9.47 am
Mr. Dave Anderson (Blaydon): It is a great privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Anne Moffat), who is a good and long-standing friend.
If Martians decide to invade this world in the near future, they will wonder where we all are. Most of us will be sitting watching television, and a lucky few will be over in Germany, being looked after by McDonald's, although I will not be one of them, thank God. Things have not always been this way, and mass coverage on television and the influence of big money and Russian billionaires have obviously raised the profile of football.
The other day, I was thinking about what things were like when I was younger. The last time the World cup was held in Germany was during England's sabbatical from the competition, and the British Isles representative was the country of my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian and most of the hon. Members here today. There were some real stars in that squad, such as Jim Stewart, Donald Ford and Tommy Allan. Who can forget them? Who can remember them? Of course, there was also Kenny Dalglish, Danny McGrain and Jim Holton - six foot two, eyes of blue. There was Billy Bremner, the man we all love to hate, and Jimmy Johnstone, the man we all love to love. Sadly, as well as being great footballers, the last three have one thing common - they are no longer with us, which is sad for us.
In 1974, I was not the man you see before you now, Mr. Chope. I was 20 - that was my age, not my weight - and I was playing local football, as were hundreds of thousands of other people, just as they are now. Then, as now, the world of football seen on our screens is not the real world of football. Then, that was merely pub and club football and some school football. Today's world is different and the situation is different.
Mr. Devine: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Anderson: Certainly, but do not mention my weight.
Mr. Devine: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He mentions the 1974 Scottish team. Is he aware that players such as Dalglish, McGrain and Johnstone all came through the junior ranks?
Mr. Anderson: I was not aware of that, but I am not surprised, because that is the culture in Scotland, and where I come from: that is how we attracted people. Football in the British isles is suffering today because of the demise of that and because big money is bringing in players from abroad and not encouraging junior footballers to come through. That is a big mistake for us all.
In my part of the world, we have junior football - it is junior in the sense of age groups - and it is booming. In Blaydon, we have a football team that attracts 270 players - boys and girls. People there are even in the process of setting up a disabled team, which is something that we would never even have thought about 30 years ago. The team operates out of a portakabin, and while the children are training and playing football, their grandmothers take it over and it becomes a social centre for them. People who do not know each other and would never have met but for their children's interest in football get together. It is part of the community, and that is what it is all about. It becomes a social event.
We have campaigns going from that football club. We are running a big campaign to try to get the Health Department to pay for people who need to wear glasses when they take part in sport. We should surely encourage that. A local amateur football team in our area, Whickham FC, recently won the Durham senior challenge cup - their first win for 25 years, since they won the FA vase. They were the first second division team to win the cup, and they beat first division opponents to do it. They are an integral part of the community, and good news for the community.
Another team, Birtley Town juniors, have just been awarded a charter standard by the FA and quite a lot of money from both the FA and the local council, because they want the team to develop and go forward. They realise the integral part that football plays in our communities, much more than in the past when we had a more cohesive society. That is particularly true in the area where I come from, where there were Miners' Welfares and people grew up, played, lived and worked together. A lot of that has been changed, but the football clubs have been maintained and are a key part of our society. We should do everything possible to keep them going. The development in football in the past few years is good news for the whole community.
We have to ask where the joined-up thinking is in the proposal, given that we want to encourage people to engage in sport. We know that 30 years ago people went to play football and then got drunk. That was part and parcel of the situation: it was a man's thing. Football is no longer like that: it is a community event that involves people in a very different way.
My hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian said that if children are involved in sport they probably will not be involved in antisocial behaviour, or if they are, it will be for a much more limited time. That is a crucial part of why the police in our area are involved in encouraging sport. Something else that happens now, which would never have happened when I was a young man, is that boys and girls play football together. We now have people from different racial groups coming together, and there is interaction with people with disabilities. We talk and talk in this House about encouraging people to involve themselves in diversity. This is real diversity: it is real people getting together, doing real things together and realising that they are living on the same planet.
When I played football, the engagement that we had with the local council was to ask how much rent we had to pay for a football field, and that was the end of it. Now there is real involvement with the development of community leisure facilities, environmental discussions and development as a whole. There is a plan to take over school fields in the area where I live, which has been strongly resisted by local people because it is all about building houses. The school fields should be maintained, used and developed for sporting facilities. The football clubs are right in there arguing that case and using links with organisations such as Sport England to ensure that their voices are listened to. To promote interest in sport, we should be talking about tax breaks, not tax burdens. We should be looking for incentives, not disincentives, and we should be finding support, not putting obstacles in the way. I understand the reality that PAYE must be paid, but I urge it on the Minister that if there is any way of relieving the burden on these clubs, it can only be for the good of the community.
9.54 am
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Mr. Anderson: Will the Minister give way?
Dawn Primarolo: I want to make this point, and then I will be happy to give way before I conclude.
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Mr. Anderson: I want to raise the same point. The Paymaster General might be right that one person might get £100, but if we are saying that at least 45 clubs must now accept that they are employers what will that mean for them? Will everyone who plays for them attract the minimum wage? Will they attract national insurance contributions? That is a big difference from one person getting a one-off payment of £100.
Dawn Primarolo: That is difficult to deal with at this stage. I am perplexed that I need to go through the national minimum wage on this occasion. We are talking about people being paid from a profit or made another payment when they might well be working elsewhere.
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