I am glad to see that the Minister agrees with me.

Hence we have the delay, revealed to me in answer to a written question 10 days ago, in the publication of the joint Department of the Environment and Department of Education and Science practical guidance booklet on the dual use of educational facilities, which should have been published early last year. Even worse is the Government's outright rejection of the recommendation of the Minister's predecessor's review group on inner-city sport that responses to the document from all local education authorities should be published, together with an implementation timetable for proposed new schemes.

I do not automatically blame the Minister for those failures, but he must pledge to the House that he will use his position in the Department of Education and Science to push for the earliest production of the booklet, together with the implementation of his review group's recommendations.

Let me give the House an example of the uphill task facing the Minister in his new Department. On the first day of his appointment, the Minister promised in The Times that he would involve himself in a development of physical education in schools at all levels. Since then, he must have found that his new Department lacks even the most basic facts, as I found to my cost when the Department could not answer some very basic parliamentary questions.

The Department could not provide me with information such as an estimate of the number and size of school playing fields; details of the number of schoolchildren and young persons participating in sporting activities; the average time devoted to sport and recreation in schools; or the provision for teacher training in physical education, although the Minister will have discovered that his Department has closed the last of our free-standing colleges of physical education.

The House is aware that I am a fair man and I want to put on the record one success story for the Minister. He has at least convinced his boss to set up a register of playing fields. We must congratulate him on that—[interruption]—although he does not seem to want to accept that accolade. The downside of that success story is that the Sports Council believes that the register will not be operable for another two or three years. That is clearly unacceptable and the Minister must speed up the timetable.

Given the Government's past indifference to school sport, it is no wonder that the Secondary Heads Association and the Central Council for Physical Recreation, which take their responsibilities to our children seriously and have investigated the state of sport in our schools, have found it seriously wanting. They have revealed that the number of pupils under 14 who have fewer than two hours of PE a week almost doubled over the past three years, from 38 per cent. to a staggering 71 per cent.

Over the same period, seven out of 10 state schools suffered decreases in weekend sporting activity, and 62 per cent. suffered decreases at lunchtime and after school hours. Should the Minister be tempted to shift the blame for that state of affairs from his Department, he should ponder the fact that an overwhelming 83 per cent. of schools gave the additional work load on teachers as a result of the Government's national curriculum and the GCSE as the No.1 reason for the parlous state of our schools.

How can the Minister's promise to develop PE in schools be taken seriously without additional resources? it cannot be taken seriously if the Secretary of State's response to the interim report of the national curriculum working group on PE is anything to go by. In a response of just 11 paragraphs, he has produced no fewer than 10 proposals for either the outright rejection or the watering down of the working group's positive and well-thought-out recommendations.

Time does not allow me to outline in full that regrettably cool response, but we demand an urgent explanation from the Minister about several areas. For example, the Government want convincing arguments against slashing one third from the working group's recommended programmes of study for pupils up to the age of 14. That could cause them to miss out on athletics, gymnastics or dance. That proposal should be put the other way round: what arguments can the Minister advance to justify such a cut?

The Government's refusal to guarantee children at least one outdoor residential experience during their time at school or particularly to back the recommendation that all children should be taught to swim 25 metres and possess basic water skills by the age of 11 is also disappointing to the extreme.

It is not good enough for the Government to cloak that in arguments about possible resource implications without coming up with a more positive response. The Minister's answers will be of great interest to the House and to every concerned parent. They will be particularly interesting because the Amateur Swimming Association states that the number of school-aged children who have died by drowning has tripled over the past three years. Two hundred or so childen under 15 have died by drowning over that period, and 80 per cent. of them could not swim. The Minister and the House must agree that that figure is scandalous. The Minister could also acknowledge the distinctive nature of swimming as an educational and not purely a recreational activity, given the safety aspect involved.

The Minister could give a commitment to ensure that, where the necessary resources are available, they are utilised to the full. He could also promise to conduct a survey to reveal precisely where resources are required and how much it would take to fill the gaps. He could also explain why the Government seem to have rejected the working group's recommendation that children should be taught to plan their sporting pursuits and to elevate their performances. Instead, he appears to want them to concentrate solely on activity. That is a recipe for producing headless chickens, not successful sportsmen and women.

I appreciate that the Secretary of State and the Minister have had their feet under the table for only half the time that the working group has been operating. Let us face it: with most of his time taken up in attempts to cobble something together, along with the Secretary of State for the Environment, that will sort out the mess surrounding education spending and the poll tax, and to deal with the shambles surrounding the opting out of schools, and with the headache of trying to find £4 billion to repair our dilapidated schools, he clearly has not had the time to consider the reasoned arguments that have resulted from the working group's five and a half months of careful study into this area. Nevertheless, he must reflect on his undoubtedly hasty response.

Let us hope that the Government will listen to the views of experts in this matter rather than ignoring them and thus threatening the physical education of our children. I do not wish to be churlish, because I have some sympathy with the Minister's plight. I know that he must be slavish to the whims of the Secretary of State who, again, has told the working group that it is hard to understand attainment targets such as "Planning and Composing", "Participating and Performing", or "Appreciating and Evaluating". I do not know what words the Secretary of State or the Minister understand—perhaps "thinking, doing, and thinking again" meet their criteria. However, what I do know is that the Secretary of State's attitude has infuriated all those with an interest in PE in this country.

Chris Laws, the chairman of the Standing Conference on PE in Teacher Education, a body that represents the higher education institutions in this country, has condemned the Secretary of State's attitude, saying that it only highlights his own lack of attempt to understand the language of teaching physical education … To suggest that the words used will not be readily understood by non-specialist teachers, parents and pupils is patronising and further illustrates his own inability to come to terms with the nature of physical education. What hope do our teachers and children have if the Secretary of State is so manifestly ignorant about their sporting and recreational needs? If he was a little less dogmatic about what he wants the working group to do and say and what he does not, it might help him to come clean and tell us the precise role that he sees for sport and PE for children once they reach the age of 14.

Having been forced to withdraw his threat to drop PE from the compulsory national curriculum for 14 to 16-year-olds, the Secretary of State could then only give a commitment to support a "particularly flexible definition" of PE. Yet only last week, when I asked the Minister of State to tell me what activities would make up that flexible definition, he was unable to do so. Now the Secretary of State has outlined in his response an equally vague commitment to sport or other activity of a sensible kind", again without explaining what that means.

The Minister has a duty tonight to tell us plainly and unequivocally what the Government mean by those woolly expressions. If he does not, the frustration and anger felt by many in the sporting world towards the Government over this issue will continue to mount.

I am aware that I have given the Minister a shopping list of answers that I require from him tonight, but it is not an exhaustive list, as he well knows. I hope that he will take this opportunity of showing his independence and will give the House a more positive response to the well-argued and considered recommendations of the curriculum working group than has his Secretary of State, together with firm proposals to tackle our schoolchildren's urgent sporting needs.

My party is determined to take its responsibilities seriously, as its record shows. My only hope is that the Minister will listen to our arguments carefully in the interests of everyone in the country who values and recognises the importance of sport in our schools.