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English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill

That is a challenge that the Committee should probably face more often.

The amendment calls on the function here of strategic authorities. It talks about sport and recreation and comes under the heading of health. There is a general consensus that exercise is the wonder drug. If you make your body exercise correctly, it has huge health benefits, physically and psychologically. This is about making sure that the strategic authorities allow these activities to take place. When I drafted this amendment, I was thinking about it on two levels. One was grass-roots sports—that is, are you allowing organised sport to take place and are you providing enough pitches for your football and rugby teams, and so on? Are you allowing enough recreational spaces for people to be able to take part in sport?

I look at the rest of the group, and I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Freeman, is the only person to mention physical activity in her amendments, so I may be ploughing a lonely furrow—but I hope that it is not an inappropriate one. Unless we know that this is being taken on board and something is being done about it, it will get forgotten. Much of the structure here, especially in grass-roots sports, is under pressure anyway. The school structure is largely in individual academies, and public parks are difficult and expensive to maintain, if you want a flat, even surface to run around on. Very few sports do not have that basic requirement. It means keeping them drained and at least clean enough for you to go on them without risking injury or illness. It is a big ask.

Most noble Lords here are much more experienced in local government than me, but we do not do things like tennis courts that well and they are easy to cut. Can the Government give us some idea of what they are going to do here to make sure these facilities are kept available? They are preventative health, they maintain your health and they are a community asset. I have not even started to talk about sports centres and swimming pools—maybe we will take those as read—but what is the Government’s activity here and with how much seriousness do we address this? Sport is often regarded as not being important or anything to do with public health. That is the way it can seem to many of us, but it is actually a key component.

I have spoken enough so, bearing in mind the words of the Government Whip on this, I will curtail my comments here and beg to move.