Our Parliamentary Liaison Officer, Simon Butler looks back at the conference season and how sport and recreation was represented at the conferences.
MPs returned to Westminster this week after another busy party conference season drew to a close. While most conference coverage inevitably focusses on the keynote speeches by party leaders and frontbenchers, the majority of attendees fill their time by at the wide variety of fringe events hosted by charities, businesses, think tanks and campaigners.
Although the events are many and varied in terms of topic and speakers, anyone inclined to pore through the many pages of fringe event listings this year would have been hard-pressed to find an event with a sport and recreation focus. Aside from the London 2012 events – which were all (unsurprisingly) very slick and well-attended – only one event, hosted by the Motor Sports Association, turned the spotlight on sport.
This isn’t to say that sport and recreation weren’t well-represented at each conference. Alongside Seb Coe and the 2012 team were the likes of the RFU, the FA, the British Canoe Union, the Royal Yachting Association and the BOA (to name a few) – and they were of course joined at all three conferences by the Sport and Recreation Alliance. The Alliance team was headed by our chair Andy Reed who, having been on the end of his fair share of lobbying as MP for Loughborough, had the chance to experience a party conference from the other side of the table.
So how do we explain the scarcity of fringe events focusing on sport and recreation? Cost is almost certainly the biggest factor. Any potential host faces a bill of a couple of hundred pounds just to have the event listed, let alone the cost of room hire, catering and staff passes. Hence many organisations – the Alliance included – decide that resources are best dedicated to holding shorter, more informal meetings with key decision makers, all for the cost of two cups of coffee at the conference hotel (that said, finding a seat in the hotel can be a challenge in itself; so much so that at one point we resorted to meeting a Conservative MP at a nearby bus shelter).
Pursuing personal meetings with key individuals instead of hosting large eye-catching events is a strategy that currently works well for the Alliance. This year we held over thirty one-to-one meetings with MPs, Peers, Councillors and officials; all of which provided valuable opportunities to discuss a range of key policy priorities including planning policy reform, the Community Amateur Sports Club scheme, changes to music licence fees and local authority funding cuts. It was also a great chance to highlight the findings of our 2011 sports club survey and give an update on our progress on tackling red tape in sport.
The Alliance is now focused on the work to be done during the new Parliamentary term, which will be largely uninterrupted until Christmas. But while the conference season is short (even shorter than the British summer, in fact) it presents a key opportunity to promote the policies which will benefit sport and recreation in the long term.
