Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)

I fully support Amendment 69 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Addington. Obviously, major sporting events generate significant commercial benefits, but we have to ask what their legacy will be or could be. Too often we celebrate the spectacle, the television audiences and the economic boost, but the local clubs, pitches and volunteers, which sustain sport every week of the year, may see little benefit. Amendment 69 seeks to address that by creating an expectation that those who benefit from major sporting events should also invest in grass-roots sport, community facilities and participation. After all, elite sport does not emerge from nowhere. Every international player and every Olympian starts somewhere. They start on local pitches, in community halls, in amateur clubs and in local swimming pools, with volunteer coaches giving up evenings and weekends. In many places, the local sports club is one of the few remaining community institutions where people of different ages and backgrounds come together regularly. So I warmly support the principle that grass-roots foundations, on which all sport ultimately depends, should be strengthened. My Amendment 70 takes that further to add that the climate resilience for grass-roots sport should be included too. This is a month when I was locked out of my office because of potential flooding and, of course, we now have this incredible heatwave, so I argue that this amendment seems particularly relevant. When we talk about investing in grass-roots facilities, we must also talk about protecting them. Across the country, grass-roots sport is already experiencing the effects of climate change. Football matches are cancelled because pitches are waterlogged, clubs face increasing repair costs after flooding and storms, and facilities are damaged by extreme weather. Heatwaves are clearly creating new challenges for us all, and these are real present-day problems for sports up and down the country. Estimates suggest that between 120,000 and 150,000 grass-roots football matches are cancelled each season because pitches are unplayable due to rain and flooding. In parts of the country, pitches are already losing weeks of playable time every year because of changing weather patterns, and every cancelled match means lost revenue for clubs, disruption for volunteers and fewer opportunities for participation. Over time, of course, it threatens the viability of facilities that communities depend on. The irony is that we can spend money improving a clubhouse, upgrading a pitch or expanding facilities only to find that those investments are increasingly vulnerable if resilience is not built in from the start. If public money or event-related investment is helping to support a community sports facility then surely it makes sense to ensure that the facility remains usable for years to come.