5. Will the Minister provide an update on the reintroduction of outdoor sports for children and young people following Covid-19? OQ55366

Yes, I'm very happy to provide further information about outdoor sports and, indeed, the developments that we've seen over the last few weeks, where the opportunities for outdoor sports have been emphasised by the opening up of a number of sporting activities. And I have a list here, if I can locate it, of those: they include, increasingly, the sports for various courts, including tennis obviously, bowls and other external activities of that kind. And we are particularly interested in ensuring that young people are able to undertake physical activity because it is part of our responsibility as a Government to promote physical activity throughout the whole of Wales. 

I've been contacted by a resident who coaches under-eights football, which is a non-contact sport, but football more generally is deemed to be a contact sport, so their coach feels that being allowed to resume practice, with social distancing measures in place, would be a great benefit to the children who take part. So, can any allowance be made for the resumption of outdoor football when it involves children and is non-contact?

I'm willing to take another look at this and, of course, I will discuss it with Sport Wales, who are our main conduit for our relationship with the various governing bodies. And I can say that we already supported the reopening of—I mentioned tennis and bowling greens—basketball courts, golf driving ranges, cycling velodromes, athletics tracks and cricket nets. All these are now activities that have been reopened, but I will certainly ask the question whether it is possible to describe certain forms of other sports, such as football, as not being contact sports. I can see some difficulty there, knowing the way that my young grandson plays his football in the Vale, but I'm very happy to take a look at that. Thank you.

Thank you for your answer to Hefin David, Minister. I particularly want to make a plea actually for young female sports. I fear that there are going to be greater challenges for women's sports and female sports to come back after COVID-19. The Health and Social Care Committee did a very good report on physical sport and they identified very clearly the challenges, but particularly for girls and young women. Many of the sports that you've just mentioned—great that they've come back, they're outside sports—many of them do not appeal to young women, and I wonder if you would be prepared to bend your civil servants' minds toward what we could do to make fun, outdoor activity available to particularly the young teenagers who need to go out, they need to get fit, they need to actually just have social contact and a bit of fun after three or four very, very tough months for young people. I do worry that they will be left out of the equation going forward. 

Well, we have a priority for increasing the participation especially of young women in various sports. We have supported netball, we've supported women's rugby, we've supported women's football and I will certainly take that as a mission during this public health crisis. Thank you.