Unrevised transcript of evidence taken before
The Committee on Olympic and Paralympic Legacy
Inquiry on
OLYMPIC AND PARALYMPIC LEGACY
Evidence Session No.5 Heard in Public Questions 75 - 92
WEDNESDAY 26 JUNE 2013
10.30 am
Witnesses: Robert Sullivan, James Munro, David Meli and Richard Caborn
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
1. This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and webcast on www.parliamentlive.tv.
2. Any public use of, or reference to, the contents should make clear that neither Members nor witnesses have had the opportunity to correct the record. If in doubt as to the propriety of using the transcript, please contact the Clerk of the Committee.
3. Members and witnesses are asked to send corrections to the Clerk of the Committee within 7 days of receipt.
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Members present:
Lord Harris of Haringey (Chairman) Lord Addington Earl of Arran Lord Bates Lord Best Baroness Billingham Lord Faulkner of Worcester Baroness King of Bow Lord Moynihan Lord Stoneham of Droxford Lord Wigley
______
Witnesses
Robert Sullivan, Head of Corporate Affairs, Football Association, James Munro,
Communications Director, Lawn Tennis Association, David Meli, Chief Executive, England
Handball Association, and Richard Caborn, Chairman, Amateur Boxing Association of
England
Q75 The Chairman: I think Mr Meli’s train was late, but he is negotiating security as we speak, so he should be with us shortly. I think none the less we should begin. Can I welcome the other three witnesses? This is a public session and is being webcast. You will be sent copies of the uncorrected transcript so you can correct any things that are not down correctly, or suggest corrections. In the meantime the uncorrected transcript will appear on the website, so that is an incentive to respond quickly with requests for corrections. We will make a start while Mr Meli joins us, and I wanted to ask each of you in turn: how did the four weeks of Olympic and Paralympic Games last year affect your sport and did the Games alter public perceptions or affect levels of public interest in your sport?
Who is going first?
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James Munro: Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to come and talk to the
Committee. 2012 was, for British tennis, the greatest year for our sport, certainly in my lifetime. I think the Olympic and Paralympic Games played an enormous part in that success.
We saw Olympic and Paralympic medals from the likes of Andy Murray—a gold medal.
There was a silver medal for Andy Murray when he was playing in the mixed doubles with
Laura Robson, and it is great to see both of them doing so well at the Championships at
Wimbledon this week. We also had success at the Paralympic Games as well, with Andy
Lapthorne and Peter Norfolk winning a silver medal, and Lucy Shuker and Jordanne Whiley winning a bronze medal in the wheelchair tennis. So there was great success on court, but I think the greatest opportunity for us was the platform it gave us to promote and reach out to new audiences. During those events we had something like 35,000 people come to either the events or some of the activities we were hosting in places like Victoria Park near the
Olympic site, Eton Manor on the Olympic site, Hyde Park and a range of other live sites, all coming to try tennis. It was a great opportunity to showcase the sport, and to celebrate some of the success of that sport, but also to reach out to new audiences.
The Chairman: Has that continued?
James Munro: Yes, the output of that has been that we have seen more children playing tennis, and recent participation figures from the DCMS have, I think, backed that up. We also have a very successful schools programme, which was part of our plans to develop more opportunities for children to play. We now have a schools programme in more than
16,000 schools in this country, and it is providing teacher training, free resources and equipment for those children. There are some real opportunities that have seen more children playing, and some great opportunities that have seen more people with a disability and more adults playing tennis as well.
Q76 The Chairman: Shall we move on and ask Mr Sullivan to comment?
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Robert Sullivan: Thank you, Chairman. Thank you to the Committee as well for inviting us here to give evidence today. English football has a unique relationship with the Olympics, as
I am sure many of you will be aware. Lord Moynihan and I shared several meetings about trying to facilitate the participation of a British football team in the Olympics. We at the
English FA were pleased to be able to achieve that. We had both men’s and women’s teams that we administrated, alongside the BOA, to compete. For a four-week period I think it was constructive for football that they were not, shall we say, the biggest show in town in a major sporting context in this country. There was a great deal that we gained and valued from that, the main focus of which was undoubtedly on both the performance and profile of women’s football in this country. The Team GB women’s team did exceptionally well; they got to the quarter-finals. The seminal moment was a victory against Brazil at Wembley, which 70,000 people came to and enjoyed—a very different type of crowd for a match at
Wembley. It was a really special Wembley occasion, as it happens. We had about 80,000 there for the final of the women’s game. It was a real step-change in the exposure for women’s football in this country, and that was probably for us the greatest immediate value that came out of the Olympic Games. That has really kicked on, and specifically it has kicked on with support from broadcasters, especially the BBC and BT Sport, for women’s football, which has really gone up a gear. We hope now, through this season, through the BBC’s extended coverage of the European Championship this year, that the women’s game will continue to grow and flourish, and we can build around that high-profile success that the
Games provided for the women’s game.
Baroness King of Bow: Just briefly on that point, you mentioned how it was a step-change for women’s football—the incredible crowds. I was one of those mesmerised by the performance. The British women did do better than the men, thank the Lord. I just
4 wonder, in the light of that, can you confirm that a British women’s team will be going to
Rio?
Robert Sullivan: I cannot confirm that, because they have to qualify, so technically one of the home nations would have to qualify for a place in the tournament. If that were to happen, the FA has committed to look at the matter specifically around the women’s team, separate from the men’s team. So I cannot confirm it today, but what I can say is that subject to qualification we are prepared to look at the possibility, because we do recognise very much the value in a women’s GB football team.
Lord Faulkner of Worcester: I was going to ask you this later, but I will ask you now.
What about the men’s team? What commitment are you making about a GB Olympic team?
Robert Sullivan: There is currently no commitment on it. We made it clear at the time, and again Lord Moynihan will remember the very difficult conversations, that this was a specific, unique one-off occasion, with the Games being in London and within Britain. That was something that was understood very clearly by us, FIFA, the IOC and the home associations.
Lord Wigley: Could I take it that, if there was any indication whatsoever from FIFA that the home nations would lose their status in the international football world by having a GB team in Brazil, there would not be a GB team in Brazil for football?
Robert Sullivan: To be very clear, FIFA have never made any of those types of insinuations.
They were very clear for 2012 that they supported the unique status of a Team GB for that
Olympic Games, and on that basis we believe it would be wrong to pursue it further for
2016.
Lord Wigley: Can I just say, Chair, that I think everybody, certainly in Wales, is perfectly happy with their players playing in a GB team, provided that it does not undermine us having
5 our own team for the other competitions, and I am sure if that is the case in Wales, it is even more so for Scotland.
Q77 The Chairman: Back on track: Richard Caborn?
Richard Caborn: Boxing did incredibly well, I think, for a couple of reasons. One was that it was the first time that women had been in the Olympics boxing, and you could not have scripted it better, because Nicola Adams, who as we all know is an incredible personality in her own right and a great athlete as well, won the very first gold medal. I think a number of people were concerned about how having women boxers would be welcomed or perceived.
I think it was welcomed, it got fantastic coverage and the results since then have been remarkable in terms of the number of young women and girls now into boxing in all its stages. The other thing that happened as well, alongside that, was that boxing was also flourishing as an exercise, and that is still growing, and growing at a tremendous rate. It enabled a lot of young people to come into and experience boxing, what we call non-contact boxing—that is, with bags and pads, without hitting a person. That, as I say, is still flourishing and is part of the wider exercise agenda, which I think boxing is now being able to contribute to.
The other point was that with the incredibly well organised Olympics, as they were, boxing was seen, like every other sport, worldwide, but I think the organisation also put us in boxing in a far better light in the public mind than probably we were when we went into the
Olympics. Through television and the way the whole Olympics was run and the way that boxing conducted itself as well, it was an exemplar, and people took boxing to heart much more than probably they had done before. It was a win-win-win situation for boxing, and we continue to build on that. The challenge to us is how we can continue to capture that enthusiasm and continue to build on it. It is not easy, but we are determined to do it.
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Q78 The Chairman: Mr Meli, I hope you have had a chance to catch your breath. I understand you had a problem with the train.
David Meli: My apologies for the late running of the east coast main line from York.
The Chairman: No problems at all. We are asking how the four weeks of Olympic and
Paralympic Games last year affected your sport, and whether the Games altered public perceptions or affected levels of public interest in your sport. I think you have a story to tell.
David Meli: For handball, unlike some of my bigger counterparts alongside me, it was probably the first time many people in this country saw handball at an elite level. It is the second biggest team sport in Europe, a huge spectator and participation sport, but probably under the radar in Britain. We certainly saw the impact of the Games, in the lead-up to it, during and after, simply from people seeing it for the first time and then wanting to know how they get involved. That is probably our biggest challenge. We need the biggest indoor court of any indoor court sport, so consequently facilities are at a premium, but certainly in terms of schools, there has been a huge, huge increase, and it is a real participation buzz for us at that age; we are really going to see the growth through primary and secondary schools.
That was people coming out of the Copper Box on the day of games and phoning us saying,
“How do I get involved?” It was a real plus point.
Certainly it has raised the level of profile and interest, and it is up to us now to try to capture that in the best possible way. It will probably not be at elite, seven-on-seven handball, certainly at adult level. It will be in schools, primary and secondary schools—a new generation. So in terms of participation legacy, I would like to stick our hands up and say we are probably one of the biggest beneficiaries of it.
The Chairman: And are you receiving public financial support to enable you to capitalise on that increased public interest?
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David Meli: The funding story for handball is a tale of two. At participation level from
Sport England, we had a good increase in our four-year funding for this whole Sport Plan award, but at the British level, at that elite level, they lost all of the funding, so in terms of legacy at an elite level from the Olympics there is none. It is disappointing and a challenge for us now to have to say to young people coming into the sport, “At this moment in time there is no outlet at a senior level apart from what people can fund themselves.” When you see players travelling to Italy, having to pay £140 for a flight, and then it goes up by £90 and that scuppers them going, that is a disappointment, but it is one that we will look for ways to solve. Certainly from an England Handball perspective we cannot complain about the increase in funding that we received from Sport England, and it will all go into developing participation.
Q79 Lord Stoneham of Droxford: I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about the legacy planning you had in your individual sports before the Olympics, and then how your expectations and aspirations changed between 2005 and 2012.
Richard Caborn: First of all, I have read the transcripts, Lord Harris. I wear another hat from time to time as the ex-Minister for Sport, and I must admit it took a bit of following, some of the questions to answers. I have seen rewriting history, but I could not relate to some of that. If I could just give a little guidance to the Committee, it would be useful, particularly to Lord Faulkner’s questions on a number of the legacy issues around the
Olympic stadium, if you go back—I do not know whether these are available but, if they are,
I would suggest you get them—to the Olympic Board meetings, particularly 7 February
2007, which makes very interesting reading and really does answer all the questions, I think, that you raised that time, and there was a slight difference to the flavour of the answers that were given to you. But if you go back and look at those minutes—that is the 15th session of
8 the Olympic Board—and the ones before then, it will give you a very good insight into how decisions were made or not made, as the case may be.
Lord Moynihan knows also the PMP report. You ought to get a copy of the PMP report, which was a very interesting piece of work that was done about what the Olympic stadium should be in legacy mode. In saying that, I think the Olympics were fantastic, I think the legacy has been great, but there were mistakes made. If I can just put the other one in at this stage, because I think it might be helpful, and it is not the remit I have—
The Chairman: I was going to stop you, but carry on.
Richard Caborn: The other one is I think a question to raise with the IOC, because I went round the world when we raised the bid, from 2001 right through. I took the Bill through
Parliament, I chaired all the finance committees of the Olympics, and I think one of the great weaknesses of the Olympic movement is that some would say they just pay lip service to legacy. However, when they hand the keys back and LOCOG is stood down and they give it back to the BOA, it is a structural fault in the system of running the Olympics, in my view, particularly for legacy. That is why you have Barcelona and Sydney with stadia they cannot use now, and I think the IOC ought to pay much more attention to what the legacy of the
Olympics is, and it is not good in terms of real estate, and the legacy is not a happy story for the Olympics either. I just put that on the record, and I would refer you to the minutes, if they are available. The last time I told the truth at a Committee in the other place I got banned for six months but, anyway, that is another story.
In terms of the legacy for boxing, we set off 12 months before knowing that our corporate governance was not good. Tomorrow we have another meeting of the board of the ABAE, but we knew we had to get ourselves fit for purpose, because we had this great opportunity coming. I think broadly speaking what we did in that 12 months running up to the Olympics, in restructuring the organisation, has helped us capture the legacy and the tremendous
9 interest that has been shown in boxing. We have a long way to go, no doubt about that, and
I will not be party political here, but in some of the decisions taken—I must admit, decisions taken under administrations I was part of in 2008—I think Sport England made a fundamental mistake on legacy, and that was to change most of the funding to governing bodies; you predicated the increase of participation in sport broadly just on governing bodies.
Governing bodies are not there to drive up participation. They are there to organise the governance, the rules, the competition, and through that part of it they will increase participation, but it is not why they are there. When you start changing funding to try to drive that, they do not have the skill set or the capacity to be able to do that, and I can say that as now a chair of a governing body that is growing and will continue to grow.
There was a fundamental mistake made there, and then I am bound to say the way they have reorganised funding into sport, both through local government and through schools, has had a profound effect on the way we have been able to capitalise on the legacy and the participation part of that legacy. As far as boxing is concerned, I think we have been lucky in that we have had women coming into boxing, and we are in the exercise market as well, both public and private, and we will continue to grow that. We have difficulties, and we are a club-based sport, and I think the clubs need a lot of strengthening. For example—it might be small but it is a big issue to us—changing conditions for women boxers: to start putting showers in, and that is very expensive to boxing clubs who are running on very meagre means. It is very difficult to cater for that. So if we really wanted to expand boxing at the grassroots, at the club level, we do need investment into that infrastructure, and coaching as well.
Q80 Lord Moynihan: Just a clarification: you said the changes in education and in local authorities have had “a profound effect”. Do you mean a profound negative effect?
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Richard Caborn: A negative effect, and I am bound to say, Lord Moynihan, you know the funding of Sport England does not kick in until 16. It is not Sport England’s problem, but it is another issue. School sport is not involved in any of the stats you get from Sport England, and that is a problem when you are measuring this, particularly in certain sports that start a lot younger than other sports do. It is a fault line in the calculation.
Robert Sullivan: To give you the perspective of the biggest governing body—of the biggest mass participation sport—men’s football is the most popularly played sport. Women’s football is the third-placed team sport. Disability football is the seventh placed, so we have quite a huge amount of participation and can lead on those fronts and those things. We take that very seriously, which is why the conversation around how we approach the Olympic legacy is probably unique for us. It is absolutely fundamental to us as a governing body to be supportive of developing mass participation. That is probably what we are talking about in sporting legacy in this sense, but for us it is part of our core business, if you like, which is why I probably slightly disagree with Richard about the role of the national governing body.
We at the FA have three core strategic aims: one is successful, winning England teams; the second is to run the game effectively; and the third is mass participation. We can all have views and judgments on how well we do on each of those objectives, but it is fundamental to our strategy to deliver mass participation. That is why we have a National Game Strategy that we develop, with the work of Sport England alongside us, and it is why we believe, through the information we gain together with Sport England and the information we learn ourselves from our county FA structures and our clubs and leagues, we are the best placed body to strategically work out where to invest to meet participation requirements.
That is about putting in interventions where we see participation drop off. It is about building where we see that participation is successful. Clearly the way people play football is changing in terms of greater leisure football, less 11-a-side at the weekends. How do we, as
11 a governing body, adapt to that? How do we work with Sport England to invest in those types of games? How do we create more leisure football types of opportunities? It is very similar, in a way, to what Richard is talking about in terms of how boxing is evolving as well in terms of a leisure pursuit. That is true, I think, for all of our sports, and we all need to learn how to adapt to that. I would strongly endorse our view that it is partnership between
Sport England and governing bodies and their networks locally that will make a difference in terms of targeting those investments and delivering participation growth.
Q81 The Chairman: Mr Meli?
David Meli: I would endorse that to the extent that, as a small governing body with very limited resources, we have to work with partners, and therefore it is about understanding what their needs are, as well as perhaps what we want to do. Often it is not a discussion about the sport; it is a discussion about other agendas that sport may be able to provide a benefit to, whether that is social inclusion, obesity, health or whatever else. Those are perhaps the discussions we need to get involved with. If I go back to the question about what our planning was, the best analogy is that it is a bit like waiting for the birth of a first child. You know what is potentially coming, but no-one really knows what is going to happen until it actually arrives. We did quite a bit of planning in the lead-up to it, working with partners on how we would cope with the interest and what the increase in interest might be. We did not know. A lot of it was about being very targeted in where we would allocate our resources, and not being too brash in terms of trying to spread it too far and wide and then really only scratching the surface. We were very clear whom we could work with, where we could work and how we could work, and now it is about growing a workforce to deliver on our behalf. We cannot do it all on our own. In terms of comments around who is best placed to do that, we can do some of it, but we need to work with others to help us to do that. Our planning and our focus was about who those partners
12 could be, so certainly we focussed our efforts and energies in the lead-up to, and during, the
Olympics on education, local authorities and facility providers. From that, we take the interest and go back to those same people and say, “Right, how do we capitalise on that?”
Richard Caborn: The difficulty there was how you fund that when Sport England is only funding from 16 upwards, and not below that—not so much for the FA, because they are rich. We are not. We are poor.
David Meli: I think it is about creating an offer. Ours has been about creating a very simple offer that other people can buy into, and therefore becoming our advocates and our leaders on our behalf, not doing it all on our own and recognising that we cannot. Why should we try? We are better off working with those people already in situ who can do it for us than we are trying to deal with all the interest ourselves.
James Munro: I would like to reinforce that: as a governing body, our mission is to get more people playing tennis more often, so participation is absolutely at the heart of what we do. Yes, we govern the sport; yes, we promote the sport, but we also develop the sport and support working with our partners to do so. If I can come to that question on legacy, and not just for the Olympics but the Paralympics as well, I think everyone around this room will have different ideas of what legacy really means, but for us as a governing body, and working with the Tennis Foundation, which is Britain’s leading tennis charity, we had a number of aims in the run-up to the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
One was around talent, and around developing a system of talent identification and then supporting that talent, so that when success came, and if we prepared for success during those events, we could then develop pathways for our younger players to go on to succeed themselves. I mentioned earlier also our work in ensuring there were more opportunities for children to play tennis, and through the Aegon Schools Programme—which again is delivered by the Tennis Foundation, and is done with no public money into that
13 programme—we are now providing free resources into more than half the schools in
Britain. In particular in the area of disability we are now, again with the Tennis Foundation, building a network of centres across the country, like the John Charles Sports Centre in
Leeds, which will provide opportunities for people with a disability to play tennis in a range of forms. They will provide free equipment, coaches who are trained, and give people that opportunity to play our sports. I think those were key legacy things for us.
Robert Sullivan: Can I just add to that? I think it is important to reinforce the point that that is not unique to tennis or unique to football. It is what cricket is doing through the
ECB. It is what rugby is doing through the RFU. It is absolutely fundamental to the work of all the big national governing bodies. I would not want to give the perception that national governing bodies do not have development of their sport at their absolute heart. They are working, in many cases, together locally on the ground to deliver those projects, as well.
Q82 Baroness Billingham: Can I go back to the LTA again? We talk about the promise of a meaningful legacy, and I would like to know—briefly, briefly, because we are running out of time—what the LTA’s proposals were prior to the Games, from 2005. What were your key objectives as far as the legacy is concerned? Very briefly, please.
James Munro: There was a blueprint for British tennis that was published in 2006 that set out our plans for developing the sport, and they were plans that set out in a number of areas how we could transform the existing structures in place. One was around talent, and as I say, I mentioned the system set up with Talent ID, which has been recognised by Sport
England and UK Sport as a leading set-up.
Baroness Billingham: Keep it a little bit crisper, please.
James Munro: We also looked at how we would use our major events as well as our leading players, to inspire and grow the sport. We have been very fortunate to bring in— and again, the Olympic and Paralympic Games have had a significant impact on this as well—
14 world-class tournaments. We are incredibly fortunate in this country to have the world’s greatest tennis tournament, and it is happening right now—the Championships at
Wimbledon. We have been able to bring in, and work with the ATP and the All England
Club to bring in, another world-class tournament, the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals.
Baroness Billingham: Yes, but this has nothing to do with the LTA’s preparation prior to the Games as to what you were promising to achieve. Now everything that you have said so far I dispute, and so do most people involved with the sport. I do not think you have increased participation. I do not think you can claim accreditation for Andy Murray and
Laura, because they came from outside the system. I have to say that my view is shared by
Sport England, who have cut your funding, because they think you are inadequate, and indeed by the Sports Minister. Having, in my view, a very poor legacy, what are your plans now to put that right? I understand you are appointing a new Chief Executive Officer. Now
I heard this morning that the criterion for his appointment will be that he is good with money, and as Tim Henman said, we would like somebody who is good with tennis. Where is tennis going?
James Munro: If I could pick up on a couple of the points that you made there around your disputing the participation figures—
Baroness Billingham: I do. I know how you got to them.
James Munro: If I can just provide you with some of the details from the past year in particular, and we are talking about the Olympic and Paralympic legacy, in the Active People
Survey, which is Sport England’s own measurement of adults playing over the age of 16 every week in England, we saw an increase last year—
Baroness Billingham: But they cut your funding.
The Chairman: Let us hear the answer.
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James Munro: Thank you, Chair. We saw an increase of 18% in adult participation last year. We have also seen, through the DCMS’s own Taking Part Survey, a significant increase in the number of primary school children and secondary school children playing tennis. We have also seen, through the APS statistics, a significant increase in people with a disability playing tennis. Now we recognise that as a governing body, and as a sport, we need to do more with our partners to get more people playing tennis, and particularly, as you are highlighting there, around some of the older players as well—adult players.
We are working very closely with Sport England to get that right, and I believe the
Committee will have the opportunity to talk to Sport England later on in these sessions, so I will obviously not talk on their behalf. What I see, however, and I see it on a daily basis, is a partnership with Sport England. It is a relationship where we, together, have identified where we need to improve. If I can give you an example of that, through the Active People
Survey data, which we have worked on with Sport England, we have identified that, as an example, we have a real opportunity to get more students playing—higher education, further education. So working with Sport England, we have developed products like Timed Tennis.
We have trained tennis activators in 16 universities, and as a result of the programmes we are putting forward, we are now starting to see, through their own statistics in APS, an increase in the number of students playing. We recognise we have a long way to go, but probably one of the great legacies for us of the Olympic and Paralympic Games is that we are fully focussed, and our mission is to get more people playing tennis. We recognise the role and value of partners in achieving that—partners like Sport England.
Baroness Billingham: Just one last reminder that in 2005 your Chief Executive, who was then Roger Draper, promised us that by 2010 we would have at least 20 men in the top 100, so your pious hopes really do not ring very strongly with me. I think you have to look to your statistics and look to the future of tennis far more critically. Thank you, Chair.
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The Chairman: I thought you were going to move on to another point.
Baroness Billingham: Oh, I am.
Richard Caborn: Is it for James?
Baroness Billingham: No, I will take the heat off him.
James Munro: I thought Richard was representing boxing.
Q83 Baroness Billingham: What were the limiting factors in your sports facilities to stimulate or respond to increased demand inspired by the Games? What were the physical factors, coaches, administrators or other forms of resource—like people who actually know about their sport?
The Chairman: Who is going to go first?
David Meli: I will start, because it is a mixture of all of the above, as far as handball is concerned. Certainly in terms of facilities, they will not spring up overnight, so one of the key things we have to do is take recognition of the need to adapt our sport. You do not have to play it in its full format, which is why it is great for kids to be able to do it in a school hall, whether it is the size of one badminton court of bigger. Certainly if we are to grow the full-size version of the game, facilities are a limiting factor, but it is not something that we as a governing body can directly do something about. Coaches, yes: we need more people to deliver our sport. Training up a qualified workforce is central to our plans and strategy to develop the sport, because we are not going to get people playing if there is nobody there to lead it. Our aim is to get a good-quality, qualified workforce out in the field.
Funding? Yes, we would all like more money, but we have to be realistic about the funding that is there. It may not always be directed to sport. I come back to the point I made earlier: a lot of governing bodies could benefit from going to partners and saying, “What are your key issues? What points are you trying to address? What is your agenda at a local level?” Actually the answer might be handball, boxing, tennis, football, but the starting point
17 may not be the sport, and that is where I think some of the discussions will open doors into other areas of funding.
Richard Caborn: Just to put boxing in context, and to give the stats coming out of Sport
England, we grew from 107,000 in January 2011 to 150,000 by April 2013, which is a significant number, but the bulk of that was in the exercise arena. We have 19,000 boxers who are registered. We are a sport that has to medically register all our boxers before they can box, because it can be seen as a dangerous sport. We have to take those actions, and they have to be properly registered. It is really that 19,000 that I think is very important, because the reason I became chair of boxing, and the reason I got involved in boxing again, is because I think it is one of three sports that get to the inner cities and can be a major agent of change for young people. It is those 19,000 I am really concerned about—how we can grow that and help them to develop their own talent. It is that area we are struggling with, because it is the investment in the clubs. There is no doubt about that.
We have 23 full-time people, right around the country, for the 900 clubs that we have. The vast majority are run, as we all know, by volunteers, and we are trying to help the capacity-building there as well. But it is the facility. In the areas that you represent, if you go down and look at boxing clubs, it is an old church hall, or it is in the back somewhere, and that is the real problem. The aspiration is to get to Sheffield, in the sense that that is where the EIS is, with the elite boxers, the Olympic boxers there, and that is something to aspire to. It is at a very low level, however, and the women boxers are of particular concern, because we are not catering for their facilities in the boxing clubs because it is quite expensive. That is one of our great restraining factors, and if we could start cracking that, we can grow the coaches. There are a lot of good women in boxing to do that. It is that physical facility that is a problem to us.
Q84 The Chairman: Anything to add from football or tennis?
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Robert Sullivan: I would just say that the limiting factors for growing formal participation are the same post the Olympics and pre the Olympics. There has been no change in that sense, and they are—as you have all heard—good facilities and good people. Those are the two most important things for developing sport, particularly at the youngest age. If kids can have a good first experience of football, or indeed any sport, with good facilities, with good age-specific coaching designed for their physical literacy and development, and their social development as well, that is what we believe will keep them in all sport and, we hope, obviously, particularly keep them in football. That is where we want to seek and target our investment.
Just to give you a flavour on the facilities front in football, over the last 10 years between us—the Premier League and Government—over £730 million has been invested in football facilities through the foundation, which Richard knows very well. That is only 4% of the football facilities out there, so it is a huge challenge and, in particular in the current economic climate we find ourselves in, 80% of football facilities are local-authority owned, and we only have to listen in the other place later to know the impact on local authorities and what consequence that will have for grassroots sport facilities. So whilst we may be having the conversation here today on the positive aspect of wanting to increase participation and demonstrate legacy, I would throw a big word of caution out that there are some very big challenges around facilities out there that will potentially get harder before they get better, and will impact this legacy debate for a while to come.
Richard Caborn: Can I just add to one point? Sport England now have acknowledged part of what I have been saying about the grassroots and the club structure. This Whole Sport
Plan from 2013 to 2017 is much more focussed in that development than it was from 2009 to 2013. It was much more Olympic-flavoured; now it really is trying to help with that legacy, and I think the way that Sport England have redirected that—and I know I am talking
19 from a boxing perspective, my sport—has been very welcome indeed, and we are working very strongly with them on that area.
The Chairman: I am very conscious of the time. There are lots more points we want to cover. Mr Munro, do you have anything to add from the tennis perspective that has not been said already?
James Munro: I think first of all it is a very important question, because we saw a significant increase in demand. For example, in the week when Andy Murray and Laura Robson won those medals at the Olympics, we saw on our website, allplaytennis.com, which shows people where to find their nearest park site, their nearest court, a 100% increase in demand.
More than 5,000 people were asking us, “Where is our nearest court?” We are fortunate that on the same website there are more than 21,000 tennis courts in this country, of which around 1,600 are free at any time, but for us the challenge is not necessarily on that. It is the second point around whether we are providing and changing perceptions about tennis, and this opportunity we have been given through the London 2012 Games to reach out to a new audience. We are training tennis activators, people from local communities, to deliver tennis to their local communities and to try to make the sport more accessible.
Q85 Earl of Arran: There is a figure flying around at the moment concerning sports participation that since October some 200,000 fewer people are participating in sport. God knows who delivered that figure—I would question it straight away—but if there is any accuracy in that figure, is it a blip, a temporary dip, or a long-term concern?
James Munro: If I am right in what figure that refers to, I think it refers to the Sport
England Active People Survey, in which case it would be for 16-year-old adults playing once a week or more in England. I think the same figure would also—although Sport England would be better placed to answer this—show that since October 2011 that number has gone up by
500,000. I think all sports recognise the challenge there is to get more people playing sport.
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With specific reference to tennis, we saw, for that same figure year on year, a very small increase from last April, but we recognise there is a huge opportunity again this summer and autumn to promote our sport. We have this wonderful tournament going on right now; we have the focus of the nation, so we are working very hard with a number of partners, like
Virgin Active, for example, who are doing a three-week free tennis membership scheme at this time, because we can only do this with partners, whether it is from the leisure sector, local authorities or local clubs. It has to be a partnership.
Earl of Arran: I have heard that same argument for the last 10 or 15 years I am afraid, but there we are.
Richard Caborn: You can play about with these stats, and unless you actually start addressing how sport—and I think physical exercise—is organised, you have a dip in that.
Sport is there to be used in a much more proactive way, and the organisation of that ought to be. The Government should start accepting its responsibility. I am not making party- political points here, but some of the decisions taken in Government since the Olympics have militated against that legacy and that participation. We have set up the National Centre for Sports and Exercise Medicine, which is all part of the Olympic legacy. I happened to be involved in that from the Sheffield end. There are three parties to that: London UCL,
Loughborough and Sheffield. They all want to drive up the participation of physical activity and sport, but you need coherence at the top, and I think there is an argument, to be honest, Lord Harris, to say that sport ought to now go with health. I think it ought to be renamed “of Sport and Physical Exercise”. It ought to be on the Cabinet, with the Secretary of Health. The success of the Olympics came about because we had a Cabinet Committee who delivered the public policy—the private sector delivered a large bit, but it delivered good public policy. It ought to be then looking at every Department that has an interest in getting this nation more active. That is from local authorities through to Transport—the
21 whole lot. That is how you will start moving it. If you are going to run a health budget in excess of £100 billion, and that is what it is now, you need to have some cohesive and strategic approach at the Government and national level to start arresting that. It is militating against that; it is not moving towards it. That is why I think there needs to be a fundamental review of where sports and exercise fit within the national bit. Once you have done that, I think the rest of it—the deliverers, as we are—can deliver much more effectively and strategically, and deliver for the nation.
Robert Sullivan: I will obviously defer the politics to Richard, but I make two points from a national governing body perspective, the first of which is that what national governing bodies really benefit from is stability in the structures and the investment routes that sit around them. We welcome when a landscape stays, and we can understand and work with it and build partnerships over a period of time. The chopping and changing of the structures around us does not help us in building strategic plans and deliverers. That is not unique to sport; it is the same in any industry, I am sure. The second point I would make is that national governing bodies’ relationship with Sport England at the moment is based around sport participation. We are not deliverers of social outcomes. We are given money by
Sport England to deliver numbers of people playing our sport. I guess my caution is, if sports are going to be held up to account to deliver social outcomes, the terms of engagement between them and Government need to be changed quite fundamentally. At the moment our relationship is purely with Sport England and DCMS, and we purely wish to be held to account for delivering numbers of sports participation in our individual sports, and that, by the way, is different from levels of general activity, which is what the Active People Survey is measuring.
David Meli: If I can add a small point, as a sport that is not measured by APS—and I am certainly not here to defend it, having done that for four years when I was at Sport
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England—I think any sport that waits six months for a figure to tell it how it is doing is dead in the water by the time it gets there. It is about what else is happening throughout that period. What else are they doing? What else are they measuring? Who are they working with? What other agendas are they meeting? What other services are they delivering? You ask, “Is it a blip, potentially? What is the long-term trend? Is the long-term trend upwards?”
You will get fluctuations in a survey of that size, especially with the numbers of people they are trying to do. I think it is difficult to lay it solely on one number, I have to say. I am not here to defend it, but any sport that sits around and says, “Oh, six months have come. We have lost 50,000 people”, should probably know that is going to come by the time you get there.
Robert Sullivan: The long-term trend is up: 1.4 million more people since 2005 playing and taking part in sport. The long-term trend is up. It will take a bit of time to know whether this is a blip or part of a new trend. Certainly as football we made it an immediate priority to sit down with Sport England and interrogate the data, because when you have a number like this, all you can do is try to get behind it, realise what it is trying to tell you about your sport, and plan your interventions accordingly.
Q86 Baroness King of Bow: I suppose I would just come back to the fact that you have all mentioned—or most of you have mentioned—how well women did in your sports, or people recognised that women delivered for the London Olympics. If we look at the breakdowns of sport participation, we see that since 2005-06 the increase in women playing sport once a week has been less than 1%. It is a 0.7% increase. That is over seven years since 2005. For men it is only a 1.2% increase, up to 40% of men playing sport once a week.
Do you think more needs to be done to target specific demographics, whether it might be women or those who are socially excluded and less likely to be playing sports in the first place?
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David Meli: Absolutely, in any sport, and certainly a couple of things we have been doing in handball are providing specific programmes, both in terms of providing participation opportunities for girls and women to play the sport, but also to train people to deliver activities for girls and women. I think it comes back to this point about having the right people delivering the right stuff for the particular groups. It is the same in terms of socioeconomic groups and disadvantaged groups: getting out into those communities and delivering a product that they can access easily, on their doorsteps, working with the likes of
StreetGames and their Doorstep Sport Clubs. Our sport can be played anywhere. It is similar to the “jumpers for goalposts” analogy of football. If you have a ball, you can throw it around: you can play whether it is on the street, in a hall, on the beach, in the park, whatever. It is about having the right people to deliver those activities, and having that empathy with the group you are looking to deliver with, rather than paying lip service and saying, “We have a girls’ programme; we have a women’s programme; we have a programme for BME groups or disadvantaged groups.”
Baroness King of Bow: What you are essentially talking about is mainstreaming.
Obviously women’s voices are quite often heard, but we are sitting here with four men giving evidence, and there are 12 men taking evidence with just one or two women. Are you going to be able to get more women into the structures of your organisations?
David Meli: I think part of the governance requirements from Government through UK
Sport and Sport England encourages us to do that. I would not use the word “force”, because I think it is absolutely what we should be doing. Any current organisation looking to reflect the community it is in should have that demographic across its board.
Baroness King of Bow: Do any of you have good news on that front to share with us?
Robert Sullivan: For example, the director of the FA who leads all the grassroots sport is a woman. We have a director on the board, Heather Rabbatts, who is a woman. I agree it is
24 just good practice, and it is evolving. The Managing Director of St George’s Park, which is a new national football centre that some of you may have been to, is a woman, Julie
Harrington. There are examples: I do not hold them up to say we are special, or doing the right thing or the wrong thing. What I am saying is, “Yes, it is important,” and good people are coming through, and we believe that they will add value like any other member of our team does.
Q87 Lord Faulkner of Worcester: How many women are there on the FA Council?
Robert Sullivan: How many women on the FA Council? I believe it is three.
The Chairman: How big is the FA Council, for those of us who do not know?
Robert Sullivan: One hundred and something, at the last count.
Baroness Billingham: That is the statistic we needed.
Robert Sullivan: Can I thank Lord Faulkner for that question?
The Chairman: How many women are there on your board?
Richard Caborn: Two. On our board, we have two women.
Baroness King of Bow: Out of—?
Richard Caborn: Out of 14.
Baroness King of Bow: 14.
Richard Caborn: 14, but that is going to change to 12, and we are hoping to bring another one on in the near future as well. Boxing, I think, is in a unique position. We have young women wanting to do the sport, and we cannot cater for them. We are in a real difficulty.
In terms of supply and demand, the demand is there; the supply is not. That is a real difficulty, because it has been a massive change. The Olympics have brought that around; there is no doubt about it. Also two other things have happened. One, as I say, is in the exercise market and particularly with As, Bs and Cs, who are now into boxercise and all that. We are also now, in the last, probably, four or five years, again with non-contact
25 boxing, as we call it, into 2,000 schools, because they have seen it is bringing discipline. That is bringing a lot of young girls into boxing as well. We have a real problem in the middle, in the club structure, because we cannot cater for them. To be fair to Sport England, they have just given us another £1 million to look at the club structure. A lot of that money will be going into providing, hopefully, facilities for female boxing coming in.
Robert Sullivan: I would make one other observation. I would say since the Olympics one of the most helpful and successful political interventions into sport—and it has come from both sides of the House—has been about pushing and promoting the women’s sports agenda. That has come from Maria Miller and Harriet Harman, and they are both very keen on the issue. I think it is actually making a difference, in particular around getting the broadcasters to pick up, use, take and leverage sports products. We have definitely seen it in football, and I think other sports have seen it too.
Baroness King of Bow: And just lastly, Mr Munro, in terms of your organisation and women, what is the—?
James Munro: If I can pick up on a point Richard made around boxercise, one of the programmes we have is cardio tennis, which is a fitness programme based on a tennis court.
It has been designed for anyone to take part in—and again some of the evidence is from the likes of Virgin Active, who are using that programme—and we now have that in around 700 places across the country, and around 12,000 people per week are playing that form of the sport, largely women. I think you are right that you need to provide more than one specific opportunity to play that sport.
Baroness King of Bow: Thank you for that, but the question was about how many women are on the—
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James Munro: On our board our Deputy President is a woman, and we also have another member, and it is a board of 13. We also have an executive, as part of the leadership team, which is made up of five people, and two of those are women as well.
Baroness King of Bow: So two out of 13 and two out of five?
Richard Caborn: Boxing is not doing badly, then, is it?
Baroness King of Bow: Two out of five is not bad. Two out of 13 is appalling, but it is all appalling.
Richard Caborn: We are still trying.
The Chairman: We do need to move on.
Q88 Lord Addington: To what extent have our sports clubs been successful, across all these sports, in building the link between school sport and school-age sport? How effective are you in developing this as an ongoing thing? What about the changes around, or cessation of, the Schools Sports Partnership and all the changes that came in with that—and the other schemes, and the reintroduction? What effect has that had? I accept the fact that this has always been a Holy Grail for a long time, so for those who have not been bored by it for quite as long as I have, do feel free to join in.
Richard Caborn: Well, it has been devastating; there is no doubt about that. I was Sports
Minister at the time from 2001 to 2007. It went from just under 25% of kids from five to 16 doing two hours of quality physical activity in sport to, when I left the job in 2007, 75%.
That was 3 million hours a week more sport and physical activity in our schools. That has now been decimated. You have pulled the plug on the £160 million—that is what it was— and the effects of that are now being monitored by the Youth Sport Trust, which has seen dramatic reductions. It has had a profound effect on our school sport and physical activity; there are no doubts about that. The other big hit, as well, is on local authorities. Robert was just talking about the Football Foundation, which I happen to be a member of, and we
27 were struggling to get grants out because there could not be matched funding. We were even getting to a point where we were giving 100% capital fund but they did not accept it, because they could not accept the revenue implications of that. That is how serious it is for some local authorities. We are getting around that at the Football Foundation, but that was a situation we were having to address. That is how bad it is in terms of investment into sport, both in schools and through local authorities. These guys—we—are trying to battle with that to try to make sure our sports continue to flourish in that very, very difficult situation—I think some sports more than others.
Baroness King of Bow: On that point about the funding, just following up, you motioned the £160 million. Obviously the Government will say they have replaced that with the £150 million for the primary schools, the £8,000 to £9,000 per primary school. I should declare an interest: I am on the Tower Hamlets Youth Sport Foundation. We have been devastated by that change in funding. However, what do you say to the Government’s argument that the money is going into individual primary schools, and why do you think, if it is only a £10 million shortfall, that there has been such a decimation of sports participation?
Richard Caborn: There are lies, damned lies and statistics: let us start with that. First of all, strategically, the one good thing about the Youth Sport Trust and the School Sports
Partnership is that it had a clear dimension, and over that six-year period it brought certainty to it, you measured it, and it started to have an impact on social inclusion, on educational attainment, on the health of the young people, all of that—and Ofsted are saying that, not me. It is all there factually to be monitored. When you started removing that investment through the Youth Sport Trust, you broke up what was in many people’s view an excellent system, which is mirrored by many around the world, let me say. Governments have come here and looked at what we were doing. In terms of that investment, whilst welcomed, into the primary schools, it is not going to address the issues you have of a strategic overview of
28 sport and physical activity in our schools, which is so crucial. That is when you start affecting those young people’s attitudes to life generally, but also how they can work with one another, as well, through sport. Using sport for that medium, on health and social inclusion, and on education, particularly in terms of truancy and so on, was having a major effect, and that, I am bound to say, has been ended.
Q89 Lord Addington: Just to pull you back you to this, literally it is the case we have a degree of ownership out of that. For those who do not have that, did you try to address this outside? What was the experience of, for instance, football or tennis? I do not know how much handball got into this. What were the benefits of the system, and how much of it stayed in place after the structure and the funding went? That is what is actually important.
Robert Sullivan: I think football would take a slightly different position from the one outlined by Richard, which is that by and large the experience of the SSPs was of varying quality. Some were excellent on the ground and really delivered; some were not so. I think the position the Football Association and football took was, if the system was to be replaced—and that was a political decision—we were not necessarily opposed to what came next as long as we saw one or two principles maintained: a level of quality assurance about what sport went into schools; a focus on primary schools and physical literacy, so for the youngest kids it was about basic, multi-sport physical literacy at the earliest age; and that it was delivered by a level of quality assurance. On that basis we were more relaxed about the decision-making of how that sport was provided resting with the headteacher and those who know their school more intimately. So we welcomed the new Sport Premium policy, as it happened, partly because we believe across the whole of football there is a range of very strong programmes that will deliver for schools what they require. We have our own FA
Tesco skills programme, which is targeted at five- to 11-year-olds and is delivered by highly
29 qualified, FA-employed coaches of excellent quality. It delivers real technical, physical literacy education into primary schools, and it does not charge at the point of use.
Lord Addington: So as a very organised sport, with very organised talent spotting, etc., the effect for you is not as great.
Robert Sullivan: Absolutely.
Lord Addington: Tennis?
James Munro: I think you are right to point out the link between schools and club partnerships as well. Our experience—and I would echo Rob’s words there—is that we were very happy to work under the previous framework. We were able to deliver our schools programme, which as I say is now in more than 16,000 schools, most of those state schools. Part of that programme is also about how, when the children get a taste for your sport at school, you then encourage them to follow that up outside school. We work with partners like UK Youth about how we can do that in youth clubs. We work through our
Clubmark system on how we work with our clubs, and we have 2,700-odd registered tennis clubs in community and education venues in this country, to make their links with schools so that the children who get that first taste can then go on and enjoy it. We welcome, as I said earlier, the Government’s decision on additional funding now, and we will work very closely with headteachers, local authorities and county sports partnerships to make sure we continue to deliver that programme.
Robert Sullivan: Can I make an additional point about schools? It is a facilities point, which is that 40% of football pitches are behind school gates. That is where the club-school link becomes really important, because we have a challenge in our game about access to facilities; schools have a challenge about access to good-quality coaching and programmes. What we would very much like is to bring those two things together, so that we use their facilities for
30 our clubs, but in turn the kids get access to the clubs, the coaches, and it all hopefully should work together in co-ordination.
David Meli: I will make a point about the primary school funding, which we welcome as well, certainly when you talk about physical literacy. For us it is a great opportunity, but I think we also need to recognise it is going to teachers who do not have the PE/sports- dedicated resource that perhaps they do further up the education sector, at secondary and tertiary level. Whilst it is a big bonus for us, and the link between school and club participation is where we will want to try to drive stuff, we need to support the primary school teachers and headteachers who suddenly find themselves with some money and being bombarded by organisations saying, “We can help you to spend it,” to give them the guidance and support to be able to spend it in the right way, to create lasting participation.
It is very easy to send a coach in for six weeks, do a session and go away again. What is left behind?
Lord Addington: So it is the constant supply of expert-enough coaching at the right point, i.e. literacy and development, that actually is the great benefit, and that is the important bit about this scheme?
David Meli: I think so, but I think it is also recognising that they have not, perhaps, got that dedicated resource in situ. We are certainly focusing on going to university and tertiary level.
Q90 Lord Addington: So the really beneficial thing about this—and anything else that takes on from the history of this—was the access to the better coaching, even more so, probably, than the funding overall?
Richard Caborn: No, no.
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David Meli: It is introducing youngsters to a new sport or to existing sports, but then also signposting them as to where they can do it on a more regular basis, because primary schools and secondary schools cannot do that on a regular basis.
Richard Caborn: The sustainability of it showed very clearly indeed when you give the opportunity for a young person to access a number of sports. You have two great sports here, but they are incredibly well funded. He has about 800 staff working for him at FA headquarters. I have 22. What I am saying is that, seriously, if you want sustainability of sport throughout it is set in the schools, but it is that experience they get there. The wider that experience and the quality of that experience—as we were saying, the exposure to anything above eight sports—the more likely they are to stop in sport for longer. There is a lot of evidence to show that. If you are just going down the route of a single sport, and that is the difficulty, as I was saying a little earlier, there is no strategic approach to support exercise. It is siloed because each sport is now doing its own thing, and you will never get that sustainable benefit from it for society out there.
Lord Addington: In other words, it is still the idea that you actually get the literacy involved and the tasting sessions are the important bit.
Richard Caborn: Absolutely, and then taking that on from there.
James Munro: I could add one distinction for tennis, if you do not mind. You mentioned about the coaching and the coaching resource. Actually, part of our programme is to train the teachers to deliver tennis, so we have trained more than 16,000 teachers—in fact more than 20,000, but I can send you the exact number—to deliver tennis, which has helped us to provide more of a lasting impact in those schools.
Robert Sullivan: That CPD point for teachers is very important, and that is ingrained in all of the NGB programmes into schools. It has to be, because you have to leave that behind for the teachers. I was just going to mention the County Sports Partnership, which is part of
32 the supporting infrastructure, which actually now will be taking on this kind of guidance and information-sharing role. I am sure, when you have Sport England in front of you, they will explain that role more.
The Chairman: I am very conscious that we have overrun the allotted time already. What
I would like to do, with the permission of the Committee, is to take Lord Best’s question, because that is going to be important in informing us for our meeting next week, and then perhaps we can submit a number of questions to you in writing for answer to feed in, which would be the remaining ones.
Q91 Lord Best: More about funding and the process used by Sport England to allocate funds to the different governing bodies: is the process working well? Did it work well with the various winners and losers in the last round? Are the criteria right? What changes would you make to the way that Sport England allocates resources to the governing bodies?
Richard Caborn: I think it is great. I think it is fantastic for boxing all round. Keep the funding exactly the same, the same structure, and we will keep scooping the pool.
James Munro: From the point of view of tennis, the first thing to make clear is quite how important that Sport England funding is towards our work to get more people playing tennis.
It is extremely important. We recognise that, as public funding, they are absolutely right to be checking and challenging our work with regards to that funding. What we are doing, and
I think we talked about it a little bit earlier, is working with them very closely on a daily and weekly basis to ensure that we do have the right plans in place. Ultimately, in terms of that funding, it will be around the number of people who are playing, which will determine whether it has been a success, but also around ensuring that we, as a national governing body, have the right processes and structures in place to deliver that long-term growth. The final thing I would say is to echo Robert’s point earlier. It is a given that a stable form of funding structure is very helpful to long-term strategic planning in this area, for us.
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David Meli: I will declare an interest on the basis of being part of the team that helped to allocate the last lot of funding, in a previous life. I can say with some conviction that a) it was pretty rigorous; and b) all sports were treated the same and went through the same process.
The one thing that came out of it as they went through the process was that sports, or certainly governing bodies, started to realise that this was not a divine right any more to get public funding. It had to be earned against good-quality plans that are going to deliver and, if they do not deliver, they are going to get money taken away. All sports are in no doubt that funding can be taken away at any point. There are some sports that have been given capped funding at the moment; there are other sports that are on notice. Sport England showed its teeth in the last four years when it did take money away. It was the first time it had been done. That had an interesting effect on the sector.
Richard Caborn: I do not disagree. I think it has become much more focussed now, but there is a disconnect between talent development and the elite programme. It is getting better, but there is clearly that disconnect between what you are doing in UK Sport and what you are doing in Sport England. There is also a disconnect between schools and Sport
England. There is a cut-off at 16, which is a problem and it needs to be looked at.
The other area is between mass participation and elite development, and there is a little resentment built up, and I can say it for my own sport, where you see big investments into the elite, and yet struggling right down at the grassroots. I think we need to manage that better. I am the last person to say we do not need all money coming into sport that we can get, but there are certain fault lines. As a Sports Minister, I was probably one of the people who built those fault lines in, but I think we do need to address that for the benefit of sport all around and particularly in terms of talent pathways.
Q92 Lord Bates: We have been told that investment in elite sport leads to increased participation by creating role models, which you have all given examples of. If you had a
34 pound to invest in your particular governing body organisations in either elite sport or grassroots sport, with the objective of increasing participation, where would you place it?
Richard Caborn: Grassroots every time, without any shadow of a doubt.
James Munro: I would echo that. Our mission is to get more people playing tennis, and so we would invest that money into a range of opportunities to do that.
Robert Sullivan: It is a really interesting question, because actually the idea that it comes from inspiration from elite participation, which falls down to participation, actually works the other way around as well. Broaden your base; get as many people playing the sport as possible. Increase the quality and it actually pushes up as well. Not to be too tortuous, it is a circle.
Lord Bates: Where would you put your pound?
Robert Sullivan: Definitely in the grassroots.
Richard Caborn: That is why the Premier League is doing awfully well: finding upcoming players.
David Meli: We would be the same, exactly as Robert said, in terms of getting more people in at the base, but then have a good-quality talent ID system and get people coming through.
You will not just find people at the elite level straight off the bat.
The Chairman: We should finish but I cannot resist: Richard Caborn, you said you thought the Sport England arrangements were fine in terms of funding, but they put boxing on probation.
Richard Caborn: They put boxing on probation, yes. I will tell you why that is, and I put my hands up. Tomorrow there is going to be a board meeting of the ABAE. I argued, on the corporate governance side of that, on the structure of the board, that they ought to be elected from the regions. Sport England argued very firmly against me, and I am bound to say that Sport England was right, because it has not worked out in the last 12 months as I
35 thought it would do. It has got tribal and we are not working in the best interests of the sport. Tomorrow, there will be a decision at the ABAE on whether they actually want to adopt a new structure of the board, which will be skills based rather than elected. I am bound to say that I failed. I tried to do it and I thought that bringing people in from the regions, actually empowering them and sending them on training courses, would have been a force for good. It has not been. It is my mistake. I accept that. I will say that to Sport
England tomorrow at the board meeting.
The Chairman: The heavy-handed intervention of Sport England was absolutely right.
Richard Caborn: I think, on this occasion, marginally yes.
The Chairman: We will just recap the answers we would like some expansion on and written answers to things we have not managed to cover. Can I thank you very much for your attendance and invite the next group of witnesses to take their place? Thank you.