Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:48 pm on 3 October 2017.
Okay, thank you very much for those questions. I was very pleased to be able to work with Plaid Cymru to include that amendment within the Public Health (Wales) Act 2017 in terms of introducing a national obesity strategy for Wales. I’m pleased to inform you as well that it’s one of the areas of the Bill that I do take as a priority. So, it will be one of the Parts of the Bill that I’m really keen to give a very early commencement order date for as well. So, I’m prioritising that particular part of the Bill.
With regard to women and girls, Sport Wales continues to target investment in opportunities for women and girls, particularly through their Calls for Action programme, and they’ve invested around £1.5 million specifically in projects to increase female participation. I was also really pleased to see in August that they launched Our Squad. That’s a campaign aimed at celebrating active women and girls from right across Wales, and signposting new participants to new opportunities as well. That campaign is also about challenging some of the stereotypes about women in sport, and about what kind of sport is a suitable sport for women and so on. It’s about giving women role models and a vision for themselves to see themselves in a different way in a sporting context as well.
One of the projects that tackles the issue of getting more women involved, but also women specifically in more disadvantaged communities, is the Us Girls Wales movement, and that was set up by StreetGames Wales and funded by Sport Wales. That continues to increase participation in sport by young women in those more deprived communities across Wales. Again, that’s a really positive programme as well.
As I said in the statement, it’s not all for Sport Wales. Actually, I think that the sport governing bodies and other sporting associations have a really strong and important role to play in this as well. I know that the Welsh Rugby Union, for example, are doing some good work to try and encourage more women to think about taking up rugby. Equally, in football as well, the Football Association of Wales has done great work encouraging girls to take up sport. Actually, the game is growing at a much faster rate for women and girls in Wales at the moment than it is for boys, so I think that’s really positive as well.
In terms of disabilities and the role of Sport Wales there, I’m really pleased to have announced recently that the new vice-chair of Sport Wales is Pippa Britton. Pippa Britton is also chair of Disability Sport Wales, so that gives those two organisations a really close link. Disability Sport Wales has supported over 1 million opportunities for disabled people to take part in sport and physical activity, and they have 17,500 members attending over 750 clubs and sessions across Wales. But, their real ethos is about inclusive sport, and that’s something that I thoroughly support, in terms of making all sporting opportunities open to people with disabilities as well. So, it’s not about having particular clubs and so on—actually, it’s about having a truly inclusive ethos as well. Disability Sport Wales also has around 5,000 coaches and volunteers supporting young people to undertake sport in the community, and I think that’s certainly to be commended as well.
In terms of facilities, the Welsh Government’s keen to give local authorities opportunities to develop their facilities. We do this knowing that people are operating in a very constrained financial time. So, our interest-free capital loans scheme has generated over £5 million of investment in sports and leisure facilities this year in Conwy, Wrexham and Cardiff, and that’s one of the examples of the innovative ways that we’re trying to maintain and enhance our facility infrastructure for sport and physical activity.
Equally, through our twenty-first century schools programme, we’re trying to ensure that our investment in schools is actually an investment in the wider community as well. So, we’re trying to ensure that that investment is there after school hours for after-school clubs and for the adults in the community to use as well. I’ve been really pleased to see the leadership that the Welsh football association, the Welsh Rugby Union, Hockey Wales and Sport Wales have shown, in terms of their third generation collaboration group. They’ve invested, between them, more than £2 million in school sports facilities. So, despite increasingly austere times, there is good investment going on in facilities.
You’ll be aware also that Ken Skates has asked for a facilities review—so, looking at the more elite-level facilities that we have in Wales—in order to try to attract further high-profile major events to Wales in future, because we’re certainly getting a reputation for being fantastic hosts for those kinds of events.