Sport, Health and Well-being National Plan (NPSRC Report)

Another key member of our team was Owen Williams, our head of press and media, who recognised that the subject was of national importance and appealed to all ages, and showcased the work of your Lordships’ House at its best. His team did not fail to take those opportunities, not least with children’s TV, linking up with Sky “Kids FYI”, the young people’s news show. In so doing, they were enthusiastically backed in this endeavour by members of the committee, particularly the noble Baronesses, Lady Grey-Thompson and Lady Brady. “FYI” even undertook to research among children, the results of which were submitted to the committee, which clearly showed an appetite to be more active in and out of school.

We welcome the maiden speech today of my noble friend Lord Effingham, who is a very welcome new Member of our Benches. We look forward to hearing his contribution.

Overall, we held nearly 30 evidence sessions, analysing over 160 written submissions of evidence over the course of the year. Dr Chris Mackintosh’s own take on the work of the committee is worthy of recording. He said:

“I believe the suggested framework for the National Plan is driven by evidence and can provide the genuine opportunity for catalytic change. Hopefully this is a watershed moment that creates a more radical vision for community sport, wellbeing and physical activity—the time is certainly right for this change.”

Central to our recommendations, we are calling for the development of a long-term, cross-governmental national plan for sport, health and well-being. The national plan will form an overarching framework document which will set out the Government’s vision, aims and objectives over a multi-year period and will bring together disparate strategies covering physical activity, health promotion, planning, housing, education, transport and more. This will mean that some existing strategies such as Sporting Future will need to be incorporated into the national plan and reflect the new way of working, but not abandoned.

We then called for a Minister for Sport to be appointed within the Department of Health and Social Care, moving away from the existing Department for Culture, Media and Sport. We called for the establishment of a national physical activity observatory to address the existing limitations in national, regional and local monitoring and evaluation in sport and recreation policy.

We called for better teacher training, particularly for primary school teachers, including greater emphasis on PE and physical literacy training. We called for schools and colleges to be encouraged to develop closer links with local sports clubs to tackle drop-out from physical activity that often occurs when people leave full-time education.

We hope that the Department for Education will guarantee funding for the PE and sport premium at least at current levels, but not just in the short or medium term but in the long term. We looked for the introduction of a statutory requirement for local authorities to provide and maintain

“adequate facilities for sport and physical activity, backed up with adequate financial support from the Treasury”.

We looked for the designation of PE as a core national curriculum subject to ensure that it received “adequate time and resource”, and the creation of a robust approach to duty of care and safeguarding in grassroots and elite support, backed by financial sanctions and built on the findings of the independent review of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, Duty of Care in Sport, published in 2017. We looked for a national register of coaches to maintain standards in safeguarding and child protection as well as an ombudsman for duty of care in sport, and close working with the sector to introduce mandatory reporting

“given the potential for abuse in sport”.

We untangled the webs which obfuscate the key delivery mechanisms of the sector by placing emphasis on physical literacy; accessibility and availability of facilities and spaces; tackling discrimination; public messaging campaigns; addressing health inequalities and the need for more social prescribing, and sport for development in criminal justice settings.

We believed passionately in the importance of instilling a lifelong habit of sport and physical activity. We recognised the need for major progress in the delivery of PE and school sport, addressing cost, facilities and accessibility—not least to the countryside.

What was the genesis of the sense of frustration that members of the committee felt? It was excellently summarised by our chair, who said:

“I thought the committee would look very narrowly at sport and recreation and what could be done for them, but it ended up with a set of proposals that are quite revolutionary, which state something really quite different about the way forward, not only for sport and recreation but for the NHS itself … How is it possible that the UK is world-leading in elite and professional sports, that 3 billion people across the world watch our Premier League matches in over 187 different countries and that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, has consistently said, at Olympics after Olympics … we have failed at grass-roots level to get more people from more diverse backgrounds to be more active, despite all the investment that successive Governments have made? … With one-third of the adult population at the moment getting less than 150 minutes of moderate activity each week; with schoolchildren doing consistently less activity both at school and at home; with PE marginalised in the school curriculum and no longer inspected by Ofsted while, as we heard in our evidence, many primary school teachers get less than three hours’ training in a three-year degree course, which is shameful, so physical literacy in most of our primary schools means nothing, frankly, because it does not appear on the league tables; with access to facilities ever more difficult; with local authorities closing swimming pools and leisure centres to save resources; and with transport non-existent for large parts of the day for large swathes of the community, we have become one of the most lazy, inactive nations in the … world. Those sections of the population with the poorest diets and the worst levels of deprivation are, not surprisingly, the least active, too, and of course the pandemic has disproportionately affected all the target groups.”—[Official Report, 4/2/22; cols. 1207-09.]

No one in this Committee could have put it better.

We on the committee concluded that the day had arrived to bring sport and recreation away from the touchlines of Whitehall to the centre of government, where, led from a position of strength and embedded at the centre of the Department of Health, sport could be united with health and well-being to play a pivotal role in our health policy. Then and only then can we truly promote a proactive health agenda as Governments have been doing across the world, from Australia and New Zealand to Norway, Sweden and France. Only then will we achieve effective cross-departmental work, which is touted as a goal by successive Ministers for Sport but which remains a chimera—a benign illusion that withers on the vine when road-tested for effectiveness.

Our hope was that funding would then “coalesce around the national plan”. We looked enviously at New Zealand, whose strength at elite level lay in a strong emphasis on participation and opportunity for all: a pathway from all local communities to podium success. New Zealand’s well-being budget model was seen as well thought through and inspirational in co-ordinating departmental budgets and departmental agendas. Those who designed and led the New Zealand strategy clearly recognised that sport and an effective, active lifestyle played an increasing role in virtually all government departments. Such is the power of sport.

High levels of physical inactivity remain a major issue of national concern. Inadequate steps have been taken to tackle childhood obesity and inactivity. At grass-roots level, women, disabled people, the elderly, ethnic minorities, those with long-term health problems and people from less affluent backgrounds had suffered most from inadequate opportunities, poor information flows, local authority cuts and numerous underwhelming attempts to boost activity rates.

A central raison d’être for hosting the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games—a healthier, more active population inspired by our great athletes—has failed to materialise. While the urban regeneration of the East End of London and the consistent funding of our elite athletes have been a success, the opportunity to raise the bar for physical activity at grass-roots level was seen by the committee to have been lost and has yet to recover.

We learned in answer to a Written Parliamentary Question tabled on 22 July 2021 that the complement of the team who worked on sports policy was just 25—25 enthusiastic, capable people who could easily transfer with their Minister to the Department of Health. Even the Minister for Sport in his evidence was not against that proposal. Yesterday’s move of digital out of DCMS would have been an opportunity to move sport to health as well, if health is to be taken as seriously as digital.

All our work was happening when countries across the world were introducing new sports laws, creating clear lines of policy formulation and accountability to their Parliaments. Ask the 25 civil servants where they believe they would be most effective. Some may indeed say they should be in education, but that removes them from the majority of the population who really need them after the waterfall effect on participation after they leave school. Maybe they should be in the Cabinet Office, but while we recognise that that would bring the importance of these policies to the heart of government, it would lack direct accountability for the programmes we considered.

Those are some of the reasons why we recommended a national plan for sport, health and well-being at the centre of government and led by the Minister for Sport in the Department of Health, leading an office of health promotion to be placed on a statutory footing to ensure its accountability to Parliament. With a national plan, a Minister at the centre of government and the 54 recommendations and conclusions we reached, it is time to act. If this Government will not act, hopefully the next one will.

This report will not gather dust. It will not sleep. As members of the committee from across the House recognised, it forms an excellent, vibrant and relevant manifesto for each and every party at the next election. No Member of your Lordships’ House who has been engaged on this work will not fully support whichever party is in power to implement the report’s key recommendations in full. I beg to move.

In the wider population, some families and communities, for whom being active is part of family and community life, have lots of sports facilities and thrive, but we also have some places, people and communities who do not have the facilities, the motivation or the encouragement. Thinking about ourselves as a nation—what is good for our well-being and that of our citizens—frankly, although I love football, it is more important to get wider involvement than to have the wealthiest football league in the world. Sometimes, it seems as though we have backed the wrong thing. We are immensely proud of having a lot of money in the Premier League, but we worry less about the neighbourhoods and communities for which sport is not available.

Things need to change. I will take two examples from my background of where the report says this very well. First, it seems minor to say that PE and sport should be core school subjects. The Government responded that it does not matter because they are part of the national curriculum. However, if everything on the national curriculum was treated equally, we would not have core and non-core subjects. “Core subject” means that it is more important than the rest of the national curriculum. If anything has to go—if money is short and anything is not measured or celebrated—it will be the non-core subjects, not the core ones. The notion of “physical literacy” in the report and the move to make it a core subject would give a powerful signal, though not overnight, to people in education and schools that this matters and that change must happen.

Where we are at the moment is that many children in primary school will be taught all their PE by somebody who may not be interested in sport, may not be confident in sport themselves and may only have had between three and six hours of training in the whole of their teacher training. Even in secondary schools, where we have, I hope, qualified teachers—although I am not sure that every class is taken by a fully qualified teacher—when the exams come along, it is the sports hall that is closed so that desks and chairs can be put out. Can you imagine literacy or numeracy lessons being cancelled because there was this or something else in the rest of the curriculum? The message given there is that yes, it is important, yes, it is part of a broad and balanced curriculum, and yes, we see the importance of activity for children, but we are keeping it just below the radar while our messages about other parts of the curriculum are far stronger. Unless that changes, we will fail to lay the foundations with children and young people so that they remain active throughout their life.

If you miss out at school, or you are in a school that does not have those facilities, you look to your community —and the amount of money local authorities spend has reduced in the past 10 years by £0.6 billion, and it is not a statutory duty to provide leisure facilities. So there is something wrong. Imagine if we closed all our GP surgeries, or all our dental surgeries—well, we do have a problem with dentists. But if we closed all those health facilities, we would worry that it would be a crisis. The swimming pool closes, and it reaches the headlines in the local newspaper but nowhere else.

I give those examples, because to me that is saying that we are not yet in a position where policy is giving a clear message about what is important. I am disappointed with the Government’s response—although, to be honest, I could have predicted it; I could almost have guessed the draft. I was probably the same, but it does what Ministers of government departments always do. It says how much they have spent in the past on various pilots or trials and that they have picked out some geographical areas to run some more trials, says that they have a new measurement, and then to top it all says that they have set up a cross-party working group or a cross-party departmental committee. It is a formula that you go down. In government terms it does not cost much, but it looks like a lot when it is written on a piece of paper.

My message is that all that has been done in the past, and it did not work. That is the tragedy of this issue—that when you look at both Governments, you can see that they have made honest efforts, because they want to bring about the change. But a bit more money, another cross-party working group, another pilot and another trial has not delivered the change that we need. The statistics are worse than they used to be. We should say in this area that there should be no more pilots or small pots of money until you tell us what happened to the last ones you spent. What was the impact, what lessons have you learned, and what are you changing in future?

To be honest, it took me some time to come around to the notion of changing the machinery of government, because I am always a bit worried when politicians suggest doing so. It is a bit of a safe haven for those who have worked in the machinery of government—but I have become an enthusiastic convert to it. I can see that the proposal at the core of the report to put this in the Department of Health, as the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, explained, could give a very big signal that government understands that, if things are to change, the leadership that it has to show is that it will change too. I very much hope that this debate will go on in future years.

Big sporting moments such as the Olympics, the Paralympics and the Commonwealth Games are amazing and great; I competed at all three. Working in this area, I experienced a really proud moment after the Lionesses’ victory last year. I was on a train, and I heard two young boys arguing about who was the best English female footballer. It felt as though we had turned a corner, but we then seemed to slow down again. If you look at what the 2012 Games did at Olympic park for communities and the built environment, beyond an incredible Games, you will see, again, that we must have the right support beneath these big sporting moments —you cannot just expect them to change anything. One of my biggest frustrations is when people tell me that 2012 changed the world for disabled people. It did not. They were a great Games, but we have to do more.

We sat as a committee during Covid, and as I was going out and about being active it was interesting to see so many more people, including women, being active who were not before, because they had the opportunity to do so. During that time, we heard so many people being passionate about the NHS, which was amazing, but I throw out the challenge that, if we care about the NHS so much, we have to stop people going into it. We should not talk about physical activity and sport in silos—they need to be the golden thread that runs through our debates. Physical activity can help with waiting lists and surgery; it can help with everything. We just need to talk about it a little more. I raised some of these issues at Second Reading of the levelling-up Bill.

The question is: should there be a national plan for sport? The answer, really simply, is yes. We could all have answered the question very quickly, but it was right that we spent so much time looking at it. What was really powerful about the committee was bringing it all together in one place. Briefly, I will pick out a couple of the recommendations and give my thoughts.

Statutory provision is vital. This cannot be a postcode lottery. We have to start thinking differently about the money that is spent. There should be a new requirement on councils, with adequate support from the Treasury, but we have to think about it as investing in people’s future and not just about the money that we spend. Many have called for a review of the tax environment for the sport and recreation sector, and I fundamentally support that.

What do we think about PE? A lot of people’s experience of PE is not positive, and I would argue that that is because of the way that it can be taught. It brings in sporty children, like me, but we do not teach trigonometry without teaching maths, yet we expect children to play sport without teaching them physical literacy. This is not just about the health of the nation; it would have an impact on our elite pathway. Members of the committee who do not work in this space were shocked by what happens in schools. I found that to be really useful and an important wake-up call.

It would be remiss of me not to briefly mention the areas that I am currently working in. I urge the Minister to look again at the establishment of an independent sports ombudsman. I am not desperately attached to the name or the connotations that come with it but calling it “an independent body that provides some oversight of the sports system” does not quite have the same ring to it. I had to call it something. The Government should look at this again, especially given all the sports and governing bodies in use at the moment.

I would also be delighted if the Government were to look favourably on mandatory reporting. I have a Private Member’s Bill on the list and I would happily hand it over to the Minister. It was written with the support of Mandate Now and others, because, again, this is something that is sorely needed.

I will make one plea. There is the report and there are other things that we need to think about doing. The potential closure of swimming pools is a real worry for me. Without the Government’s support, it is anticipated that 40% of council areas will lose their leisure centres or see reduced services before 31 March this year. That should be a cause of huge concern to all of us. I am sure the Minister will tell me why the Government cannot look at this differently and regrade the commitments made, but they should look urgently at doing something to protect this, because it affects the whole of British society.

Finally, there are so many opportunities in this area and I am really looking forward to the Minister’s response. This is our chance to do things differently and we should take it.

A decade on from the fanfare of the national pride in our Olympic Games, my observation—I dissent from my noble friend Lady Grey-Thompson here—is that the fundamental delivery promise of community empowerment has not taken place. The Olympic legacy promise was that it would revolutionise and reinvigorate communities and develop sustainable community sports and recreation facilities in all five boroughs, if not impact sports nationwide. Does the Minister agree that we have failed to honour that promise?

For a decade, young families put up with the health consequences of building the village, and frail children paid a heavy price with poor health and heightened childhood asthma and eczema. The Olympic promise was better housing, a family environment, and opportunities for sport and recreation facilities, but the outcome was inevitable, given that those involved in the design and implementation had little interest or stake in the local communities, and credible community experts were absent as decision-makers in the legacy delivery team.

A reflective workforce must include management at all levels. I am pleased to see that that is mentioned in the report. Will the Minister say whether there has been an analysis of the impact of the Olympic legacy on sports provision for all the boroughs surrounding the Olympic village? Is consideration given to why provision in these areas remains so poor?

I was recently informed that one of the legacies of the World Cup in Qatar is that a stadium has been designated to develop women’s sports and that it is led by a Minister for Women’s Sports Development. I do not know whether I have a created a rod for my own back by saying that, but the framework suggested on page 26 of the report would be extremely impactful, so long as it is inclusive and diverse throughout the structure.

The report is timely and thoughtful, and I am pleased to see references to safeguarding, given the current attention to online safety. An overwhelming impact of Covid isolation and lockdown was increased reliance on technology as the main source of recreation, and it is likely to become more prevalent and addictive as the new generation of games, virtual reality and augmented reality immerse us in the metaverse and Web3 transitional space. The Government should heed the recommendations in the report and take action and, as well as being answerable for delivery, as the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, said, be a catalyst for a national transformation.

I should declare an interest as a board member of Channel 4, which is still the UK rights-holding broadcaster for the Paralympic Games. I was delighted to be able to negotiate those rights way back when I was at London 2012 towards the end of 2009, transforming how we present disability sport, to not just the nation but the world.

Looking at the National Plan for Sport and Recreation Committee’s report, does the Minister agree that it makes complete sense to rename the office “the office for health promotion”? Would he not see it as a thoroughly good thing that the Minister is not just a Minister for sport but a Minister for sport, health and well-being? Would he not like to take those few steps across to the Department of Health?

Would he further agree that we need to look hard into what is happening across the country in social prescribing, which can do so much good? What data exists on how universal this opportunity is and on its outcomes? What more can government do to enable everybody to be able to avail themselves of this possibility to change their lives for the better forever?

On the role of technology, the negative side was highlighted by the noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, but we could have the potential positive side. Is the department working in partnership to look at some of the benefits that can be gained, particularly through wearable technology? As with all good technology, data has to be at the heart. What quality of data do the Government have across this area because it is only by having a golden bedrock of data that we will be able to drive the changes that we want in this space?

In conclusion, we are in the midst of an obesity crisis. We have a post-Covid crisis. Does my noble friend agree that physical literacy is at least as important as literacy and numeracy? What is the cost of having such parlously low levels of physical literacy right now, not how much it will cost to change that but what is the current cost—social, psychological, individual and, yes, economic? What is the economic cost to neighbourhoods, to our nation, of this lack of physical literacy right now? To that end, does my noble friend agree that the best thing the Government could do right now is accept this excellent report in full?

I also very much want to associate myself with what the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, said, in respect of mandatory reporting. The committee heard from no one who disagreed with the need to bring in mandatory reporting, and I cannot understand why the Government resist that.

In the time I have left, I want to focus on physical literacy among children. The Government are defensive and rely on the money from the sport premium and that PE is mandatory between ages of five to 16. Yet again, we see a problem. We have had those things for a little while now, and the problem has not been solved, so what are we going to do differently? I have visited a lot of primary schools and asked them how they are spending their sport premium, and it is making a difference. Many primary schools are now engaging professional coaches, who are helping to address the problem of the absence of PE training among primary school teachers that the committee identified. That is positive, but other problems endure.

Swimming was made statutory. I am very proud that as Schools Minister I introduced it as part of the Olympic package, but if we do not have swimming pools for kids to learn in, it does not really amount to much. Some things will endure. The issues around puberty and body image and the mental health difficulties that girls, in particular, are going through at the moment, as well as the difficulty around changing rooms in organised sport are very difficult ongoing challenges. However, the accountability system that we have in schools values the academic subjects in the EBacc and excludes PE, with Progress 8 then enforcing that and fetishising the academic within the accountability system, so that in the end schools end up having a GCSE for everything so that it looks academic. A GCSE for PE then becomes kids in classrooms studying PE rather than being physically active, which is a perverse and ridiculous situation in which to find ourselves.

Now, of course, we have schools facing budgetary pressures with pay and energy and so on struggling to renew equipment and facilities that we need for children to be physically active. So we need an approach of physical literacy, and the PE teachers that the committee spoke to were clear about wanting to make that change, combining the health and mental well-being effects with fitness. It is less about sport for sport’s sake and allows the learning to become more personalised, using after-school clubs and community use of school facilities and updating the idea of extended schools that we had in the first decade of this century.

As the committee discussed, I would like to see more accountability about how that sport premium money is being used, so that every school is publishing on its website exactly how it is using it. A great example is Surrey Square Primary School, which talked about its investment in the professional development of staff and its membership of a local sports network, supporting and engaging the least active children with that money through new or additional sports clubs during the school day. The school mentioned a whole run of things, including inviting athletes, dance troops and gymnasts into the school to inspire the children. It listed not only how it spends the money but the impact that that then has on the children that it is targeting. If that kind of activity was mandatory across the system, we would see a real impact. Children in particular need better than just cognitive development. Our school system must change to better develop children socially, emotionally and physically, because it is key to their future happiness and prosperity.

Finally, can the Minister say when a DCMS Minister last met with the DfE and Department of Health and Social Care Ministers to discuss changing the curriculum and the accountability of schools to reflect the need for better physical activity among children?

For my part, I am married with two children, I have a degree in classics, and I have spent the past 23 years working in the City. Around half of that time was at Barclays, with the remainder at two other global banks, where I advised predominantly FTSE 100 companies on foreign exchange and treasury. I now work for a company called Birchstone, doing exactly the same thing, only we help UK SMEs. I hope I can use my experience in finance to participate in relevant debates and Bills.

My father was in the Navy all of his life and was president of the Royal British Legion. As a result of my naval upbringing, I will take a keen interest in the House on anything veteran-related and issues which will affect ex-military servicemen and women. I would also like to be involved with anything related to sport and its positive effects on society, such as the work that the Sport England organisation carries out. That leads me on to today’s discussion, tabled by my noble friend Lord Moynihan.

It was the Roman poet, Juvenal, who wrote in around 80 AD

“Mens sana in corpore sano”

and in doing so coined the phrase “healthy body, health mind”. The reason for my interest in this debate is that I understand and have been a beneficiary of the positive effects of sport. I have been taking regular exercise for the past 25 years and, without a shadow of a doubt, it has enabled me to remain healthy, feel good and work hard. The benefits of sport and exercise are well publicised and manifold.

As this excellent plan states, sport and physical activity can change lives, improve physical and mental health and well-being and lead to a better quality of life, as well as benefiting both national and local economies. Unfortunately, although we know this to be the case, there remain high levels of inactivity within the population, and if we can overcome this, the benefits for all will be felt.

One of the key findings of the report from my perspective is that we have to instil a lifelong habit of sport and activity within our children and younger population. By nurturing this love of sport from an early age, we can try to ensure that when the younger generation grow, they will continue to adopt an exercise regime and instil that love of sport and exercise into their own children, thereby creating a virtuous circle. Physical education should be encouraged in schools, and the report believes that the physical literacy of children should be valued as highly as their educational literacy and numeracy. I could not agree more. Physical exercise should be the building block for their future, enabling them to maximise their potential in other aspects of their life. The report also suggests campaigns to encourage and inspire parents to be active with their children outside of school. This can dovetail with a requirement for local authorities to provide and maintain adequate facilities for sport and physical activity for local communities.

There are so many invaluable recommendations and findings in this report, and I very much hope they will be acted on. I look forward to working with noble Lords on this report and any future business relating to this subject.

I am afraid that I do not agree that we should somehow dump the responsibility for sport on the Department of Health and Social Care. Having been in that department, I can tell noble Lords that there is quite a lot going on already—it is pretty swamped trying to tackle waiting lists, build hospitals, sort out our catastrophic care service and prevent illness. I do not think that scapegoating the department by dumping the responsibility for sport on it is the silver bullet that anyone would hope for. I know that that is not exactly what my noble friend Lord Moynihan has in mind; I would just like to flag it to add a sense of proportion.

Responsibility for the health of the nation, and therefore for sport, needs to be spread much more broadly, rather than simply scapegoating the NHS or the Department of Health and Social Care. We need houses that have green spaces and access to sports facilities—access is very important. As the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and the noble Lord, Lord Knight, pointed out, schools are absolutely central to solving health and sport issues. We have sold off far too many sports grounds; sport is not taught properly and the risk-averse nature of the sports culture in schools means that not enough kids are doing it. The list is quite long, but it is critical that we sort it out.

In practical terms, I find the state of the swimming pool estate heartbreaking. I am utterly obsessed by swimming at the moment—I can tell noble Lords another time about my adventures in the outdoor and wild swimming game. Nearly half of our swimming pool estate is under threat of closure at the moment. Something needs to be done. The Government may be cash-strapped and their credit card may be maxed out, but, as my noble friend Lord Holmes said, it would be heartbreaking if more than half of kids in the next generation did not learn to swim, which is where we are heading at the moment.

The problem is not central control of sport; it is more about local authorities. I will not go through it in depth, but my experience as a Health Minister taught me that there has been a great hollowing out of the resources of local authorities, which is seen severely in the area of sport. There is not enough access or encouragement and the culture in many of our communities is simply not supported by the necessary resources to do it.

On big sporting events, I will throw in a note of challenge as a bit of a sceptic. I apologise to the amazing Olympians in our presence but, in terms of delivering actual activity, our big events have simply not encouraged our population to engage in sport. That is a big failure.

We need our sports clubs—we have fantastic football and rugby clubs—to do more than they do at the moment, and we need our employers to put sport at the centre of the workplace experience. We have 20 pubs, clubs and restaurants in this building and one very poky gym—I do not know whether anyone here has been to it, but it is not as good as many of the pubs and clubs. That culture really needs to change.

To conclude, the project of getting Britain healthier could not be more important. The role of sport is central to that. We need to change the environment in which people live and give them agency and the ability to address their behaviours. Sport is the one thing you can take on yourself that will really improve your health outcomes. That is why we need to support people to do sport: it will give them the opportunity to turn around their health outcomes. It is also why I would like to see this much more widely distributed across the responsibilities of government.