6. What action is the Welsh Government taking to promote ethical engagement in sports? OAQ52449

Thank you very much for that question. The Member will know that Sport Wales acts on our behalf as the Government-sponsored body in the whole field of sport. To that end, it hosted an ethics and integrity conference last year, highlighting the importance of recognising the values of fair play in sport and for all sports organisations and individuals to uphold the highest forms of integrity. 

I'm very pleased to hear that response, Minister, but I met with Sports Chaplaincy Wales just last week. They've got 50 volunteer chaplains working with sports clubs across the country, including some of our premier clubs—Cardiff, Swansea City football club, Ospreys, the Scarlets and the Cardiff Blues among them. They do a tremendous amount of work delivering around £0.5 million-worth of volunteer hours in terms of pastoral care, promoting ethical engagement in sports in the clubs in which they work, dealing with things like drug and alcohol misuse and, indeed, helping people through individual problems. I wonder if you could tell us what engagement the Welsh Government may have had with sports chaplaincy services and whether, if there hasn't been any engagement, you might be prepared to meet with them with me in order to discuss how they can support the Government's ambition to have ethical sportspeople in Wales in the future.

Yes, I would be delighted to co-operate with chaplains in this field. Some of these sports chaplains are indeed known to me and I admire their work very much. I'm thinking particularly of the chaplaincy work going on in Swansea. So, yes, I would be very happy to join in that meeting because it is important to encourage the voluntary activity of faith communities, and that includes all faith communities, clearly, and there may be room for more humanist chaplaincies as well in this area, but I won't go into that this afternoon.

One of the issues that I'm concerned about, which is a huge ethical issue, is the increasing conjoining of the gambling industry with sport. There's research done by Goldsmiths college in London that shows that gambling logos are on televised matches most of the time. This is deliberately trying to inject into the minds of children that gambling is a part of being a sports fan, and it seems to me that this is wholly reprehensible. Now, the Football Association in England has announced an end to all sponsorship deals with betting companies, but, unfortunately, rugby has yet to kick out gambling from the game. So, what do you think the Welsh Government can do to tackle betting sponsorship in sport, which is making it endemic in the way that big tobacco was in the past?

I accept, certainly, the points that you make, and you will remember that the First Minister did respond last week to a question from our mutual friend here, Mick Antoniw, about the cross-government group that's been established to develop a strategic approach to reducing gambling-related harm across Wales, and I think it is essential that we should look again at the recommendations from the chief medical officer's annual report, which called for co-ordinated action and identified new activity that might be required both at the Wales and the UK level. And, since I've been asked specifically about the relationship between both football and more particularly rugby with betting, I will certainly raise these issues with the governing bodies of sports where there appears to be a promotion of gambling activity alongside the sporting activity, because that is not the role of sport governing bodies. I understand that sport governing bodies benefit from income in different ways, and that is a commercial matter for them, but, where the health of the population is damaged by promoting activity related to sport, then we, the Government, should intervene.