End the woes of Britain's children with boxing

Get The Kids Boxing! Gott hand it to those Brits! (WTF is "conkers"?)

This week, the Conservatives are getting to grips with the childhood problem. It is this: however you look at it, the statistics show that our children are becoming obese, depressed, and increasingly prone to anti-social behaviour and alcohol abuse.

Youth crime has rocketed by one-third since 2005. Learning difficulties such as ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and BESD (Behavioural, Emotional, Social Difficulties) are on the rise.

With an increase of about a third in NEETS (those not in education, employment or training) over the last 10 years, our young people are finding it harder and harder to get a job as they become adults.

And boys are hit particularly badly. They do worse than girls at GCSE and they make up about 80 per cent of all suspensions and expulsions. There has always been a greater proportion of boys who have special educational needs, but we have now reached a point where one-third aged between eight and 10 are considered to have that problem.

What is it that's rotten in the state of education? I blame the cotton-wool culture that is enveloping not only our schools, but our entire outlook on life. Children, particularly boys, need to explore, make mistakes, compete and let off steam.

But despite vague aspirational notions floating around the marketing of the 2012 Olympics, real competition is becoming a dirty word in school sport. Equally, the fear of injury and the threat of financial compensation mean that field trips and activities we would have found dangerously exciting as children are now out of bounds - and as we can see, the results of this are neither healthy nor safe.

So what can we do? There are seldom silver bullets in life, but on this issue, a big red glove works wonders: boxing. As a keen boxer, I want every child to have the chance to box. I know first-hand the extraordinary benefits.

Boxing as a child can have many different benefits

I used to train with a young man called Matt. He had been about to opt out of school. He was falling in with the wrong sort and teetering on drink and drug abuse: he used to spend his Saturday nights looking for fights. Then he started boxing.

Within two years he was holding down a good job, made better friends, stopped drinking and street fighting and started winning boxing competitions. He has never looked back.

I have come across countless stories like this, and if you understand what boxing is about, it is not surprising. First, boxing provides that element of risk that our children need but are being denied in the playground and classroom.

It teaches that actions have consequences, as they do in the world beyond school. It teaches that if you don't move quickly, you can get hit. And it hurts a bit. But it is measured risk in a supervised environment. Contrast that with the uncontrolled violence on many of our streets on a Saturday night.

Second, boxing communicates with young people on their own terms. It unashamedly recognises the aggression and frustration common in teenagers and gives it an authorised physical outlet. It reaches the places other sports don't reach - particularly the anarchical world that so often swallows up school drop-outs and which other well-meaning efforts at social engagement often find impenetrable.

Third, and perhaps most important, boxing gives young people who may never have been good at anything else a sense of worth and self-esteem. They stop defining themselves as drop-outs; the frantic quest to prove themselves ceases to be necessary. They no longer feel that they have to pick fights, but can walk away. Boxing endows them with the confidence to give school a go and to make job applications.

But people are still squeamish about the sport. Contrary to popular belief, boxing is not a violent free-for-all, and amateur boxing is very different from the professional game. Most training is non-contact, and the strict regime instils a profound sense of discipline, order and respect.

The Government has now said it supports it, but everything it has done reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of why boxing works. Its entire culture is risk-averse: it wants us to wear goggles while playing conkers, it frets about the perils of school football and it has cut lottery funding to amateur sports clubs.

Instead of really tackling the youth disengagement that its out-of-touch initiatives have created, the Government presents another bureaucratic scheme to criminalise the main casualties of its risk-free world by introducing compulsory education till 18.

The Conservatives are setting out their vision for solving what could become the big issue of the next decade - the childhood challenge.

David Cameron has endorsed boxing as one of the keys to eradicating the toxic risk-free world. As an ex-boxer and parliamentary candidate, I am working to make boxing available to every child in my parliamentary seat of Bristol North West.

And if you are still feeling squeamish about boxing, consider this: since 1980, four British boxers have died as a result of fights. By contrast, recent figures show that alcohol abuse caused nearly 9,000 deaths in 2006 and over 180,000 hospital admissions in England.

If we really are concerned about the health and safety of the next generation, we have got to get real. Giving every child the chance to box is a good place to start.

• Charlotte Leslie is the Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Bristol North West.