Missing millions and the cultural divide

As someone who has trouble distinguishing between works of art as performed during a sporting contest and those to be found in museums, art galleries, theatres or concert halls, I am accustomed to the description of philistine.

This is not an accusation easy to defend, particularly as the imagery involved in my fancy can be coarse. For instance, whenever I see the statue of The Three Graces, currently displayed at the Victoria & Albert in London, I can't help interpreting the scene as the first-ever goal celebration in women's football.

One tends not to be taken seriously after such an observation. Thankfully, there are others who offer more comprehensive and profound support to the argument that sport's contribution to the life of our nation is insufficiently acknowledged and encouraged. Three of them were in full voice last week.

Trevor Brooking, the former England international footballer and now a television pundit and chairman of Sport England, has gone to town on the subject with which I began – the snobbery behind the British reluctance to recognise the cultural significance of sport.

Kate Hoey was brusquely, and many think unjustly, deposed as sports minister after the general election in June. Not a lady to hide her slight under a bushel, Hoey launched a fierce and deadly accurate attack last week on the Government's attitude to sport in a three-part series on BBC tele-vision's Breakfast programme.

Denis Vaughan, executive director of the Council for the Advancement of Arts, Recreation and Education and an unwearying crusader for a more creative distribution of National Lottery funds, mounted a challenge to the "dishonesty" and "sustained deception" in Whitehall's handling of the Lottery proceeds.

Brooking's views are contained in a new book published by the Independent Television Commission entitled Culture and Communications, with an eye on the Government's forthcoming Bill on the future regulation of broadcasting.

He maintains that while we readily accept the substantial economic benefits that sport brings, the part it plays in our mental and physical wellbeing and the positive influence it has on our children's social and educational skills, the country finds it difficult to regard it as of genuine cultural importance.

He sees a hint of snobbery in this and the lack of academic opportunities linked to sport. Hence, sport gets bracketed with areas like pop music and fashion, and even sport's voice at Cabinet level, the DCMS, appears to subscribe to the view that it falls outside proper culture. Brooking argues that sport is currently the most significant feature on our national cultural landscape and that the televising of sport is central to this. Yet the way we allow sport to be broadcast shows the low cultural value we attach to it. While we allow free admission to museums and art galleries we don't do enough to make sport available to the widest possible audience via television, and he probably has next year's World Cup particularly in mind, when he calls for this to be put right in the Bill.

Revealing her frustration at being minister for sport long enough to identify the problems but not long enough to do anything about them, Kate Hoey is in a unique position to criticise the Government's approach to sport.

For a start, she calls for a moratorium on the sale of all playing fields and for an independent examination of the exact position across the country. I agree, all New Labour's pledges in this direction have been unforgivably neglected.

She contends that no one runs sport in the UK and that there isn't a more bureaucratic and confusing system in the world. I don't agree with her call for more centralisation, but she is right to attack the Government for taking four times as much out of sport as they put in and for allowing the nation's youth to be sold short.

As Denis Vaughan has been saying for years, solidly supported by the media, including this little corner, the money that could make the difference already exists in the Treasury vaults, where they have been keeping Lottery funds to the tune of £3.5 billion under lock and key for several years.

Now he has called on the Committee on Standards in Public Life to expose this dishonesty in Whitehall, whose mandarins continually misrepresent the figures available to the arts and sport and slow the flow of funds to a trickle.

No one, not even successive ministers of sport, has been able to give a straight answer to these questions because the bureaucrats refuse to budge on the issue. Do they intend eventually to divert the money to other purposes? Our three campaigners have chosen a formidably thick brick wall to bang their heads against, but the neglect and the promises wilfully broken do amount to a national scandal, and we shall follow their crusades with close interest.