With a lifetime in politics behind him, Charles Clarke, the former Labour cabinet minister, edited a book called The ‘Too Difficult’ Box about the problems politicians never get around to addressing because they are, well, just too difficult: drugs policy, welfare reform, sex work and so on. I wish to pitch a companion book called Policy Issues That Are Fantastically Obvious With Fantastically Obvious Solutions Which Everyone Appreciates But Still Somehow Never Get Fixed. The idea came to mind on Tuesday evening as I was giving a short speech at a House of Lords event.
This was the launch of the report by the Chiles Webster Batson commission on sport and low-income neighbourhoods. Webster is the broadcaster and campaigner Charlie Webster; Batson is Brendon Batson, pioneering footballer and, as it happens, one of my childhood heroes. Charlie and Brendon grew up in Sheffield and Walthamstow, east London, respectively, and have intense personal experience of the importance of sport in low-income communities.
The commission spent more than two years speaking to hundreds of academics, young people and countless workers and volunteers scraping together the meagre money they need to run all the little organisations and projects which, as our mantra on the commission has it, give young people somewhere to go, something to do and someone to trust.
You may ask what my name’s doing on the commission because, unlike Charlie and Brendon, I grew up in a relatively affluent area and had sporting and recreational opportunities aplenty. I was never short of places to go, things to do and people to trust. But this is exactly the point. As one of the report’s key findings puts it: “Lack of access to and lower levels of participation in sport are two inequalities experienced by children and young people living in low-income communities.” It also emphasises that physical and mental health issues are greater in these areas than for those in wealthier communities, which is why they are in particular need of the sport and recreational opportunities they lack.
Very early on, having heard in great depth about the work of these (to use the jargon) Locally Trusted Organisations, I must admit I became discouraged, bored almost. The story was always the same: everyone was obviously doing astounding work giving children and teenagers places to go and things to do. And the outcomes were measurably positive in every area. You name it: physical and mental health, discipline, crime, education and so on. And everyone in charge told the same story about what stood in their way: the worries about where the next pennies were coming from, and all the bloody time they had to spend filling in endless application forms for the paltry grants they survive on. Pitifully small sums which will save thousands and possibly millions in the long run.
I honestly think everyone from Jacob Rees-Mogg to Mick Lynch would nod along to this. And yet very little changes. Probably because everyone already knows the truth of all this: it’s incredibly difficult to get people engaged in the issue. Writing in the Guardian about it, I got the sense that it had all been heard before. And even with brilliant work having been done on the subject like this, I get the unpleasant sense of “’twas ever thus” shrugs lingering all around.
It was all so frustratingly obvious that I’m afraid I pretty much opted out. So when it came to the launch this week I felt a proper fraud. Jane Ashworth, one of the commission’s administrators, having seen hardly hide or hair of me for two years, was kind enough to let me off the hook. “Don’t worry,” she said. “You came along, got it straight away, realised it was all bloody obvious, and kind of lost the will to live. No problem. Just spare a thought for those of us who’ve been round the houses a dozen times with this.”
Point taken.
• Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist.
