Item 5 on the agenda this afternoon is a debate on the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee report, 'Physical Activity of Children and Young People', and I call on the Chair of the committee to move the motion—Dai Lloyd.

Motion NDM7061 Dai Lloyd

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales:

Notes the report of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee on the physical activity of children and young people, which was laid in the Table Office on 7 March 2019.

Motion moved.

Thank you, Dirprwy Lywydd. I am pleased to take part in this very important debate today on the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee’s report on physical activity of children and young people.

In Wales we are facing a national crisis in terms of our children and young people’s health. A higher proportion of children in Wales are overweight or obese, and report unhealthy lifestyle behaviours, compared to other UK nations. We know that active children are more likely to become active adults. Yet evidence from the University of Southampton notes that levels of physical activity and sedentariness among children in Wales are some of the poorest globally.

As part of this inquiry, we took a wide range of evidence. In addition to the usual formal evidence gathering carried out in committee meetings, we visited Bassaleg School to hear the views of pupils and teachers; held focus group discussions with stakeholders; and conducted a webchat with young people between the ages of 11 and 21 about their levels of activity and the barriers they face or have faced in becoming active. I would like to thank everyone who contributed to this work.

We have made 20 recommendations in this report, which, if implemented, would be a big step forward in driving the change and improvements that are needed to reverse this worrying trend. Our report covers a wide range of issues, across a number of ministerial portfolios, and I will try to cover as many of these as possible in the time available to me.

We heard compelling evidence that fundamental motor skills need to be taught at an early age. There is a misconception that all the skills will develop naturally in childhood, and that is just not the case. We heard evidence that, like many other academic skills, fundamental motor skills need developmentally appropriate instruction and opportunities to practice skills in enriched learning environments. Children who are delayed in fundamental motor skills are less likely to be physically active both now and in the future.

We heard about successful kinaesthetic instruction for pre-schoolers—SKIP—an evidence based programme of professional development that has been used to train teachers, teaching assistants and parents about the importance of early movement for child development. Dr Nalda Wainwright, director of the Welsh Institute for Physical Literacy, told us, and I quote, 

'we train the teachers to understand how children move through those stages. They do it in literacy and numeracy, but nobody's taught them that in a physical context. There's been such a misconception in the world of academia around motor development—suggesting children learn that by themselves through play. But that's like chucking a bag of letters in the room and saying, "Play with it enough and you'll learn to read"'.

We therefore recommended—recommendation 5—that the Welsh Government takes further action in the new curriculum to ensure that every child in Wales is enabled to develop the essential fundamental motor skills required at an early age in school, and ensure that current gaps in the foundation phase related to these skills are fully addressed. We would support investment for programmes such as SKIP Cymru to be rolled out across the country to ensure that every school in Wales is able to adequately support children to learn these skills. While the Welsh Government appears to accept this recommendation, this isn't really reflected in the response, which talks about the foundation phase and existing resources delivering the requirements and notes that they might develop a case study on the SKIP Cymru programme. In response to this statement, Dr Nalda Wainwright told us, and I quote,

'It is extremely disappointing that in Wales, where we have the highest childhood obesity in Europe and a third of children living in poverty, Welsh Government feels an appropriate response to the recommendations of the report is to quote the Foundation Phase curriculum, which published research shows does not develop the necessary motor skills. They also suggest that resources with no evidence base are a pedagogical model for physical education. By ignoring the evidence Welsh Government are in danger of failing the young children and families of Wales in particular in areas of deprivation where they are faced with a growing crisis of inactivity, poor motor development and rising obesity.'

It is clear to us that physical activity is not given enough priority in schools, and this must change. The new curriculum offers a great opportunity to redress the balance and give physical activity the attention and priority it deserves. We are very concerned to hear that the majority of schools are not meeting the recommended 120 minutes a week for physical education, and that reductions in the time allocated to physical education in both primary and secondary schools are commonplace due to curriculum pressures. We agree with stakeholders that the recommended 120 minutes a week should be a statutory requirement, making it clear that this is a minimum target, and more activity should be encouraged if possible. Therefore, we are hugely disappointed that the Welsh Government rejected this recommendation, given the evidence that it's not happening in the vast majority of schools in Wales.

We also agree that, to elevate the status and priority given to physical activity in schools, it must be inspected by Estyn, both to monitor compliance that the 120 minutes is being adhered to and also to assess the quality of physical education experience. Again, while on the face of it recommendation 9—that the Welsh Government gives physical education a greater priority in the new curriculum and makes this priority clear to Estyn—has been accepted, the accompanying narrative just sets out what Estyn currently does, whereas the recommendation calls for new action, for physical activity to be given greater priority in Estyn's inspection regime. Therefore it does not appear that the recommendation has actually been accepted. I would be grateful for the Minister’s comments on this.

We heard about the importance of providing an appropriate choice of activities and involving pupils in the development of the physical activity and sports on offer in their schools. This was supported in our discussions with pupils at Bassaleg School, who told us that the school had a well-rounded approach, and being given an option was important, particularly for those who did not want to take part in formal exercise. I therefore welcome the Welsh Government's acceptance of recommendation 7, to ensure that all secondary schools regularly consult pupils on the choice and range of physical activities available to them and ensure their views are taken into account.

We looked at the differences in boys and girls' attitudes to physical activity. The 2018 school sport survey shows that 50 per cent of boys are taking part in sport three or more times a week in comparison to 46 per cent of girls. In terms of attitudes towards sports, enjoyment of school-based PE in primary schools is similar between the sexes—75 per cent for boys versus 71 per cent for girls—but the picture changes at secondary level. Here, while 64 per cent of boys enjoy PE, only 45 per cent of girls report doing so.

The reasons put forward by witnesses for this difference include lack of female sporting role models, peer pressure and low self-esteem. Evidence from Women in Sport states that girls are much more likely to be self-conscious, and by the time they are 14 to 16 years old, around one in three girls, or 36 per cent, are unhappy with their body image.

Many witnesses highlighted the need to move away from defining sports as male or female. We heard that gender stereotypes start to form at a very early age, with girls being brought up to believe they are not as good at sport as boys. Laura Matthews from Women in Sport told us that this can be very subtle, with phrases like 'You throw like a girl' that very much make girls aware from an early age that they're not as good as boys. And having that kind of thought in your mind really will put girls off from wanting to get involved in sport.

We also heard about the lack of female sporting role models in the media and a lack of coverage of women's sport. According to research carried out by Women in Sport, women's sport makes up 7 per cent of all sports media coverage in the UK. While we acknowledge that there have been improvements, there is still some work to do in this area. We therefore welcome the Welsh Government’s commitment, in response to recommendation 14, that it will work with Sport Wales to support the further development of campaigns such as Our Squad and #WatchHerGo, to encourage wider participation in sports by girls. 

To conclude the opening comments, physical inactivity is a national problem that affects us all. We need effective public health interventions to help to address the issues. However, we can't just rely on public bodies and schools; parents also have an important role to play in influencing their children's physical activity. We welcome the Welsh Government's recognition in the 'Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales' consultation of the need to focus on family orientated approaches, and we urge them to take this forward in the final strategy, with ambitious targets and effective monitoring to ensure tangible outcomes. Because if we don't start taking urgent action now to change attitudes towards physical activity, we are storing up problems for generations to come. Thank you very much.

Of course, our Chair in his own inimitable style has breezed through the entire report, touched on every recommendation, but nonetheless, Minister, I do think that it is really important that I rehearse again some of the points that he's made because we do have the highest rates of obesity, and unhealthy children usually grow up to be pretty unhealthy adults. It's a deeply concerning statistic and it means that as adults more people will have difficulty in getting appropriate employment. It's very hard to do some of the jobs that we have to do if you've got bad backs, if you're way too heavy to do that job that you need to do. More of us, especially those from severely disadvantaged backgrounds, are more likely to die up to 10 years earlier; that's 10 years of a glorious life that you could have had that you haven't got because of things like diabetes, heart and stroke and some cancers, just to name a few. 

And, of course, this whole report wasn't just about being heavy. Our general levels of fitness are vital if we are to enjoy not only a physically long and happy life, but a mentally long and happy life. I would remind Members that we should not underestimate the benefits of physical activity for our mental health. We're all only too aware that today's children and young adolescents are putting up with societal pressures that we did not have to put up with. There are horrendous things going on via the internet, bullying in schools, there's just a whole raft of things, let alone the pressure of performing, of examinations and of trying to move forward as people. If you're fit and you have that release, and you have those serotonin levels flowing through your body, you are so much more able to deal with some of the vicissitudes that come towards your way.     

Being healthy and active is something we can aspire to, but like all aspirations it's grounded in habit, in knowledge, in confidence and experience. So, we should start at the beginning, and that's why I was so pleased to be part of the committee report into physical activity among children and young people, because I believe we must act now to ensure that future generations take being active, being normal—walking, cycling, dancing, playing sport—. My goodness me, it doesn't have to be doing whatever minutes it is of football and rugby, and I'm not going to say which because I'm going to get it wrong, I know I will. We must ensure also that these children know when they grow up that smoking and drugs and eating too much and drinking too much is not actually the way to have that fit and healthy lifestyle.

We need to start with education, and that's why I'm so pleased to see the Minister for Education present, because a lot of this does come back down into the people who can most influence our children at that young age, and that is parents and that is teachers, and they are the keys and we need to use those keys. And this is why we made such a clear recommendation about the hours of physical activity being mandatory in schools, and we came to the 120 minutes as a basic requirement, having listened to a lot of expert witnesses. The Ministers present will know that I have raised this issue of the fact that we are dropping our numbers and dropping our numbers and dropping our numbers, and I have real concern about it.

So, dear reader, if you read our report, it does look like great news that the Government's accepted recommendations 5 and 7, but I'm not convinced, because in 5 we want that further action. Dai's talked a lot about the development of fundamental skills, motor skills, in young children. Yes, you know, the Government does wax lyrical about the foundation phase, and I am a great supporter of the foundation phase, but the Wales Institute for Physical Literacy is very clear: they've gone back to the research, they've gone back to the evidence and it is not evidenced. Their research shows that pupils are not developing those skills, and we need them to because they are the vital building blocks for healthy people. And I think that this response is blasé and it is assumptive.

With regard to recommendation 7, I have met many schoolchildren who've never been asked what they would like to do for physical sports. It's just taken that if you're a boy, you do rugby or football, and if you're a girl, like my daughter was told, 'You can just run around the football pitch while the boys are having fun in the middle playing a game.' That's great; that really turned her on to sport for the rest of her life. So, if you're going to truly engage with girls and young women and kids who live very disadvantaged lives, with carers, with children in rural environments who cannot get back in to play sport at the end of the day, you've got to really ask them and really listen to them. And I think that there are some good schools, and we visited a few, who do it; most schools don't, and that has to change.

Finally, I want to address the wholesale rejection of recommendation 8. There is only one area of learning and experience in the new curriculum, and our entire education system is going through a huge shake. It's got to bed down over a new curriculum; there are significant changes to methodology and practice; and while the teachers are working flat out to absorb this, while the Government's monitoring and reviewing, our children are not becoming physically active enough to benefit their lives and to benefit our fiscal life going ahead, because we know about the pressure. Our obesity, our health and our mental well-being crises will not improve until we tackle this issue, and I think that this report was a good step forward.

I'd like to start by commending the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee for what I think is a really interesting piece of work. I followed this inquiry closely, and I want to focus on a couple of recommendations today. This is an issue that is really close to my heart. It's close to my heart as a parent, it's close to my heart as a former teacher and also as a former play scheme worker, and as someone who has campaigned around improving opportunities for children and young people's physical activity since I was elected.

Moreover, I'm keen to see a whole-Government approach to this issue, which I hope I can explore in my contribution today, starting with recommendations 3 and 4, which recommend a family orientated approach and which call for Sport Wales and Public Health Wales to develop an appropriate programme. I think this is really important, offering a means by which improving the health of children and young people could serve as a catalyst for well-being in the whole family. I know that, in the Welsh Government response, there's a reference to the Wales physical activity partnership, which could improve physical activity levels. I'd also like to see feed-in from initiatives such as the Valleys taskforce with regard to the Valleys regional park concept as well. In areas like mine, this could be a really low-cost accessible way of getting people out and about, enjoying the non-urban environments that are quite literally on people's doorsteps.

I've spoken before—I think it was in my very first short debate back in 2016—about what is called a 'nature deficit disorder'. This is based on research showing that just 13 per cent of Welsh children considered themselves to have a close connection to the natural world. I think that's staggering. It's a lower figure than Scotland, Northern Ireland or, indeed, even London. Similarly, as an industrial history devotee, I think there are opportunities here linked to our industrial heritage. I've mentioned in this Chamber before previously my passion for the Abernant tunnel, which links Cwmbach in my constituency with Merthyr Tydfil. If reopened, that could be a real draw as an active travel route, and I know that there are many other similar schemes that could have the same positive effects.

Recommendation 11 is another really useful tool. Allowing wider access to school facilities, especially newly renovated ones under twenty-first century schools, just makes common sense. I'm pleased that recently I was able to work with RCT council to meet requests from a local community for children to be able to play on a brand-new MUGA—that's a multi-use games area, for those who are not in the know—at a primary school in Cwmbach. It just makes sense that we should open up these areas outside of school hours for the community to benefit from.

I'd like to go beyond this and flag up also my previous proposal for an inclusive play Bill. This would have ensured play opportunities meet the needs of all children and young people in the community, and I think it's important that this remains a priority.

Disability Sport Wales, in their evidence, which is cited throughout the report, powerfully made the case for really digging down and integrating inclusivity into governmental responses. In a similar vein, I hope to be meeting with the Deputy Minister for health in the very near future to discuss inclusive play and I look forward to hearing how work on various responses is progressing.

Recommendation 16, on the pupil development grant, is also, I think, very important too. Based on Public Health Wales figures, one in four 11 to 16-year-olds in the Cwm Taf area are obese, as are nearly 15 per cent of four to five-year-olds. These are the highest figures in Wales, and they are simply not acceptable. When there are clear links between deprivation and obesity, it is so important that we use levers like the PDG to try and make amends to this issue.

I accept the Welsh Government response that there are already some good examples of this out there, but I'd like to see more work on this point. Similarly, I'd like to see progress on the possibility of bringing in a soft drinks levy—recommendation 20. We know, in Wales, sugar intake is three times higher than the recommended value for teenagers aged 11 to 16, and with this week being Diabetes Week, there could be clear benefits here.

To close, I’d just like to reflect on recommendation 19, which relates to section 106 and accessible recreational facilities with new housing developments. Persimmon recently built a shiny new estate in my constituency, and their glossy brochure showed a play area at the heart of the estate. Five years later, there is no play area, only a dumping ground for the developer, and each school holiday I get residents asking me about when that play area's going to be opened, only to be met with further obfuscation and delay. This is an issue that we touched on recently in the economy committee, in our investigation into local house builders. There's definitely a reluctance from local authorities to take on open spaces now as a consequence of austerity, and I think this is something that we need to look at in the future. 

I'd like to extend my thanks, as others have already said, to everybody who participated in this very important piece of work by our committee. I came, of course, to this work towards the end—I joined the committee towards the end of the process—and it has been quite a revelation to look back and read through some of the evidence in preparing for responding to the draft committee report. As others have said—and I won't detain the Chamber's time in repeating it—this is an incredibly serious issue. The long-term impact on children of being unfit and overweight when they're really small is lifelong, and I think we should have cognisance of the comments made by Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson today about how, if we don't deal with these issues now, we are building up problems for the future, both for those individual children, but also for all of us as a society.

Of course, as Dai Lloyd has said, it's very positive on one level that the Welsh Government has accepted so many of the committee's recommendations. But, however, as Dai has already said, too much of that acceptance seems to be, 'It's perfectly all right because we're already doing it.' Well, having looked back at the evidence that the committee received, this is simply not the case, and I would urge Welsh Ministers to give the committee the respect and understanding that we would not be recommending that you do things that you're already doing. We might congratulate you, we might say how grateful we are to you for that, but we wouldn't ask you to do things that you're already doing.

I want to say a few words quickly about three specific recommendations, Deputy Presiding Officer. Now, the Welsh Government's response to recommendation 5, which is about the skills of teachers in the early years and the importance of children developing those fundamental motion skills, the evidence is very clear: the Government response says that perhaps we can do some more case studies. Well, we've already done that work; you don't need to do it for us. There are established methods of improving practitioners' skills in this area, and the evidence, as Dai has already said, is clear that at the moment the skills are not there. I mean, I've trained as a teacher and people taught me a lot about child development when it came to literacy and a lot about child development when it came to numeracy, but the expectation was that child development in terms of their physical development would just come through play. We know that that isn't true.

So, we have an acceptance of a recommendation here, but it's an acceptance that just tells us it's all right, it's happening anyway. Well, it isn't all right and it isn't happening anyway. Now, the Welsh Government have rejected two of the committee's recommendations, and, in some ways, of course that's the Government's absolute right to do that. And I want to talk briefly about recommendation 6 and then recommendation 8.

So, recommendation 6 speaks about asking the Government to consider introducing a programme of investment to improve physical activity facilities in existing schools. Now, all of us will have visited schools in our own constituencies and regions where, for example, the space that is used for physical activity indoors is also the space that's used for meals, is also very often a space that's used for overspill classrooms—this is particularly true in primary schools. Now, the Welsh Government's response to that recommendation—and, of course, we know this as a committee— says this is a matter for local authorities. Well, of course it's a matter for local authorities, but the committee's evidence was clear that local authorities are not making that necessary investment in those schools outside the twenty-first century schools programme, and that's precisely why we've asked the Government to do something about it. Now, of course the Government's pot isn't full, of course we know that there's a lot of pressure, but surely this is absolutely crucial. And I would urge the Government to look again at their rejection of that recommendation. If local authorities could, or were willing, to put that right, they would've done it already, and they either can't or they haven't.

And to turn again, then, to recommendation 8 and the Government's refusal to accept the need to legislate for 120 minutes of physical activity as a minimum, now, I do understand what the Government has said in terms of the new curriculum, by its very nature, being less prescriptive, and, as a former teacher myself, I absolutely welcome that. But I've read the Government's response in great detail, and it really isn't clear to me how anything that they're proposing to do is going to make the difference that is needed. We know that physical activities get squeezed. In the early years, as I've said, there may not be the skills in the teaching and support workforce; there may not be the physical space. With older pupils, there will be that pressure of exams. Now, again, hopefully the new curriculum will lift some of that, but there's that pressure of exams and there's that pupil reluctance, particularly in the case of girls and young women.

I am just not convinced, and I don't think anybody else who's read the evidence would be convinced, that the Government's approach is going to prevent this. So, if the route is not to legislate for 120 minutes, we need to have another way of making sure that that activity time is somehow protected, and I'd be grateful to hear more from the Government today about how they propose to do that.

To close, Deputy Presiding Officer, there can be nothing more important than our children's physical health; the whole of their future depends on it, their ability to learn academically, their ability to grow into exactly the kind of citizens that the new curriculum describes us wanting to create. What we cannot have around this very important agenda is complacency and apathy.

Can I first of all thank the committee for bringing forward this really worthwhile report, with some worthwhile recommendations? But I'm only going to focus on one area—I say to the Chair of the committee—and that's the issue that is referred to in the report around active travel and what more can be done. And it's interesting that the report actually flags that if we were to genuinely, meaningfully, deliver active travel, not simply active travel infrastructure but the cultural change that would enable schools to make it absolutely normal to walk and to cycle to school, the impact would be substantial, but it would be particularly proportionately impactful on young girls, because the benefits that they would achieve through that would be more, according to studies that have been done, than with young boys, though both would do it.

So, I just want to say to Government Ministers who've seen this—and I welcome a few weeks ago, in fact, when the Minister for Education came along to a presentation by a Cardiff school here in the Senedd and watched what they did. It's difficult sometimes to say to schools in your own area, 'Imagine a school where the governing body said, "We are going to do this; we're going to actually make ourselves into an active travel school. We're going to do it genuinely, not just the infrastructure, not just the cycle racks, we're going to do it. And we're going to do it in a number of ways. We're going to have the commitment from the top leadership of the school, from the teachers, the headteachers, the chair of governors, the governing body, we're going to engage with the local authority on it to make sure that not only do we have the hard infrastructure in the school, but around the school and around that town and around that community as well". Imagine a school where they actually said to every individual parent, "We're going to deliver personal travel agreements with you. At the start of your school year, we're going to talk about how your child will get to school safely and securely and to do it not by car. So, you can walk, you can have crocodiles, you can scoot, you can cycle, you can do whatever, but we want that understanding and agreement", and working with the parents, despite scepticism, to get to the point where every parent agrees to it there, and then to engage with local residents to explain to them what will be happening, that they will have little troops of children going past them in the morning and not to worry about that—that will now be normal—and they will have children coming through past the backs of their houses on the cycle lanes on bikes in great numbers.'

Now, there is a way to do this and it does require support and guidance to parents, some of whom will be sceptical. It does require the school infrastructure for bikes and scooting, and parking for bikes and scooters rather than cars—

Would the Member take an intervention?

Indeed, I will.

Would you agree as well that 20 mph default speed limits in urban areas would be very helpful to achieving that sort of change?

Absolutely, I fully agree with you, John. And the work you did on putting in place the groundbreaking legislation to do this I think took us so far, but, actually, now delivering on the Welsh Government's aspirations to have 20 mph speed limits as the de facto speed limit within urban areas would be a huge help in this, and, in fact, he's prophesied what I was going to say next: imagine a school that actually worked with a local authority, regardless of that, to actually deliver that, and a school, then, that developed their walking buses with the parents involved, including some of those more sceptical parents.

Well, that happens. We have now, within Cardiff, within Ysgol Hamadryad, exactly that happening. And, okay, you can say that there were distinct advantages, but it wasn't easy to make it happen. It was a brand new school, they could start from a blank sheet on a relatively flat area, and so on, but they worked with the council, they worked with the police, they worked with the parents, they persuaded the doubters. And they even worked with the police to say and make it clear to parents and residents, 'We will actually be encouraging parking cautions, first of all, but then fines to be given to anybody who parks', and do you know, since last September, when they introduced this, they've only had three, and none of them, I understand, were for parents—they were actually for other people coming into the area and parking. This is quite remarkable, and the impact that has been flagged up in the committee's report about what this can do for young people's health, regardless of the other things that are in the report, is significant. We have that groundbreaking legislation. If we actually have the will, now, amongst Ministers—the Minister who's in charge of active travel, the Minister for Education, for local government and communities Ministers and others—to really make this work, we can make an enormous difference. There are 101 reasons why we can't do this; there are 101 much better reasons why we should. Ysgol Hamadryad proves it can be done. Let's see if we can do it throughout the whole of Wales.

I had the privilege of being a member of the committee whilst the inquiry into physical activity of children and young people was conducted. I would like to thank the Chair, fellow members of the committee, the clerks and all those who gave evidence over the course of the inquiry. As a former PE teacher myself, this subject and the importance of it is very close to my heart—totally understanding, after many years of study, how growth and development, both physical and emotional, is enhanced by physical activity, and its importance and relation to this growth.

As Dai quite rightly points out in the foreword of the report, obesity is one of the world's most serious global public health challenges for the twenty-first century, and Wales has one of the highest levels of obesity in western Europe. I welcome the committee’s 20 recommendations and am pleased that the Welsh Government have accepted most of them. It is really disappointing that the Welsh Government has rejected two of the more important ones, recommendations 6 and 8.

Children spend much of their waking week in school, and yet less than half of them participate in sport or physical activity three or more times per week. As a result, less than half of the children meet the recommended guidelines for physical activity. More worryingly, just one in six 11 to 16-year-olds engage in moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity for at least one hour per day. We cannot leave it to local education authorities to deliver improvement. The Welsh Government must show leadership.

Recently, I was dismayed to learn of the intention to shorten the school day at Nottage Primary School in my region. The proposed changes to the school day in order to align with the nearby comprehensive will eliminate a morning break and cut the pupils' lunchtime by 20 minutes, and this move will dramatically reduce the opportunities for physical activity for pupils at this school. Play is essential for the health and well-being of our young people, and we should be increasing opportunities, not reducing them, and I urge the Welsh Government to reconsider its position on recommendations 6 and 8.

Finally, while I welcome the committee’s nineteenth recommendation and the Welsh Government’s acceptance in principle, I would ask that the Welsh Government go further. New social housing developments must include green spaces as close to the dwelling as possible. Every home should have an individual garden for children to play in, and, where that is not possible, a shared garden.

We have to be bold if we are to ensure that our children and young people are as healthy as possible. Diolch yn fawr.

Getting to grips with the health issues of our nation has to be a priority. I barely need to say that. We know that obesity and physical inactivity, which helps to create that obesity, is something that we can't afford to ignore at any level. There is a Public Health (Wales) Act 2017 that we now have that demands that a strategy is in place to tackle obesity. I was pleased to play my part, as the health spokesperson for Plaid Cymru at the time, to ensure that that amendment was added to the original draft Bill.

But the challenge now is to ensure that a strategy is put in place that can genuinely change the culture, with new investment and introducing greater urgency in the Government's actions. Without a doubt, ensuring that steps are taken to encourage greater physical activity amongst children and young people has to be, I think, at the heart of that. Indeed, I was very pleased, as a member of the health committee at the time, that there was a consensus reached among the Members that this was an issue that deserved our attention, and this report that we're discussing today is the result of that, of course.

It's a national issue. I'm sorry to say that it is a particularly serious problem in my constituency, where recent research by Public Health Wales showed that 13.5 per cent of children who are four and five years old in Anglesey are obese, as compared to 12 per cent across Wales. Over a quarter of children in Wales are considered to be overweight.

And I was very pleased that the first witness who came before us as a committee as part of this inquiry was Ray Williams, a former physical trainer in the army, who won the Commonwealth Games gold for weightlifting, and who now, through his gym, which is a social enterprise in Holyhead, is trying to change attitudes towards health and fitness. I had a chat with Ray at the beginning of this week, and we both agreed that the report is very useful, but that the Government's response was very disappointing.

We both have no doubt that one of the main things that needs to be done is to use the fact that we have children in school for a large proportion of their lives to drive a change in fitness levels. Personally, I would like to move towards something like an hour of physical activity every day for everyone, through a combination of activities within school hours and outside school hours. The committee received international evidence. Slovenia came to the fore as a nation that realised the health crisis facing them and transformed their attitude towards introducing physical activity into the lives of children and young people, and to do that on a national level. I'll quote from the report:

'The Slovenian Parliament has adopted a National Programme of Sport for 2014-2023 which proposes the following actions: to provide at least 180 min of high quality PE per week to every child, to provide free swimming and cycling lessons as a means of enhancing social competencies, and to ensuring leisure time for sporting activities.'

It goes on to list some of the other steps. And yes, the time that is allocated for physical activity is important, and that's why I, like the Chair of the committee, am so disappointed to see the Government rejecting the committee's recommendation 8 to put that 120 minutes of physical activity, which is already recommended for schools, on a statutory footing. As I've already said, 120 minutes a week isn't ambitious enough in my view, and to reject even guaranteeing that is a major failure on the part of the Government to take this issue seriously enough.

What's happening far too often, I know from experience with my own children and what we heard as a committee, is that the time for physical activity is used for other purposes. The purpose of recommendation 9 is to prevent that from happening, by getting Estyn to give greater priority to physical activity, to monitor and evaluate the physical activity that is being provided. Yes, the Government agrees on that issue of making it a priority, but they note, then, in their response to the committee that they don't of course agree that giving greater priority to physical activity should mean ensuring 120 minutes of activity a week. That, again, is extremely disappointing.

To conclude, another issue I'm disappointed in is that the Government is rejecting recommendation 6 to introduce a programme of investment in schools that isn't part of the twenty-first century schools programme. They say in their response, as we heard from Helen Mary Jones, that it's an issue for local authorities. Of course, local authorities have seen their budgets being cut to the bone, but it's about investment in our children, in our future. The health of our nation won't come for free. Healthy body, healthy mind.

I very much liked the focus in your report on the fundamental motor skills that children need to develop at an early age, and the misconception that all the skills that they require will develop naturally in childhood just by running around, and this is absolutely incorrect. Just as one of your witnesses says, you wouldn't expect people to learn to read by chucking a bag of letters at them and assuming that literacy would emerge from the chaos. So, I appreciate the fact that your report has identified this gap in the foundation phase in terms of teaching these motor and co-ordination skills, which obviously—. It really affects children's confidence if they don't have those skills, because that's how they form friendships, and if they can't do things that their peers can do, it's going to be very disabling for them.

So, I absolutely agree that schools have a vital role to play in getting children and young people to be more physically active, but I think the problem needs to be addressed much earlier than that. I note, from the Government's response, that there's going to be increasing measurement of babies and toddlers' weight, and I would like to assume that we are using those contact opportunities to ask their carers about the physical activity that they're engaging in, as well as the diet the child is following. I appreciate the fact that the Government has accepted recommendation 3 about the importance of a whole-family approach to those children at risk of obesity, and I wondered if the Government is considering the success of HENRY in Leeds, which is a whole-system approach to early education and the parents of young children, which indicated that in Leeds the obesity rates of children starting in reception have actually gone down, which in the rest of the country is going the other way. 

So, there must be something right about what this HENRY intervention is doing, which of course relies on training up volunteers to work on a one-to-one support programme to enable families who are disadvantaged, who are less likely to engage with statutory service to access the healthy families programme. I think that the work that's been done by HENRY has—. There's lots of evidence that it is one of the most statistically significant in delivering sustained changes in parenting, diet, physical activity, emotional well-being and lifestyle habits. All of these things go together. If people are not physically active, as Angela Burns has already highlighted, they are unlikely to be emotionally and mentally very well either. I note that they are actually working around many regions of England, and some of the work that they are doing is training staff in English children's centres. So, my question to the Government is: have you considered using this programme in Wales, and do you think that Flying Start would benefit from the methodology? If not, can you provide evidence that Flying Start is achieving the improved outcomes that we have seen from the Leeds programme?

Moving to what's going on in our secondary schools, I agree that it is disappointing that the Government has rejected recommendation 8—for two hours of dedicated physical activity a week. It's not a huge amount, after all. I asked the secondary school where I'm a governor, and they are compliant in key stage 3, but by key stage 4 it's down to one hour because of the pressures of the curriculum. But, I think that is a really short-sighted decision, simply because, if they are not being active, their brains aren't going to be so active either. So, I think that a further hour of physical activity would actually improve their academic performance.

If we look at what happens after school, only 50 per cent of the year 7 pupils are doing any exercise outside school four times a week, and that falls to a third in year 11. So, I want to know what the Government is considering doing to open up all schools to be community-focused schools. I regard this as a public health emergency. Just as we have a climate change emergency, we also have a public health emergency. On that same note, how many schools have an active travel plan? Yet again today I saw pedestrians being pushed off the road by rat-runners delivering their children—their able-bodied child—to school by car. This is completely unacceptable, and also not in the best interests of the child, who is imbibing all the fumes that they get from the car.

There's a private school in my constituency that takes in pupils from three counties, and they have an active travel plan. Why can't all schools have an active travel plan? Where children have to be bussed into school because the school is 10 or 11 miles from where people live, stop the bus at least half a mile from the school and they can walk or run the last half mile. These are things that we need to do and we need to do them now because we have a major problem.

Can I now call on the Deputy Minister for Culture, Sport and Tourism to reply to the debate?

Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I will seek to focus on those sections that we have responded to a little negatively according to the views of some of those who’ve participated in this debate. But before doing so, I would like to refer to two specific points. First of all, that we are looking at the whole question of the fitness and health of pupils in a holistic and community-based manner. I am very grateful to Huw Irranca-Davies particularly for referring to the latest school to have been built here in Cardiff Bay that the Minister for Education will officially open very soon. That school is an example and an inspiration in terms of how we can operate on a community basis in a manner that safeguards pupils and visitors to the site, but also meets head on the challenge of not relying on cars to take children to school.

I'm pleased to say that I think there are many good examples around Wales of schools meeting this challenge, and I wonder if you would join me in recognising the progress of schools like Ringland Primary in my constituency, where they've increased walking, cycling and scooting to school by 20 per cent over the last year, so that now just under half of the pupils travel to school by those means.

Thank you very much for telling me about Ringland Primary, and I certainly congratulate them, because this, to me, is the way that we must move. We must move holistically and on the basis of community and the school community itself, and the wider community. 

Another thing that's important to note, I think, is that we have made progress in implementing in partnership with other bodies in order to focus on the issue of health, which is so centrally important to us as a nation, as has been stated in the debate. We have done that by bringing the organisations working on this together, namely the health promotion body, Sport Wales, as well as NRW, who emphasise the environmental side of things and the opportunities of making use of nature and our environment as an area where people can have experiences of being physically active.

But another thing that we have done with Sport Wales is to focus specifically on tackling the issue of the participation of women and girls in sport. The remit of Sport Wales now includes a particular focus on encouraging women and girls to participate in physical activity. There is a particular programme where prominent athletes visit schools in order to ensure that a positive image of successful women in athletics is made public in our schools. There is a particular programme, namely the Young Ambassadors programme, which has been developed, and this is a means of highlighting those successful examples that are role models for our young people.

Would you take an intervention?

Yes.

It's most kind of you to take an intervention. I think the point I just want to make is that we refer a lot to sport, and I'm aware of the Sport Wales programmes, but of course, for young women—12, 13, or 14 years old, hormones racing around their bodies, very body conscious, very aware of trying to figure out what they're all about and everything—actually, the notion of somebody coming in and doing the sport side of it is, and can be, a turn-off. And I would love to see some of these organisations be far more creative in how they get these young women to undertake physical activity. 

Well, this is the whole point about shifting away from the traditional notions of physical activity and physical education as taught. It's an attempt to make physical activity attractive through interaction with those who have been successful in that field. It's not a matter of saying that we expect everyone to pursue elite sport, but we do expect everyone to pursue physical activity to their level of satisfaction, which enables them to enjoy life to the full. And that's why these role models are so important.

If I could also mention the criticism made on the recommendations rejected, and to make it entirely clear that the reason that we have rejected these recommendations is because we believe that the way that we operate at the moment deals with what's covered within those recommendations?

For example, I believe that there is a misunderstanding here about the nature of the changes to the curriculum that the education Minister is leading on at the moment. We are not in the—and I'm old enough to have been involved with the national curriculum back in the 1980s, and I'm very pleased to see that concept disappearing from our public discourse. That is why we have rejected the recommendation on 120 minutes of physical education in schools. Because what we want to see happening is the kind of thing that I had the pleasure of seeing in Llansanffraid Glan Conwy in the county of Conwy, where I live, relatively recently, namely the way in which pupils take part in the daily mile on the school grounds, and that was done without any kind of enforcement, but it was just good practice that had developed within that school, and that happened on a daily basis. Estyn, as has been emphasised by us several times, continue to review their methods of inspection to support the new curriculum, and that will mean looking at the way in which the quality of teaching can be looked at in all areas of learning experience, including this area.

The Llywydd took the Chair.

Thank you very much. I, too, am a fan of the daily mile. The children at the school that my children attended, Ysgol Henblas in Llangristiolus, do that and it brought them a great deal of benefit. But in wanting to see 120 minutes being given to physical activity, I'm perfectly happy for that to include the daily mile. I don't mean formal physical education lessons necessarily. The important thing is to ensure that that time is allocated somehow, and to empower Estyn to demand that it happens by putting it on a statutory basis.

Well, what we've moved away from as Government now is the concept that a national curriculum should be imposed on schools, rather that the educational experience that is enjoyed within schools should develop within those schools, and we are seeking to place all of this in the context of the policies that have been developed across Government.

For example, the 'Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales' strategy that will be published by the health Minister in October will put in place a new framework to secure progress on the commitment to physical activity across Wales. There will be an opportunity for us soon, before the end of this year, to see the outcome of the collaboration between Sport Wales, Public Health Wales and NRW—that physical activity partnership for Wales that brings all of these issues together. The use that has been made of the healthy and active fund has already generated a response, and there will be an announcement tomorrow on many of the schemes to be supported within that fund.

Therefore, the shift that's important for us is that we respond to the challenges that we face through the new guidance from the chief medical officer, which I referred to, which will be published in the summer, but also through the activity that will increase at a community level, when schools look at the challenge that we pose for them. I accept—and this is the final point that I will make—that there is a grave challenge here, but I want to say that we're not going to resolve it through evangelising by individuals, but by working on a community level within our schools.

Dai Lloyd to reply to the debate.

Thank you very much, Llywydd, and I'm pleased to respond. Thank you to everyone for their contributions.

Obviously, we've heard, and I won't rehearse the arguments that I outlined in the original speech, pulling together all the evidence that we took, but it remains that obesity is a huge and rising agenda. The evidence we took that early fundamental motor skills, those co-ordination skills, taught at an early age—and taught, actually, at an early age—are vitally important. That's the evidence and it is not happening at the moment. That is also the evidence, and it needs to happen, and that is also the evidence.

I hear what the Minister was saying about the 120 minutes of physical activity as a statutory minimum and stuff, but the evidence we took—we try to base everything on evidence—is that that has to happen. It is not happening when the 120 minutes is not prescribed now in an awful lot of schools. They don't get anywhere near the 120 minutes, however much people would like it so to happen. It doesn't happen unless you put it on a statutory footing and that, again, is the evidence that we took.

Because physical fitness, as again evidence says, if you are physically fit, your blood pressure is 30 per cent less than if you're not physically fit. Your blood sugar is 30 per cent less than if you're not physically fit, and your blood cholesterol is 30 per cent less than if you're not physically fit, and your weight is normal compared to if you're not physically fit. But those instincts are ingrained at an early age, and that's where it is down to schools, it's early schools intervention, it's down to parents—we talk a lot about families and stuff—and that's the evidence.

And the other part of the evidence was that it requires a step change from Government. Business as usual just won't do it. We are facing an obesity epidemic, and we have to face up to that and step up to the plate, and that also is the evidence we took. People always go on that health costs are increasing. Yes, because health is left to pick up the pieces that we should be sorting now at an early age under education, physical activity, or whatever other portfolios that the Deputy Minister carries.

So, to avoid those increases in health costs, we need to be sorting out the problem at a far earlier stage, as Members have attested. I'm grateful for everybody's supportive comments. Angela, first of all, emphasising the obesity epidemic and not just the physical impairments, but the mental impairments as well. And I'm grateful to Vikki Howells as well, emphasising the sugar tax that we need to be in control of to make sure that the money from sugar tax is actually ploughed into the obesity agenda here in Wales. It is not at present because we're not in control of it. And, obviously, also using schools, our modern schools, for longer outside normal school hours.

I'm grateful to Helen Mary for emphasising these important points, that we do need a step change in behaviour, as we have said. What we're doing now is just not doing it, and we have to change. Huw Irranca followed a different—though linked, obviously—agenda as regards active travel and that culture change that needs to happen, and I'm grateful for his experience. And, obviously, John Griffiths about the 20 mph speed limit. There are so many aspects to all this coming together, as well as Caroline Jones invoking her experience as a PE teacher. Rhun, in terms of—

—that very powerful evidence that we received. That was one of the main focuses of our evidence, was to hear Ray Williams telling us what he thought should happen, from his gym in Holyhead. Yes, and also agree, as we as a committee agreed, that the committee drew up a wonderful report, but that the Government's response was so, so disappointing. And that is the response out there, because it is asking you to step up to the plate. We heard about Slovenia, a nation similar in size to Wales, 1 million fewer people in fact, independent of course, but clearly able to think creatively about these issues, and also coming to a decision that 180 minutes a week was required. And of course, they do prioritise physical activity. It is extremely important.  

I'm grateful for Jenny Rathbone's emphasis on those fundamental and co-ordination skills that you learn at a very early age when you can do things—kicking, catching, co-ordination skills at a very early age. You get confident in doing that from a very early age, certainly before seven. If you can't seem to manage it, you then think, 'Oh, this physical activity lark is not for me.' It is fundamentally important. The current foundation phase is not tackling that issue. 

The clock has turned red. So, just to conclude, thank you to everyone for their contributions to this report. Thank you to all the witnesses, the clerks, the researchers and so on, to the Members for your contributions today, but there is a significant challenge remaining for the Government to step up to the plate here—

—because business as usual just won't do. Diolch yn fawr. 

The proposal is to note the committee report. Does any Member object? The motion is therefore agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36. 

Motion agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.