Jonathan Gullis – 2023 Speech on Sport in Schools and Communities

The speech made by Jonathan Gullis, the Conservative MP for Stoke-on-Trent North, in the House of Commons on 10 January 2023.

It is sad that sometimes these types of debates are not the ones that make the news headlines, as they should do; this debate shows great consensus across the House on the importance of this issue. I concur with a large amount of the comments that have been made, but let me add my two pennies’ worth.

In my brief time as the Minister for school standards, I was delighted to have the physical education and sports premium under my brief. One thing I instructed the officials that I worked with about was the importance of getting beyond the one-year funding settlement that always comes late in the academic year, meaning that teachers have already got curriculums planned and people recruited. It is essential that we not only announce such funding well before the Easter break—that is the very least we should do—but start to move towards a three-year to five-year funding agreement.

The Department for Education has done that extremely successfully with the holiday activities and food programme, which has been a real success in local areas such as Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, where we have the Hubb Foundation, led by the co-owner of Port Vale football club, Carol Shanahan, and one of its former professional footballers, Adam Yates. It has been serving more than 500,000 school meals to those on free school meals and providing thousands of opportunities each school holiday break to young people, particularly disadvantaged people. It engages with the schools to make sure that the young people on the pupil premium or on free school meals are the ones going to the clubs. It helps by using registers to find out what the engagement levels are.

I completely agree with my hon. Friends the Members for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) and for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) about school buildings sitting empty and idly by in our communities, despite being the beating heart of many of them. I was a teacher and I always found it shocking that a building that has the required safeguarding, security, kitchens and sporting facilities remains closed for six or seven weeks during the summer holiday—that is simply not right and we must do much more on this. Surely with small amounts of funding going into schools, we could make those facilities available at a cost whereby, working with volunteers, they can deliver or maintain things. There would be a hugely beneficial impact.

Let me give an example. The Government’s town deal funding for Kidsgrove of £17.6 million meant that we invested nearly £250,000 in the King’s Church of England Academy Kidsgrove, a secondary school, to put in FIFA-standard 3G Astro pitches. We had an agreement that the community would have access to those facilities in the evenings and at weekends. Not only is that generating income for the school; it has created a new job in the process, and it has meant that hundreds of people from across the local area are now descending on Kidsgrove, as the sporting facility sits right next door to Kidsgrove sports centre. As part of the town deal funding, it got nearly £4 million to reopen what is a vital community facility. That is creating a sports hub in an area where, sadly, childhood obesity is at about 28%, according to the latest figures I saw.

Those facilities are great for the local community and we are grateful for the Government funding. This is an example of how it can be spread across the local area. I want to thank Councillor Simon Tagg, the leader of Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council; the Kidsgrove sports centre community group, which is ably led by Mark Clews and others, including Dave Rigby, Ray and Councillor Gill Burnett; and Councillor Paul Waring, who is now the leader of Kidsgrove Town Council and has put money from the town council budget into the sports centre to make sure that the facility thrives.

Of course, as the sports Minister has heard already, leisure centres, particularly those with swimming pools, have to be included in any support for energy usage. I do not want this fantastic community facility, which was refurbished and reopened at the end of last summer, to have to temporarily or, God forbid, permanently close because of energy prices that are not its fault. They are not anyone’s fault, other than Vladimir Putin and his vile campaign against the people of Ukraine. We need to make sure that we re-encompass those facilities, so I implore my right hon. Friend to speak with Ministers in the Treasury and in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to include those facilities in the support for energy usage. I will gladly work with any colleague across the House to continue that campaign and have our voices heard.

We are also looking at facilities within our local communities. I have mentioned the Kidsgrove Sports Centre and the 3G astroturf pitch at the King’s School, but the Kidsgrove town deal meant that we installed a pump track such as the one my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) mentioned. The pump track was a new concept to me, but it has been my biggest success to date. Funding of £100,000 has created one of the largest such tracks in the UK. It was built by local contractor Clark & Kent, which has professional BMX bikers and former Team GB Olympians such as Kyle Evans working for it. This facility, which is free for the community to use, is on an old abandoned site at Newchapel Rec, which had some mud tracks built by the local community. People from as far away as Scotland and Cornwall have been emailing me to say what a great facility it is. Again, that is great for our local community.

When the Levelling Up Parks Fund was announced by the Government, I thought that a mistake had been made because Stoke-on-Trent was not included. I have got used to hearing Stoke-on-Trent being announced as somewhere receiving funding from this Government. So I am going to let the sports Minister lobby his colleagues in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and tell them that they must have made a mistake, that we are going to have a round 2 and that Stoke-on-Trent is going to get, I hope, around half a million pounds. I want to have a pump track revolution across my local area to make sure that we install more in places such as Middleport Park, building on the work by the Middleport Matters Community Trust, led by Vicki Gwynne and her amazing team, and building a facility not only to get people physically active, but engaged in learning softer skills, which are so important. We need to ensure that the BMX track in Norton and Ball Green is brought back into use, which councillors Dave Evans, Carl Edwards and local community champion Jenny Taylor have been long calling for. These projects are very important.

I cannot end my remarks without mentioning Port Vale football club’s tremendous day out at Wembley, albeit at the expense of my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley): we thrashed them at Wembley to get promoted to League One, thanks to Carol and Kevin Shanahan’s revolution of that football club. There is a massive engagement now in football. Stoke-on-Trent North is home to Stoke-on-Trent Ladies in Smallthorne, Port Vale Women and Milton United football club, which has ladies and girls teams as well. A revolution is taking place in Stoke-on-Trent to get young people, particularly girls, invested in sport.

I agree that PE must become a core compulsory part of the curriculum. Two hours is the bare minimum that should happen. We need to make sure that Ofsted is properly inspecting that and that we have the right people going in to teach it. Teachers in primary schools are overworked already. We need to give them the support that they need to focus on the curriculum and use the expertise of sports stars—retired and perhaps amateur. Perhaps we could get Phil “The Power” Taylor out and about in schools around Stoke-on-Trent, which is his home. Let us make sure that that can thrive. For me, sport was a life saver—quite literally. I have openly talked about my own mental health struggles, having attempted twice to take my own life. Having a sports team and a fantastic sports coach in Mr McCollin at Princethorpe College taught me discipline and structure. He brought me into a community, which was that team. He taught me those soft skills, although I accept that I do not display them very well in this Chamber, Madam Deputy Speaker. My mother would like to see them more.

If we are to truly educate not just bright minds, but great people, sport has an important role to play and I hope that we can go further. I welcome the Minister’s announcement of an incoming sports strategy. I hope that the Minister for Schools will be announcing very shortly that PE and sports premium and working towards a multi-year settlement further on.