Lord Storey (LD)

I am grateful for those comments, believe it or not. I could well have made the noble Lord’s speech, to be honest, and I might have gone on to say some of those things. In some of my other contributions in this House, I have, for example, decried the Government’s stance on the EBacc, which has created problems for the creative industries, as well as for sport and physical education. The noble Lord, Lord Gove, who is not in his place, spoke yesterday, and I referred to the cataclysmic changes that his time as Secretary of State brought about. I was slightly annoyed that he referred to a reasonable request for a national guarantee on tutoring as a sort of publicity stunt by the Lib Dems. That was my reaction to that, as those noble Lords who were present know. I accept everything the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, said. Politicians��not in this Chamber, of course—sometimes forget what happened beforehand. The country was on its knees because of the recession—it really was; you could see that—and the Government had to step forward and take some difficult decisions. But those difficult decisions did not have to see the dismantling of services that both the noble Lord and I think are really important. As the head teacher of a primary school for 23 years, I recognise what the noble Lords is saying, but it is not in every school. However, we were talking about PE, so let me move on to one example of PE which I know a great deal about: swimming. I declare an interest as a patron of the Royal Life Saving Society. Swimming is important to us as a nation—we are an island. I do not have the figures to hand, other than the sad figure that somewhere in the region of 250 people drown every year and some 40 of them are children between primary age and 17, and those figures are rising. Why are drownings happening? It is because fewer and fewer schools have the resources to swim. How many schools have a swimming pool they can go to? I remember in those halcyon days in my borough, primary schools would have a small learner pool that you could walk to in every area. We could take even top infants to the learner pool to learn how to swim. Every child had a term and a half of swimming and 98% of children left school being able to swim 20 meters. That does not happen now, for the very reasons that we have heard. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan. I thought his speech was absolutely spot on. If we are serious about the importance of sport, everything he said I could not agree with.