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From House of Commons
Hansard 19th December 2005
Oral Questions to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media
and Sport
Mr. Sadiq Khan (Tooting)
(Lab): What steps her Department is taking to ensure the
2012 Olympic games encourage grass-roots participation in
sports across the UK.
The Minister for Sport (Mr. Richard Caborn):
We are committed to driving up grass-roots participation in
sport across the whole of the UK. We are working with key
partners to maximise the benefits of hosting the games by
building on existing programmes to encourage more people to
become involved in sport.
Mr. Khan: Is my right hon. Friend
aware that building work is well under way at my old school,
Ernest Bevin college, in Tooting, to develop a dojo and
sports complex, thanks to more than £500,000-worth of Big
Lottery funding? The complex will be open not only to the
school's 900 pupils, but to more than 350 pupils from local
primary schools and, potentially, to hundreds of local
residents outside school hours.
Mr. Caborn: I know that my hon.
Friend is very proud of that welcome development, which can
be mirrored throughout the country. Such developments will
prove very valuable. Starting next year, as we build to
2012, we hope to run an annual national schools' festival of
sport throughout the nations and regions—Scotland, Wales,
Northern Ireland, the north, the midlands and the south—in
which all our young people will be able to participate and
thereby develop sporting excellence. Importantly, part of
the legacy of the games will be a competition structure in
our schools that will probably prove second to none in the
world. That will put to bed once and for all the idea that
competition is not important in sport.
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