Sports Politics: As Caborn celebrates, school sport laments

Minister lauded for his long run but a much-loved event faces doom

The marathon-running Sports Minister, Richard Caborn, is about to break a record. Next month will see him established as the longest-serving incumbent in a single spell since the inimitable Denis Howell carried his bat in two innings in the Sixties and Seventies. Since then sports ministers have come and gone almost as frequently and ineptly - with a couple of excep-tions - as England's batsmen in Australia. But the bluff, blokey Yorkshireman has dug himself in and done a decent job within the constraints of a sportfolio that some predecessors have considered a poisoned chalice.

The sports ministry is a corridor without power, but the 63-year-old Caborn, appointed in June 2001, when the football lobby pushed Tony Blair into ditching Kate Hoey, creditably has managed to lodge sport more firmly within the Government's consciousness. Particularly football.

Caborn is a football man, a former director of Sheffield United and a close buddy of the Premiership chairman, Sir Dave Richards. There is growing speculation that when he eventually leaves - almost certainly if and when Gordon Brown becomes prime minister - he will land a significant inter-national job within the sport.

Caborn's principal legacy will be the crucial part he played in the successful 2012 Olympic bid, when his talent for networking was invaluable. But things have gone less well lately, with a curious aberration over the use of recreational drugs in sport which astonished his friends on the World Anti-Doping Agency, and his support for the European Sports Review, which has put him at odds with some in football.

No previous sports minister has played the party political game as hard as Caborn, and consequently, despite being affable and approachable, this former steelworkers union official has not enjoyed the same rapport with the shop floor of sport as did Hoey, who had a firmer grasp of the grass roots.

While some enterprises have flourished under his stewardship, some have foundered. None more so than the Panath-lon Challenge, a much-lauded event for schools that is about to go to the wall after 11 years. Caborn promised publicly he would help try and save it, but some believe it has been sacrificed for political expediency with the advent of the UK School Games, supposedly Brown's brainchild. This has become something of a teacher's pet for the Government, with a £6 million Exchequer investment via the already liberally funded Youth Sports Trust.

The Panathlon, a unique multi-sports event aimed at inner-city schools in which around half a million youngsters have participated, gets nothing, though a fraction of that sum annually (say £150,000) would ensure its survival. "An absolute disgrace," according to one of the Panath-lon's patrons, the former Olympic gold medallist Jim Fox.

The magazine School Sport, in an open letter to Caborn last year, said the minister should be "ashamed", while Adrian Mullis, the deputy head of Hackney Free, former Panathlon champions, says: "It is terribly sad. Without the Panathlon, school sports will not be the same for tens of thousands of children who have experienced a creative challenge which embodies the spirit of Olympism, helps raise their self-esteem and reaches parts of school sport which other events cannot. The UK School Games, which are club-oriented, do not even come close to what it offers a school like ours, and I have spoken with teachers all over the country who feel the same way."

Last year, 30 schools sent letters to Caborn, the DCMS, UK Sport, and to 10 Downing Street - all to no avail. Similarly, a petition signed by 5,000 schoolchildren has been shrugged off.

John Hymers, who helped found the Panathlon with the original sponsors, Royal & SunAlliance, stayed on as chairman when they pulled the plug on grounds of economy. He and Ashley Iceton, its innovative young organiser, have fought its corner, but save for some work with youngsters in Paralympic events, its demise is nigh unless sponsorship is forthcoming.

Says Hymers: "We had a meeting with Richard Caborn at which he told us he is only inter-ested in initiatives which are sustainable. We too could be easily sustainable with only a fraction of the £1bn core funding which the Government are pushing out to other organisations.

"Mr Caborn may be the longest serving sports minister but he is the only one who has failed to show at one of our events. It is disappointing that the minister made a public promise nine months ago on Radio 4 to help us find a sponsor, yet this has amounted to discussions with only one potential sponsor and that was for school sport generally."

Caborn himself argues that he has looked into the Panathlon but that ultimately it is up to individual schools to support it out of their sports budget, using some of the "massive" investment the Government have made in school sport. So, short of throwing themselves on the mercy of Lord Archer, Simon Jordan and other celebrity benefactors on ITV's £1m giveaway show, there is not much more the Panathlon people can do.

On Monday week, to mark his record-breaking tenure, Caborn will reflect on his career "and future challenges" in a lecture at London's King's College. Will he give the Panathlon a second thought? Or, more importantly, a few quid? You can bet dear old Denis would have done.

The Caborn Casebook

The Positives...

1. Key player in London's successful Olympic Games bid.

2. Pushed sport higher up the Government agenda.

3. Urged football to implement the Burns Review and cut prices.

4. Modernised sport's governing bodies.

5. Greatly increased funding for elite sport.

... The negatives

1. No significant increase in mass participation in sport.

2. Lack of rapport with the grass roots of sport.

3. Playing fields continue to be sold off.

4. Political influence in decision-making, notably in schools sport.

5. Overall decrease of one third in sport's Lottery funding.

Alan Hubbard