The Sports Council for Wales
Cyngor Chwaraeon Cymru

THE RICHARD COMMISSION - RESPONSE TO THE CONSULTATION BY THE SPORTS COUNCIL FOR WALES

1. The Sports Council for Wales (SCW) welcomes the opportunity to comment on the commission’s consultation document "the Powers of the National Assembly for Wales: Issues and Questions for Consultation".

2. The Council was established in 1972 by Royal Charter. Its broad aims are to:-

2.1 increase sports participation;
2.2 raise standards of performance and develop excellence.

3. The Council is an Assembly Sponsored Public Body (ASPB) and receives direct grant aid from the National Assembly for Wales. The Chairman is appointed by the Minister for Culture, Sport and the Welsh Language and is accountable to him/her for the work of the council and its achievements. The Chief Executive is designated as the Accounting Officer. The budget for the current operational plan year is £10.338m.

4. The Council is also a named distributor of Lottery funding under the National Lottery etc Act 1993.  The Council receives 4.5% of the sports lottery fund for the United Kingdom to distribute in Wales, currently around £10m per annum.

5. The Council’s policies are set out in the "Strategy for Welsh Sport – Young People First" launched in 1999 and endorsed at a plenary session of the Assembly.

6. Turning now to the specific questions set out in the consultation paper:

In what practical ways do the powers of the Assembly, or the limits on its powers, impinge on you, your organisation or the people whom you serve and what are the best examples of this from your point of view?

7. Under the Government of Wales Act, sport is now clearly a devolved function. The Minister for Culture, Sport and the Welsh Language has policy responsibility for sport and the Culture Committee of the Assembly has a scrutiny role. The Chairman has a close working relationship with the Minister. Both the Chairman and Chief Executive have appeared before the Culture Committee on a number of occasions and assisted the Committee in its recent study into "Sports Participation in Wales".

8. This direct focus on the benefits, challenges and issues facing Welsh sport is particularly helpful. Prior to the establishment of the Assembly, the tendency had been to adopt an England (or event London) centric approach across the whole of the United Kingdom.

9.   The establishment of the Assembly has also enabled specific issues to be investigated. A good example was the establishment of the Football Forum by the previous Culture Minister in order to agree a strategy for young people’s participation in football.

10.   The Assembly has also been able to progress more easily a number of cross-cutting issues. The Council played a significant role in the:-

10.1   Physical Education and School Sport Task force which was established to advise on issues concerning curricular PE; extra-curricular sport; community links; facility provision; initial teacher education and training (ITET) and continuing professional development. The resultant report was accepted by the Education Minister and £5m over three years made available for the implementation of the recommendations;

10.2   Health and Active Lifestyles Task Force which was established to advise the Health Minister and Culture Minister on ways of bringing the standards of health in Wales closer to European averages through improved physical activity. The report has recently been adapted into an Assembly Action Plan involving central and local government, ASPBs plus the voluntary sector.

11. The Assembly is currently working on a ‘Sport and Physical Activity Strategy’.

Does the Government of Wales Act provide the Assembly with the powers it needs to operate effectively and meet the expectations of the people of Wales? Whether, and if so how, these powers should be extended, strengthened or changed and whether they should include tax varying powers?

12. The National Lottery is not a devolved function and remains under the control of the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. Although the Sports Council for Wales and the Arts Council for Wales are named distributors in the national Lottery etc Act 1993, the other good causes (Heritage Lottery Fund, Community Fund and New Opportunities Fund) are all United Kingdom bodies with Wales regional offices. The Assembly is able to directly influence the policies of SCW and ACW through their Lottery strategies but other bodies are required to operate within a UK framework and this makes it more challenging when seeking to influence policy. Joint working between Wales- based bodies and UK bodies is also more difficult. Having said that, joint marketing and public relations work at Wales level have been very successful but work at an operational level is more difficult since it requires co-ordinations across the four home countries with the UK based distributor.

13.   The current structure not only militates against effective joint working but lacks clarity in relation to:-

13.1   powers in setting policy direction;

13.2   responsibility in relation to accounting officer issues;

13.3   marketing and promotion of projects.

14. In the recent Lottery Review Consultation, the Assembly and relevant ASPBs argued for greater devolution of powers.

15.   Greater devolution would also allow the Assembly to change or vary the percentages across good causes and distributors based upon its perception of need. Currently such percentages can only be varied with Parliamentary approval with the Secretary of State for culture, Media and Sport having the lead responsibility.

16.   The forthcoming Lottery White Paper may begin to address some of these issues.

17.   Sport is a wide ranging activity and many pieces of legislation impact upon its development including education, local government, planning, social services, charities, etc. Whether sufficient of these powers are delegated to the Assembly is difficult to comment upon at present until the Sports Strategy is published for consultation.

If the Assembly were to acquire greater law making powers, is it inevitable that it would need to be reconstituted on a Parliamentary model? If so what organisational changes would be needed to support this model and what gains and losses from making this change?

18.   The Council does not have a competency to answer these specific questions.

How effective has the Assembly been in influencing UK Government policy making in relation to Wales – what are the practical examples which illustrate strengths and weaknesses?

19. Sport at a UK level is co-ordinated by a Ministerial Group (Sports Cabinet) with representatives from the three devolved administrations, chaired by the Culture Secretary. The Assembly’s Culture Minister has played a leading role in this group and significantly influenced policy development.

20. The Chairman of SCW is a member of the UK Sports Council, a body established to develop sport at the elite level. In recent months, Wales has been particularly successful in obtaining funding towards major sports events from UK Sport including the World Disabled Badminton Championships, IPC World Disabled Swimming Championships plus Solheim Cup bid. The Team Wales (Assembly, Celtic Manor, WDA, WTB, Newport CC, two golf unions plus SCW) approach was one of the principal reasons for Wales successfully securing the Ryder cup in 2010.

21. The role of sport in Europe is becoming increasingly important from both a funding perspective and an opportunity to observe good practice in other countries. European Union funding (both structural funds and the Social Fund) is crucial to Wales and a more proactive approach is adopted by the Assembly and its ASPBs compared with Whitehall. Currently, the European Commission’s competency does not cover sport although funding is available for sports related activities. The Council has established a good working relationship with the Wales European Centre. However, formal UK views on sport are transmitted via the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.

22. The UK is represented on the Council of Europe’s Committee for the Development of Sport (CDDS) by UK Sport. The home country sports councils have little input or access to this forum.

23. The Council has no competency in these areas.

HGJ/as

20 June 2003