In the past, the top clubs have often been reluctant to deal with the issue. Now, however, we have the Scottish FA’s review and its remit. We have experience of the person in charge of the review, who has a good knowledge of the issue. Clubs will have to be open and transparent in terms of the review to get to the bottom of the issue.
We have spoken a lot about the power imbalance, which I agree exists. Clubs need to address that, and it could perhaps be part of the review. A young lad signs a registration form at, say, age 11, which the club can unilaterally renew every year—and there are compensation payments around that. All that deals an imbalance.
11:15
As has been touched on by some of the members, we have to have a better and safer reporting system so that players are happier to come forward. I do not believe that, with 3,000 club academy Scotland players, there has not been one issue raised. The wellbeing panel has not heard any yet, but I am aware of a number of issues that have been raised.
There is an issue of compensation when someone is not happy about moving from one club to another and clubs have to address that. We also have to address the issue of intermediaries, where unregulated and unchecked people are able to sign representation contracts with minors aged 13 or 14. We have to look at something similar to the English system, in which people have to register and go through a check if they want to work with minors.
Given the huge focus on this now, the clubs have to be open and transparent. We have to get to the bottom of it as, if we do not get a proper report about what went on previously, who said what to whom, and why issues were raised with clubs, but not dealt with by the clubs—that has been raised with me personally—the review will fail and people who survived abuse will come forward to say that that is not good enough. There are a lot of issues with the professional game, which is my area of knowledge.
One point that I will make about the SYFA and the youth game is that it is absolutely reliant on volunteers, and the vast majority of people who volunteer in football and other sports do so out of good will. We have to support those people. There are issues—David Little might be able to clarify this—about people having to have certain levels of coaching qualification, they have to have first aid qualifications and they have to have a PVG check. All of those should be in place, but one of the first questions today was about barriers and we should not put barriers up.
Donna Martin told me this morning that volunteers can go through a PVG check that is free of charge. I did not know that; we must inform people. There is a financial commitment in terms of qualifications and there is also a time commitment. We must support the people who monitor that as well as the individuals who have to go through that process. We not want to discourage the people who put in so much time and effort to coach children—including mine—in various sports. If we do not have those people, our children do not have sports to play. An area that we really have to look at is support in terms of finance and time, because those people are vital to the wellbeing of our children.