks of schools and PE teachers—which had quietly been achieving notable success in getting students across England to be more physically active during school hours have been
abandoned; playing fields in some areas have been sold off; and school sport targets have been removed. We heard earlier this month that the borough that hosted the Olympic games is the least physically active in England.