Thank you, convener. As many of you know, although you would not be able to tell by looking at me, I am a child of the 1960s, without the hippy look or the long hair. During the 1960s, sectarianism was pretty rife in Glasgow. It was certainly rife where I stayed in the west of Scotland. There is no doubt that there have been huge steps towards making that disappear, with people in society working together much more.
However, in recent years there has been a perceived upsurge—perceived by me, anyway—in sectarianism; that is based mostly around football, but there have been incidences elsewhere in society that I think must be dealt with. The most obvious of those is the attack on the priest outside St Alphonsus church about the same time as an Orange walk was taking place. We have been told that the perpetrator of the attack was not a follower or a member of the walk but the attack happened about the same time and I think that there is clearly some kind of link there. For me, something has to be done about that.
Football in Glasgow and the west of Scotland is a great attractor to sectarianism and I was disappointed when the Offensive Behaviour at Football and Threatening Communications (Scotland) Act 2012 was repealed. We have to make sure that we send out a strong message that we still take sectarianism seriously and I hope to do that with the proposed cross-party group.
Although I have mentioned football, I have also said that sectarianism is not just an issue in football and that we will not be concentrating solely on that. However, we have to recognise that football has an almost unique place in Scottish society when it comes to sectarianism.