Treasury's five-a-side penny-pinching is hardly the way to tackle the nation's obesity problem The fact is five-a-side is Britain's grassroots sport success story, one of the few activities which have seen growth in participation over the last few years. We may be falling out of love with playing tennis, rugby and squash. Numbers may be dropping among those who take up cricket, golf and indeed 11-a-side football. But the game which so neatly fits in with our modern lifestyle - an hour of intense competition taking place at your convenience - just keeps getting bigger. It was only a matter of time before the Government noticed our growing addiction to its charms. Even they could not miss its grip on the national sporting psyche. Among the denizens of the House of Commons, statistics suggest there must be at least half a dozen members who regularly don their trainers and head off for some competitive five-a-side. But instead of encouraging those still agnostic to the game's lure to join in the fun, instead of building more places like the Trafford barn or suggesting to local councils that they convert existing fields and parks into state-of-the-art five-a-side facilities, what the Government wants is a slice of the financial action. Immediately. It is seeking to impose VAT on a pursuit that was hitherto not taxed. The Treasury argument is a simple one: these centres are commercial entities and as such are required to do their bit in the heavy lifting needed to reboot the economy. And make money they do. The rate in which it is building and opening new facilities across the country is evidence that Powerleague - and its competitors - is a nicely profitable organisation. Except by adding on average £1 per person per session to the cost of participation, what the Treasury may well be doing is suffocating the growth of the sport in its infancy. And thus reducing at a taxing stroke many a modern Briton's sole access to regular exercise; or at best turning it into a pursuit solely for those with the financial wherewithal not to notice the increase in price. Sure, Powerleague makes money out of the widespread delivery of fitness. But given, in these straightened times as local council leisure budgets are pared to the bone, that they are one of the few areas of provision that is actually expanding rather than contracting, they should, you might think, be encouraged rather than targeted. That is certainly the view of the sports minister Hugh Robertson. In an embarrassed missive to the Treasury he pointed out this week the ill-timed nature of this putative measure. Just as the Olympics are about to begin, this must be the most haplessly delivered piece of legislation ever cooked up by the money mandarins. The idea of the Games - and the reason for the billions of pounds of public support - is that they should inspire a generation to get active, with all the concomitant benefits to health, wealth and well-being that would bring. And yet here they are, two weeks away from the flame arriving in Stratford, doing their best to park us all back on the sofa. It is not even as if this is a big untapped well of cash that has been discovered. Government sources reckon £5 million a year might be raised from the new VAT move, or roughly enough to fund the pay-off of a departing executive of a bailed-out bank. That £5 million will not make much of a contribution to cutting the deficit, but it could do a lot in preventing a cut in the national waistline. In fact, since the Treasury likes to quantify everything, maybe it should look at more substantial figures. Such as the estimate that the cost to the NHS of the obesity epidemic will soon top £5 billion a year. Flab is about to overwhelm the health system, blubber to smother its very ability to function. The best way to counter the onrushing fat storm and its attendant fiscal drain is to encourage us to take responsibility for our own scale by seeking some form of exercise. Five-a-side is currently as good a delivery vehicle for personal fitness as there is. The more of us are playing, the fewer will be furring up the arteries of the NHS. It could be said encouraging further increase in participation is the most effective way of accruing a financial return from the five-a-side boom. Instead the Treasury seeks a short term minor cash injection. As Robertson, their own colleague in government has pointed out, this mooted scheme of theirs has to be among the finest examples of the very opposite of joined-up government.