Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Economy – in the Senedd at 1:41 pm on 16 November 2022.

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Photo of Dawn Bowden Dawn Bowden Labour 1:41, 16 November 2022

I wouldn't frame it in quite that way, Tom. What I would say is, certainly—if I deal with your first point first—going to New Zealand was a very valuable experience, and I've done quite a detailed report on the activities that I undertook while I was there. I think it was extremely important to support the women's team while they were out there, qualifying for the world cup, playing on a world stage, and it was important that we did that. We support the men's team when they play in the world cup, and it's quite right that we should support the women's team in a similar way.

But we didn't just go out there to watch the rugby. We went out there to have an engagement with a number of organisations around sporting participation, particularly amongst women, but wider participation as well. And when the culture committee did a recent inquiry on participation in sport—which you're a member of, and that report is going to be coming to the floor of the Senedd very shortly—one of the organisations or one of the schemes that was mentioned in that inquiry, was from New Zealand, and was called Active Me. And I actually took the opportunity to go and meet Active Me while I was there, because the work that they do is very much about participation and physical activity, and they have a scheme there that is funded on a kind of tripartite basis between health and education and Sport New Zealand and so on. And although that is a very successful scheme, and it has achieved the kind of statistics that you're talking about, it's not a million miles away from some of the work that we are already doing. But what I have done, and what I'm intending to do, is to have further conversations with Sport Wales to see what more we can learn from the Active Me project, and see how that can be developed, so that we can deliver much more cohesive participation and activity amongst children in particular.