Having put a shot across the bows of the Scottish Executive, with our warning about the risk of a potentially disastrous vacuum when they decide how to fulfil their manifesto pledge of axing sportscotland, it is now time to target Whitehall.

Presumptuous? We think not when we read the views promoted by some of those well-placed to influence Gordon Brown.

It is a poorly kept secret that the future Prime Minister is considering a radical Whitehall shake-up. The Departure of Culture, Media and Sport is steeling itself for surgery: the Department of Education may take over the arts; the Home Office gambling; and the Department of Health sport, while the cabinet takes specific responsibility for the Olympic Games.

Well let's get some debate out there. Linking sport to health is what its supporters have tried to do for years, and they have latterly enjoyed some success. But being subsumed into the DoH at UK level? Not without some prophylactic measures. Something for more than just the weekend sportsman.

And as this responsibility is devolved, just where would all this leave sport in Scotland?

We argued that sport in Scotland must not be given to a ministry run by bureaucrats with no sport back-ground. The same will apply if sport is taken over by the health ministry. With hospital managers long since outnumbering hospital beds, sport taken under health's wing could leave it as dysfunctional as the NHS.

Health has significant public focus, and a direct link would help move sport up the agenda, promoting the link with the capacity to increase quality of life for all. An active lifestyle would be even more obviously linked to reducing the NHS burden.

It has been suggested that 5% of the DoH budget be ringfenced for sport. This would represent an increase, though supporters argue it would far more significantly reduce the NHS bill. But if sport does not have a single-portfolio minister, as we have argued should be the case in Scotland, then it risks being sub-merged without trace in the DoH. And that will happen anyway without specialist sport expertise within the DoH, or UK Sport staff being rebranded within the DoH.

A major concern would be that if the 5% is not ringfenced, it will vanish into the all-consuming maw of the NHS, arguably Britain's single biggest employer. Sport would then be worse off than ever. We could forget any Olympic glory for Britain.

The source of information and opinion being breathed in the ear of the future PM is disturbing. The New Statesman recently published "50 Ideas for Brown's Britain". This may be worthy of greater consideration than any comparable list from, say, Hello! magazine, if for no better reason than that The New Statesman is owned by Geoffrey Robinson, the man whose controversial loan to Peter Mandelson led to the first of his cabinet resignations.

The millionaire businessman has Brown's ear. His magazine asked five left-wing think-tanks to submit their brightest ideas for Britain's future. Suffice to say there wasn't a one sport-related idea among them. Closest they got was under the heading: "Put children first".

It was so earth-shatteringly radical that it could have been compiled by a Standard Grade pupil on work experience. It suggested: "Extend the school day to provide at least an hour a week of extra-curricular activities." No mention of physical activity, or additional PE. They could have been advocating chess, stamp-collecting, or a computer games club.

That's the trouble with think-tanks. People who constitute them rarely seem to do anything active.

If Mr Brown takes anything from that list, sport will not be part of it.

So it was interesting yesterday to hear the views of Denis Vaughan, president of CAARE, the Council for the Advancement of Arts, Recreation and Education. He is an orchestral conductor who was a major force behind the introduction of the National Lottery. We spoke just after he had returned from the gym. Denis is 80. It's 14 years since he said lottery disbursement outside a charitable foundation would be a disaster. He has since been proved right. And he is still campaigning.

Recently Vaughan wrote to Chancellor Brown about potential benefits of a break-up of the DCMS. If gambling goes to the Home Office, it would be a chance to give the lottery independent charitable foundation status. "The lottery is not gambling, because no gambler would accept odds of 14 million to one.

"The trouble with think-tanks is that these people aren't in touch with the public, or daily living," he said. "What matters is what people feel: physically, mentally spiritually and emotionally. If you only deal with the mental, that's not living.

"Economic multipliers on art and sports activities are stronger than on any other lottery beneficiaries. So the Treasury would gain much more."

That one might appeal to an ex-chancellor. But is he listening?