Speeches

Lord Pendry – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Pendry on 2016-05-18.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of research that shows that lack of physical activity is negatively affecting more people than obesity, whether they have a strategy on how to support grassroots attempts at getting citizens to take part in more and sustained physical activity.

Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Government is determined to tackle physical inactivity. Around one in two women and a third of men in England may be damaging their health through a lack of physical activity. Ministers across government continue to work together to identify opportunities to get people active in a range of ways including active travel, health initiatives, planning and sport.

In December 2015 Government published ‘Sporting Future: A New Strategy for an Active Nation’ – the first comprehensive government strategy for sport for 13 years – it sets out a new vision for a successful and active sporting nation. It has a strong focus on reaching inactive people and helping them to get moving in ways that suit them.

Sport England’s new strategy ‘Towards an Active Nation’, published on 19 May, states that tackling inactivity is a major priority for the organisation, it is tripling its current investment to over £250 million over 4 years, making it the largest single national investor in tackling inactivity.