David Moffett made his allegation in a newspaper article published in New Zealand.

 

The 61-year-old Yorkshireman, who now lives in the country, was the £140,000 per year chief executive of Sport England for 13 months between January 2002 and March 2003.

 

He was also the chief executive of the Welsh Rugby Union for three years before resigning in September 2005.

 

On both occasions he quit because of personal reasons.

 

Moffett was congratulating New Zealand's Olympic team on their performances in Beijing but warned that they would not be able to compete with the amount of money Britain is currently pumping into sport.

 

He wrote: "I can attest to the sheer weight of money poured into all levels of sport, from facilities and participation to elite athletes.

 

"We should applaud their [Britain's] efforts at these [Olympic] Games [in Beijing].

 

"They dominated sports like cycling, yachting and rowing and had unexpected gold medals in a range of sports including swimming.

 

"Whilst at Sport England, I cut millions of pounds out of the overheads and channelled increased funds to those governing bodies which were properly run and subscribed to the view their elite funding would only go to genuinely world class performers and not every athlete who showed limited potential.

 

"I did, however, ensure sufficient funding was made available to the grass roots of sport.

 

"As CEO I wanted to implement policies that could survive a change of Government, let alone Minister.

 

"How naive I was.

 

"At the first opportunity, the new Labour Sports Minister has downgraded Sport England's role to that of community sports funder with severely reduced funding and given the elite athlete programme to UK Sport, a sports body with a less than auspicious record.

 

"That all sounds very logical until you delve deeper into the whole question of devolution and the relative strengths of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales who remain largely autonomous.

 

"There is a real tension brewing as these countries rightly perceive an England focused UK Sport will mainly channel funds in one direction. In fact it is the partnership between the national governing bodies and national sports bodies that delivered the Beijing success.

 

"A word of warning though.

 

"As Britain focuses mostly on their elite athletes, other parts of the matrix are already suffering.

 

"Grass roots participation is struggling with many thousands of children and adults unable to participate because there are no facilities.

 

"Nearly 200 school playing fields have been sold by Labour to fund all manner of projects.

 

"This and the medals-for-all approach, as a result of non-competitive sport in schools, will have a detrimental effect in the future.

 

"You simply cannot have a summit without a broad base and the UK Government's willingness to put all of its eggs into the 2012 Olympic Games basket will eventually come back to haunt it."

 

The comments by Moffett, who is also a former chief exeuctive of the New South Wales and New Zealand rugby unions and the New Zealand National Rugby League, came a day after Culture Secretary Andy Burnham launched an impassioned defence of what had been achieved in school sport since Labour came to power in 1997.

 

It also coincided with with Sport England launching a new £36 million "Sport Unlimited" scheme designed to attract into sport those young people who currently do not take part in sport regularly.

 

The full article can be read at http://www.stuff.co.nz/4674106a2201.html.