Britain’s inactivity crisis requires a new minister for sport, health and wellbeing, a House of Lords committee has argued, with the Department of Culture, Media and Sport having presided over an “uncoordinated and fragmented” strategy that failed to deliver change.
A new report by the Lords’ sport and recreation committee says that powers should be removed from the DCMS and transferred to the Department of Health and Social Care to combat growing levels of inactivity in England. It comes as Sport England’s Active Lives Children and Young People survey reports 94,000 fewer children were active in the academic year 2020-21 than before the Covid-19 pandemic.
The committee says a new “national plan” for sport and physical activity should join up plans across government but that the importance of physical activity should also be put on a new footing. Among the recommendations are an obligation for councils to maintain leisure facilities and for PE to be made a core subject on the national curriculum.
Schools should also be required to work with grassroots sports clubs and enable their facilities to be used across the week and outside school hours, the report says, while any reorganisation must come with greater funding from the Treasury.
The authoritative Active Lives study for adults was released in October and recorded a headline decline of 700,000 fewer active people in 2020-21. A separate report into children and young people, published on Thursday, found numbers steady on the year before but with no bounce-back in activity from the initial impacts of the pandemic. Both reports found the greatest declines in activity to be among the most socially disadvantaged.
“The pandemic has made abundantly clear the pressing need to get the country fitter and more active,” said Lord Willis, chair of the sport and recreation Committee. “However, participation in sport and recreation is flatlining. The Olympic legacy did not deliver the more active population we were promised, and the latest figures show activity levels have declined since the pandemic. Something needs to change and now is the time to do it.
- Download the Guardian app from the iOS App Store on iPhones or the Google Play store on Android phones by searching for 'The Guardian'.
- If you already have the Guardian app, make sure you’re on the most recent version.
- In the Guardian app, tap the yellow button at the bottom right, then go to Settings (the gear icon), then Notifications.
- Turn on sport notifications.
“To make the changes we need it is time for a new national plan for sport, health and wellbeing. That plan needs to be ambitious and coordinated, and carry the weight of the government and prime minister behind it. That cannot be delivered if it is led by DCMS, a small department with an increasing focus on its digital portfolio. That is why we are calling for responsibility for sport policy to move to the Department of Health and be driven by a new minister for sport, health and wellbeing.”
The committee said that its members would now seek to make amendments to the government’s Health and Social Care act as it passed through the Lords, with the aim of facilitating their proposals.
The government says it intends to act on a number of these concerns in an new strategy for sport which is set to be published in the next few months.
In response to the committee’s report, a government spokesperson said: We know that the pandemic has had a significant impact on participation rates in grassroots sport, which is why we are working hard on how we can best increase activity levels through a new sport strategy and School Sport and Activity Action Plan.
“We continue to urge everyone across the nation, particularly children and young people, to enjoy the benefits of getting active and aim for the Chief Medical Officer’s target of 60 mins a day for children and 150 minutes a week for adults.”
