Evan Harris wants the Government to use its head and give backing to mind sports

Woody Allen described the brain as his second favourite organ. The campaign to gain recognition for mind sports has recently succeeded in getting the Government to accept that the brain is part of the body and as such its performance and dexterity can be tested in competition like the rest of the body.

In a debate in the Commons on March 15 this year Tony Banks, the Sports Minister, was revealed to be a great supporter of chess and other sports of the mind. In that debate I made the case for the Government amending the 1937 Physical Training and Recreation Act to allow chess, and indeed duplicate bridge, to be recognised as coming within the definition of sport. When that Act is amended the Sports Council will be obliged to promulgate changes to its Royal Charter and so allow chess and bridge to benefit from the largesse they dispense.

The minister has also accepted that it is unfair that the development of chess and bridge for young people and the disabled should be held back by the fact that lottery sports funding cannot be accessed to benefit the thousands of people who play these games.

I have taken the British Chess Federation and the British Bridge Union to meetings with the minister in the past few months, and there is now widespread cross-party support for these changes. The BBC has been lobbied by the campaign to devote more time (or any time) to covering the top level competititions that mind sports hold in this country. It seems peculiar that with the competition that exists for televising sport, TV companies have not thought of providing wider coverage of these mass participation games that are relatively cheap to broadcast.

There is a real opportunity to get chess, bridge and other mind sports such as Go and Scrabble, played in the after-school clubs that the Government is promoting.

Britain does exceptionally well in mind sports in international competitions, especially in terms of youth development.

We have a number of world junior chess champions, both male and female, of many ages. My own constituent, Abbey Walker is - at 23 - one of the youngest ever European bridge champions. She and her colleagues returned from Malta last months having retained the European Women's Bridge Championship. The Government should be concerned about the exclusion of parts of our society from sporting activity. Older women in particular do not find current so-called "mainstream" sports to their taste yet, but when it comes to bridge, for example, they can more than hold their own with men.

Our mind sports champions and young players deserve recognition; the campaign to win this recognition is succeeding. Soon the brain might well be the British public's favourite sporting organ.

The author is MP for Oxford West and Abingdon