What steps his Department is taking to encourage participation in sport by girls of school age.

Through the joint Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Department for Children, Schools and Families physical exercise and sport strategy for young people, the Government are investing an additional £100 million to offer five hours of high quality PE and sport to all pupils aged five to 16 and three hours for those aged 16 to 19. That will bring our total investment to at least £755 million over the next three years and will enable the provision of further sporting opportunities that recognise and respond to girls' needs and abilities.

I welcome the investment in PE and sport during school hours, but does the Minister agree that we also need to provide resources for out of school hours activities? Port Sunlight rugby club in my constituency has used a £10,000 grant from Awards for All to develop a sport against crime initiative, which encourages young people off the streets and into sport, particularly into playing tag rugby, which being a non-contact sport can be played by both sexes. I commend that programme to the Minister and invite him to visit Wirral, South to see for himself the work that the Port Sunlight rugby club is doing.

I am always delighted to visit my hon. Friend's constituency and look forward to doing so, particularly to watch the tag rugby. It is important that rugby is played by girls, and I commend the Rugby Football Union's work on that. I was not being complacent earlier. We need to encourage more women and girls into sport. It is necessary to ensure that they can participate and that we end the appalling drop-out rates of girls and women in sport. I am minded to support the idea of Sue Tibballs, the chief executive of the Women's Sport and Fitness Foundation, to look at setting up a taskforce to see what we can do to widen the participation of women in sport.

Ben Chapman asked an excellent question. Is it not important that the Government and local government give every encouragement to private sporting clubs that encourage young girls to participate in physical sport, such as the Macclesfield rugby union football club, which encourages young girls to take part in touch rugby, which is ideal for young women? Is it not important, too, that we do not allow any school playing field to be sold, because even the playing fields of those schools that are closed could be merged with those of a school next door, so that sport both during school hours and after school hours can be encouraged for boys and girls?

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his involvement in trying to ensure that more people become involved in sports, and, in particular, I congratulate Macclesfield on its work. We will address the issue of playing fields shortly, but we have put many safeguards in place to protect them. However, the issue is not just about playing fields; it is about sports provision. Like me, he too may have, over the course of many years, spent cold days on playing fields when it might have been better to play indoors, because more people would have participated. Playing fields are important, but they are not the only issue.

One of the most popular sports with girls of school age is, of course, swimming. The Minister will be aware of the controversy over the closure of local authority baths, which are often being replaced by smaller private pools that are less accessible to the general public. The Sport England active places website claims that there are 171 such pools. Over the weekend it was alleged that 51 of them are in independent schools and six are on military bases, so they are hardly accessible to girls of school age. Why did that occur and has the Minister any evidence that it is happening in other sports, and therefore that the entire survey is flawed?

The hon. Gentleman has tabled a number of parliamentary questions that will be answered shortly, giving the detail of the figures that he requests on the breakdown of pools, both public and private. I am sure that if he wants to pursue the matter further, he will do so following that answer. In general terms, however, swimming is vital to us. It is one of the biggest participation sports in which girls and everybody else can get involved. We want to see investment in swimming. I am a bit put out by the campaign run by The Daily Telegraph, which I think is inaccurate, and I will be happy to meet The Daily Telegraph to talk about it.

Of course everybody wants to see more girls playing sport, but we have to ensure that they have the ability to go to sporting grounds. Can we also ensure that we encourage them to play more than just football—and besides rugby union, there is a thing called rugby league, which is the great sport of the north—so that more girls play cricket following the success of the England women's cricket team, unlike the men's team?

Again, I congratulate the England women's cricket team on its excellent work and on the agreement reached between it and the federation on being paid appropriately. Perhaps football could learn from that lesson. My hon. Friend is right. We need to widen the sports in which girls participate beyond traditional sports to dance and other activities, while ensuring that they have access to physical recreation.