Health and Sport Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Official Report 627KB pdf

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Sport for Everyone

Agenda item 2 is a round-table evidence session on sport for everyone. We will go round the table and introduce ourselves. We have a number of guests today; we also have one of our colleagues, the spectacularly well-informed Brian Whittle, who is joining us for this evidence session.

I am Neil Findlay, the convener of the Health and Sport Committee.

I am the committee’s deputy convener and the MSP for Rutherglen.

I am the chief executive of High Life Highland.

I am the MSP for Renfrewshire South.

I am the chief executive of Scottish Athletics.

I am a Conservative MSP for Lothian.

I am Julie Clark of the University of the West of Scotland.

I am a Conservative MSP for the Highlands and Islands.

I am the Lib Dem MSP for Edinburgh Western.

I am an MSP for Lothian.

I am the SNP MSP for Uddingston and Bellshill.

I am a lecturer in sports management up the road at the University of Edinburgh’s institute of sport, physical education and health sciences.

I am a South Scotland MSP.

I am the chief executive of the Scottish Sports Association.

I am an MSP for the Highlands and Islands.

I am the director of sport at Glasgow Life.

I am an MSP for South Scotland.

I am the MSP for Glasgow Provan.

Thank you very much for that. Alison is going to start us off.

I am really pleased that we are having this session. I will kick off by looking at the survey results. It is probably fair to say that a lot of the information gathered on barriers does not come as a huge surprise to any of us. Three of the most common barriers are expense, lack of time—work-life balance—and lack of adequate facilities. We have known that for a very long time, but nothing much seems to change. I would be grateful if our guests could describe what they would do to take the agenda forward. Who would like to kick off?

10:15  

I am happy to start. For the past five years, my work has focused mostly on researching the impact of regeneration and the Commonwealth games on the east end of Glasgow. In our data gathering, we have disaggregated findings in terms of barriers and people who are more or less active. Our bar for being active is very low: we simply ask people whether they have done anything remotely sporty, which could just be walking quite quickly, in the past four weeks.

When we look at the split of those barriers, among the less active group—about half our sample—alongside the usual barriers of lack of time, lack of interest and concern about cost, there is concern about their health not being good enough to allow them to do anything. That is a massive feature, and it was the biggest factor in our 2012 survey. There is a lot of scope for outreach to help people to understand in a fun way what exercise, sport and engagement actually are. It is not about something separate, elite or athletic—people can do things within the community and with their friends. I am sure that Glasgow Life will have a lot to say on that. There is massive scope for doing things that can help that very important least active group.

Would anyone else like to comment on that?

An awful lot of research has been done over 20 to 25 years on the different barriers to participation among different population groups. The committee’s survey contributes to that work. To overcome and address those barriers, especially for the totally inactive, intense work and collaboration and partnership between key partners as well as a preventative health agenda are required.

I will highlight one area of work that is covered in my submission: the good move programme in Glasgow, which is a partnership between public health—including the NHS—the Wheatley Group housing organisation, Paths for All and Glasgow Life. That wide-ranging programme is aimed at targeting the inactive in all age groups. Part of the programme is about targeting old people and part is about targeting families and very young children. It now encompasses about 7,000 individuals whose levels of activity we are tracking. Over the years, we have witnessed an increase in activity among those who are involved in the programme.

This area of work is about collaboration, and the programme relies on funding from a range of partners. It is crucial to understand that this type of good work and good practice needs to be sustained in the future, and ideally needs to be expanded so that it can have a population-level impact. There is a whole range of programmes, from tea dances to programmes that focus on those who have particular conditions, but health walks have proven to be one of the most popular activities. We are running something like 60 to 70 health walks a week in our urban parks. They are mainly volunteer led and are focused on urban parks in deprived communities in Glasgow, and their popularity is really growing. There is a lot of research that shows that embedding walking in people’s daily lives is probably as good a strategy as any to get the inactive to be more active. Walking and cycling are two key areas for development.

I noticed on the committee’s website that it is looking at doing some visits. You would not have to walk too far to get to the Crags community sports centre, which is right next door to us—I do not know whether you have been there before. It is held up as an example of community empowerment. There has been an interesting, and quite slow, development in sport of the type of social business and social innovation for which Scotland is known.

The sports centre was run by the community, but that did not work out, so it was taken over by Edinburgh Leisure but that did not work out either. It has now been taken over by local volunteers from a basketball club, along with basketballscotland—basketball’s governing body—and a housing association. The sports centre is perhaps a bit alternative and different in having hip-hop, BMX and aerial yoga. We should be looking at radical, innovative delivery of sport, and that could be the way to do it, because it fits in with the youth counterculture.

An interesting issue is the extent to which we look upon community as a unified thing. In what ways do the different social classes mix in the Crags community sports centre? We talk a lot about mass engagement, but we do not talk much about class in sport. Spartans community football academy is another really interesting place to go—committee members have probably been there—because the academy understands the influence of class and it gets people there who are from the local community and who can build relationships. The academy is doing some really interesting things, particularly in terms of crime and education. The people there have business acumen and compassion for the community.

One issue is that the role of local government, which is the elephant in the room in all discussions about sport, can get missed out. Maybe we will come on to that. Spartans community football academy is doing some great work on education, but it does it for nothing. These are difficult times for local government, because of budget cuts and so on, so there are issues, but what is the role of local government in places such as Spartans and the Crags? If local government is transferring assets—maybe failed businesses—what support does it provide to help such places? Are we providing middle-class playgrounds in some cases? There is a lot of talk about responsibilisation; a lot of responsibility is being put on a few people. Where is local government’s role in community empowerment?

It is always interesting to look at barriers, as there are many different kinds. Walking and cycling have been mentioned, and we have among our members Ramblers Scotland and Scottish Cycling, both of which report increases in people being active. More than 700 circular walking routes are being used through the Medal Routes mobile app, which means that more people are getting out and being active, and Ramblers Scotland is increasing its membership. In addition, its membership retention is at 89 per cent, so a lot more people are getting active through walking, which is very accessible. More people are also actively participating in cycling and more clubs are being established, with an increase of more than 2,000 individual members and a 16 per cent increase in the number of cycling clubs. A lot is happening in those areas, which perhaps masks the innovation that Gavin Reid mentioned is happening in other sports.

One challenge to come out in the survey was people’s lack of time. An interesting question is how much of that lack of time is a reality and how much of it is a perception. I appreciate that, either way, if somebody thinks that they do not have enough time, that is the hard and fast reality. However, if people truly understand the benefits of taking part in sport and being active, does that change that reality? We know that only 4 per cent of Scotland’s population understand the chief medical officer’s guidelines on how active people need to be for their own health. If people understood the guidelines, would they prioritise things differently?

The barriers to people being active are one thing; the barriers that our members, as the governing bodies for different sports, face in how to help more people to get active are a different question. I hope that committee members have had a chance to look at our paper, which shows significant increases in participation across Commonwealth games sports and Olympic and Paralympic sports. Those are the enormous multisport events that we have seen in the UK over the past few years, but a huge number of sports are not involved in those events and some are not competitive in the same way. Orienteering is a particularly good example of such a sport, and it has seen a 20 per cent increase in individual membership.

Our members face barriers—which I am sure we will come to—around costs, access to facilities and a range of other enablers, including people. However, if we look at those barriers collectively, we can do things innovatively and differently, and our members across the board are looking at how to achieve that.

I will not speak for my colleagues, but I am one of those who does not know what the chief medical officer’s guidelines are—and we are supposed to be informed. There is the problem.

That is a fair point. The guidelines are to do 150 minutes of moderate activity each week along with two muscle development sessions. Every time people hear that, they only hear “150 minutes”. It is great that they are hearing that, but the muscle development sessions are critical in terms of support—particularly for older adults—and for balance and confidence. When you talk about these things, for me you are talking about sport, but physical activity and sport are equally important when we look to achieve those benefits for everybody.

I am not sure that that terminology would get through to the public. What does the guideline that people should have two muscle development sessions mean?

Indeed. A wide range of opportunities can help to meet that guideline. It does not have to mean pounding away in the gym twice a week.

In the sporting context, we should not undervalue the role of sports clubs in local communities in Scotland. There are thousands of sports clubs around the country, but the majority are probably at capacity, which is one of the barriers to participation in sport and physical activity. Athletics and a number of other sports have shown that, with the right investment in people and in clubs, we can increase capacity. The role of the clubs is key.

In the volunteering context, we undertook a survey of Scottish athletics last year and, based on the minimum wage, we had £7.19 million-worth of volunteer hours, which is staggering.

Whether it is participation or the role of volunteers in the community, we should not undervalue the role of clubs. With the right investment in clubs and in local communities, we can make a difference—there are some great examples of that around the country.

In terms of barriers to do with lack of time and locality of facilities, progress is being made across the country. There is better utilisation of the school estate and, when the school estate is being renewed, there is careful building to include more leisure facilities that are close to communities, rather than people having to travel. On price, we operate a low-cost access scheme, which has led to an 18 per cent increase in participation over the past few years. For young people, the active schools co-ordinators scheme in our area has produced a 7 per cent increase in individual participants taking part since the Commonwealth games. Those self-generated universal services need to be backed up with some of the targeted work that Ian Hooper described.

An issue that has not been mentioned so far is teenage girls’ activity levels taking a dive in the first two years at senior school. With a big focus on that in our area, we have almost closed the gender gap, and it has been dance and fun that has broken the back of that. It has not been about hard sport, but about getting girls into something that they are interested in from “Britain’s Got Talent” or whatever. It has brought them in and it has also led to a very significant jump in the number of older youngsters volunteering to lead younger people. It breaks down the serious nature of sport and allows them to have a feeling of responsibility. We now have 500 older youngsters volunteering out of the total of 1,500 people—including parents and others—who volunteer in the active schools programme. That leads them on to a leadership programme in which they can gain qualifications and it brings in girls who were previously not interested in any kind of physical activity. They end up being the coaches of tomorrow in sports clubs, having been brought in through the fun aspect, rather than the serious aspect.

Thank you all for your comments and I thank Dr Reid for reminding us about the fabulous work that goes on in the Crags, in the Spartans and in various clubs around the country. Regarding physical activity, we have heard that one size does not fit all and that what appeals to one person might not suit another.

The written evidence from Charlie Raeburn of the Observatory for Sport in Scotland emphasised—and I have heard it time and again, too—that there is a lack of evidence that could inform policy making and budget-making decisions. There is a lack of evidence about how good sport is for people. However, it should be crystal clear to everyone how good it is to be involved in sport. At a recent Scottish conference on sport, the message from the audience was that we do not have the evidence base in Scotland that is needed to encourage investment. I would be grateful to hear the views of Mark Munro and Dr Clark on that.

As a sport, athletics has had increases of more than 50 per cent in individual membership and increases of more than 70 per cent in club membership in the past five years. As Alison Johnstone touched on, our greatest concern is that that information is not being captured. What survey shows the growth in governing body sport, in clubs and in local communities? The evidence base is not strong enough. We need to look at how we monitor, assess and evaluate that information and at how we put that complicated jigsaw together. There must be better ways to do it; we need to sit down and determine the best way forward. Governing body growth is certainly not represented in any of the surveys that we have seen.

10:30  

But the information that Scottish Athletics provided says that jogscotland has had the biggest increase.

Yes.

But that has been chopped.

Absolutely. We have been receiving £100,000 per year, but from April that funding ceases.

Can you attempt to talk us through the logic of that?

Again, I would like to know the logic of that.

Can anybody provide that?

That is a good question. We are seeing 100 new participants a week coming into jogscotland and we are seeing new groups. The jogscotland programme is very much about the social element and physical and mental health. I think that 77 per cent of those involved are female and their average age is 40-plus. It is a great physical activity programme. Again, we need to look at what information about the programme the Government wants or requires and work together to achieve that. However, to say that we are in crisis mode at the moment about jogscotland is probably correct.

Alison, did you want to come back in on that?

No, but it would be helpful to have an expert view from Dr Clark and Dr Reid about the lack of an evidence base that would ensure that programmes such as jogscotland are not cut.

When I was on the phone to Charlie Raeburn a few weeks ago, he was talking about the same thing, which is that we lack an evidence base.

We play the numbers game in sport and have done so for years. It is always about numbers; for example, we have numbers for active school sessions and community sport hubs and we have a number for this and a number for that. However, when we bring people from sport into university, they give a different view of what is happening—I think that we have a gap in that sense.

Further, it is always a disappointment that our students tend to read academic work that is on English sports policy or sports policy from around the world. There is a lack of good-quality, rigorous academic work on what is happening in community sport hubs here. I, too, live not far from a community sport hub, but I have not been anywhere near it and I have not heard anything from it. It feels as if the community sport hubs wait for people to come to them. In some cases, the experience will be brilliant because of people such as Bengy Barsanti in East Lothian, who does fantastic work. I am sure that there are other places that do the same.

We are not great at getting academics and practitioners together to discuss how we can get a much more rigorous evidence base so that we do not feel uncomfortable about saying, “These are the numbers that we have and that equals success,” because I do not think that that is the reality. We need to try to get that evidence base in some way.

My response to the question is in two segments. I work with a disadvantaged demographic group. Quite often, the people with whom I work are among the 15 per cent most disadvantaged people in Scotland and some of them are among the 5 per cent most disadvantaged according to the Scottish index of multiple deprivation. One of the fascinating but depressing things about that work is people’s perception of the time that is available for activities and what is or is not for them, which is difficult for those who live in straitened circumstances. I would argue strongly for separate consideration for people who are financially stressed and who are often geographically clustered. One of the fascinating things that have happened in the east end of Glasgow is a large-scale investment in quite a small space, and we should have evidence coming through to see what that does for us.

The context for what we are saying about physical activity and sport is that those people are worrying about heating their homes or feeding their children before they go to school. Part of that economic difficulty wraps into what we are discussing about physical activity. Understanding that those areas move in parallel is part of understanding what works and what does not. If someone’s economic circumstances get better, they are in a position to be more active and think about what is good for them rather than just coping. One chunk of the problem with the evidence base is about disentangling complex phenomena around people who are economically disadvantaged.

To return to the point about the funding environment, we undertook surveys in schools for a couple of years involving two particularly advantaged schools—relatively normal but, by comparison, advantaged—two disadvantaged east-end schools and two other comparatively disadvantaged schools. We got a lot of interesting information from that work, but we did it with practically no money and were not able to follow it up. However, I want to highlight some of the things that we learned, because I think that they are incredibly important.

When we compared the advantaged and the less advantaged schools—in other words, the more normal schools in Glasgow—we found that the kids in the more affluent schools got access to a wider range of sports. That is a wonderful thing; after all, we have talked about the fact that one size does not fit all. If you are in an environment where you can try a lot of different things, you are more likely to find something that works for you.

When you speak to teaching staff and active schools co-ordinators, you learn how under pressure teachers feel and the difference between the advantaged and disadvantaged schools. In disadvantaged schools, just getting kids to come to a club is a problem, because they might have to go home and look after their baby brother, sort the dinner or do 20 million other things that children from more advantaged backgrounds do not have to deal with. When those from more advantaged backgrounds go to a club, their parents turn up with fruit, water and transport. The playing field is still very far from level with regard to support for kids in less advantaged schools, even though this is one of the most promising pathways to the population-level change that Ian Hooper talked about.

We have multiple problems, the first of which is logistics. If you are from a deprived background, all sorts of other things are very important in your life, and what you need is a clean, safe and well-lit area that you can walk around in and where you are not frightened to get on the bus to go to the lovely facilities that are available.

Another problem is pressure on the research environment. Very often we are trying to do things with little or no money, and the learning that you can get from this is quite valuable. For example, we learn about the sedentary time spent by young people. It is not just what you do physically but how you create an environment that gives people fun, desirable things to do and other ways of using their time. I have to echo the point—indeed, I cannot emphasise it more—that the activity has to be fun; it is not enough for it to be good for you.

I just have a general question about the difference between sport and activity. Both terms are extremely important, and we need to think about how we define “sport” and “activity” and then link the two ideas, because that is important in how we frame our questions.

I cannot agree more with what Dr Clark has said. However, do you agree that schools should be open after hours to ensure that kids do not have to go home before they go somewhere else? If we could keep them in that environment, would we not have more of a chance of holding on to them and ensuring that they took part in activity?

Very much so, and schools should also be used as spaces for everyone in the community. This is, to some extent, a personal credo, but I believe that schools should be for the community and the area.

Cross-generational activity and things that can be done by families are also incredibly important. Those sorts of things have been done quite a lot in health research in order to tackle obesity—for example, as a way of trying to change eating patterns—and I am sure that, if it is not being done already, we can do the same sort of thing with physical activity.

As someone who is interested in health and wellbeing, I have to say that I do not care how a person gets their exercise. I do not care whether they are scuba diving, walking to the shops faster than normal or whatever; it is all about hitting that 150-minute target and building up strength and ensuring that if you are a 60-year-old woman, you are not suffering from osteoporosis. It is incredibly valuable to have environments in the community where people can interact, because that is where you get the buy-in and the fun.

The club issue was mentioned. Our research shows that groups of people who are less active are more likely to do activity in a club environment. One possible avenue of exploration in that respect might be the issue of ethnicity; we have not had a chance to look at that, but there are some hints that those from minority backgrounds might do something if there is a club where they can do it with their friends.

I want to respond to a number of points that have been made. On the evidence base, there is an issue to do with understanding the evidence that we already have and using it to inform policy and action. I am not saying that we have a strong and co-ordinated evidence framework, but I think that we are not taking the time to understand and collate the evidence that has been put together over a number of years. Julie Clark has mentioned some pieces of research that have been undertaken in the east end, and I could quote a myriad of research projects that have been undertaken in different parts of Glasgow, Scotland and the UK. I am not sure that we are very good at learning from the evidence that has already been collated.

One of the key things we should learn is, as has been said, the need to target our efforts. That is part of the issue. The evidence says that we need bespoke solutions and targeted efforts between partners if we are ever to make an impact in areas such as the east end of Glasgow. I have mentioned programmes such as good move. There is a nationwide programme on community sports hubs. However, where the approach really has an impact is in areas such as Drumchapel, where it is targeted and is making a difference by bringing organisations together in an area that is very much like, and has the same challenges as, the east end.

Another question that was asked was what the role of local government is in the process. Local government and leisure trusts have a role in facilitating and bringing people together in such situations. At a recent policy conference in Drumchapel, there was good interaction between Terry McLernon, a local guy who organises and is the champion for the Drumchapel community sports hub, and our officer who supports that hub. That has brought together a range of initiatives and activities. There is a facilitating role for local government.

In targeting, we should not ignore the universal provision. Let us not forget that the active Scotland framework is not just about making the inactive active but about sustaining activity among those who are already engaged in it. In Glasgow over the past seven or eight years, we have seen significant increases in Glasgow club membership and attendances at facilities. We must not lose sight of that, and we need to hold on to it, because it is important. However, increasingly, our efforts need to be more targeted at those population groups and communities, using the good practice that I think we know but which we are just not taking the time to understand and roll out so that it has a wider impact on more of the population.

I do not think that there is anything in the framework that is not within our grasp. We just need a more co-ordinated approach between partners and a bit of time to understand the evidence that we already have.

I would like to take the discussion in a slightly different direction, which is to ask about capacity. It seems that capacity is about two things: having adequate and sufficient facilities, and having enough people to help with sport participation. In the Scottish Athletics submission, there is a hint that that might be becoming an issue. Does the issue exist more widely than just in athletics? I represent a very rural area, and I wonder whether it is a particular issue for such areas. Are there waiting lists in some sports?

I say all that because, if we succeed—as we all want to do—in getting more people to participate in sport, it would be a tragedy if we were not able to facilitate that because there was not the right facility or the right amount of people and we just could not achieve it. I am interested in hearing the panel’s views on capacity.

Kim Atkinson will probably be able to give you some better statistics than I can but, to answer your question, the majority of sports clubs in the country will face capacity challenges.

Our biggest success in the past five or six years has been investment in a programme called club together. Back in 2011, as a sport, we recognised that we needed to invest more in our clubs, our club people and our volunteers, and to recruit more volunteers to allow that capacity to grow. We also had one eye on the London Olympics and another on Glasgow 2014 as windows of opportunity and as an inspiration. Along with our local partners, and using national funding that we had at that point, we invested in two part-time roles to work alongside volunteers—who were crucial in the programme—to aid them with capacity building. Initially, they were called club together officers; now, they have various titles, depending on the club’s situation.

We have grown from 17 clubs working in that programme to 33 clubs. We have seen a number of the clubs in the programme more than double their membership in that period of time, which is a huge success factor. However, the programme is very much about investing in the right people in clubs and in valuing the roles of volunteers and of clubs in their local communities. We can make a difference, but volunteers need support and they need investment in that support.

Can I return to Alison Johnstone’s question for a second, and then come back to Donald Cameron’s?

With regard to statistics, I agree with everything that has been said, but I would also make a plea not to forget about the qualitative human stories that are associated with them. More and more research is now being balanced, with figures on one side and a few really good examples on the other.

10:45  

In recent conversations with colleagues in, for example, Perth and Falkirk, they have been very clear, as we are, that there are some wonderful stories about people who had been completely inactive, perhaps hit with type 2 diabetes and immobile. Something grabbed their attention and they became a little bit more active, then they went to a class and then they increased their social network. They have rediscovered their lives, and they have ended up doing marvellous things.

In a local community, particularly in small rural places, when those stories are publicised and the person is known around the place, it has a much stronger effect on their whole group of friends. For example, one of the centres that part of the committee is going to on Monday has a really good programme for older people. In fact, the manager’s proud boast is that they now have more people over 60 attending classes than they do people in any other age group. That is quite unusual, I think. It has happened because so-and-so has done well and has grabbed three of her friends—mostly ladies, it has to be said. On a Friday morning, the last time I was there, there were 95 people over 65, three quarters of them ladies; a few men were hiding in the gym because they had been grabbed by the wives and brought along. Inspirational stories have a very big effect.

I have a couple of points, convener. Going back to what Alison Johnstone said, I echo the point about what evidence it is that we think we are missing. We know that, in our nation, 2,500 people die every year because they are not active enough. For a developed nation, that is a staggering figure. What evidence do we not have about that?

We know the benefits of taking part in sport and being active. Everybody will tell you. The former chief medical officer called it the

“best buy in public health” .

What is it that we think we do not know, from that point of view?

We have a suite of evidence. Mark Munro has already given some of it, and we have given evidence to the committee about the benefits of the great work that our members, the governing bodies, are doing. We also know that, in terms of creating a difference in the Scottish household survey—the information that tells us whether participation is increasing or decreasing and how we measure it at a Government level—we had a 5 per cent increase across the population of people being active to change that figure.

Do we understand what is happening? I do not know. Do I know the great work that our members are doing and what that counts as? Yes. How does that impact on evidence-based policy and budget setting? I do not know. I can tell you that I have figures that our members are giving us about people who are benefiting.

We know that 900,000 people are members of sports clubs. Going back to the great point that Ian Murray just made, I think that there are so many sets of benefits that people receive. There are benefits across the governing bodies of the 13,000 sports clubs, where people can tell you about people’s lives being changed. Some of the stories, particularly from Scottish Disability Sport, would make you cry at the lives that have been saved—not just the lives that have been changed—by the power of that. We know the impact that clubs have. We know that they are the fabric of society. We know the benefits of volunteering, which Mark Munro talked about.

I think that there is a fundamental question about the culture. Going back to another point that was made, are we about investing in numbers or in values? If we are talking about people living longer, healthier and happier lives, we know that taking part in sport and physical activity, as Julie Clark so eloquently put it, will help people find that. However, do we know that we are talking about a set of benefits that are about values and not necessarily numbers?

To return to another of Dr Clark’s points, we know that evidence shows that people who participate in sport in clubs participate for longer and more often than people who participate in other environments. To return to Mark’s point, are clubs the fabric of society? Yes. If we get more people involved, they will get so many extra sets of benefits.

On Donald Cameron’s question about capacity—absolutely. Mark’s point would be echoed across a huge number of governing bodies. How are we failing the people who want to take part in sport, for whatever motivational reasons? They want to get involved, but we do not have enough facilities, we cannot afford the facilities that are available or we do not have enough people who are able to get involved in volunteering as coaches, even though they want to be, for whatever set of reasons. Facilities are a barrier from that point of view.

The school estate continues to be a challenge within that issue. The last report on it was done in 2013, I think, at which time only a fifth of the school estate was being used in holiday time and a third in term time. Schools are local facilities that are a known, safe environment for local people that they can access, yet we know that they are not being managed, programmed or used to the extent that they could. A huge number of opportunities are available to people in local communities, but they do not know about them. How do we connect the dots, so that people know where their local jogscotland group is—where all the different sets of activities are happening across 52 sports and 32 local authority areas? People do not know. If they knew how good it was for them, how many different kinds of opportunities there are and the diversity of opportunities available for the diversity of the population, maybe people would take part.

We need to challenge those sets of waiting lists, but we also need to consider how we increase capacity by addressing the challenges that many local authorities face. However, there are school estates and ways to use what we used to call a sleeping giant. There are many sets of opportunities; we need to try to stretch things a bit further. It comes down to whether we are investing in numbers or in values.

I thank the witnesses for coming. I declare an interest as a mental health nurse.

I will explore a little the mental health benefits of an active lifestyle. There is certainly good evidence that walking improves mild depression and is good for other forms of mental illness. I was particularly struck by some of the case studies in the report from the get active in Drumchapel project at the Drumchapel community sport hub, which told stories about how people’s lives had been improved by becoming involved in sports clubs and becoming physically active. The case studies showed the mental health, as opposed to physical health benefits to people.

I invite the witnesses—perhaps particularly Ian Hooper, as he is from Glasgow Life—to comment on that and on how we can extrapolate that benefit. We cannot consider activity as only a physical health issue; we need to look at it holistically.

There is without a doubt a physical and mental health benefit. Drumchapel community sport hub is an example of what I said earlier about there being evidence. There is a report on that and Spirit of 2012 has done some monitoring and tracking.

I am really pleased that the committee is going out to Drumchapel community sport hub to see what is happening there because a cocktail of things is going on in the area that could have wider lessons for the rest of Scotland. They relate to targeting, getting different agencies working together and people in the community taking ownership and working together. There are local champions and local volunteers are increasing. The school in Drumchapel, its headteacher and the active schools coordinators have also played a key role.

Drumchapel is an example of a community in which different agencies, people and clubs have got together. A number of clubs are also working together and they have gone beyond their normal remits, stretched their barriers completely and are getting involved and engaged in attracting people into their organisations that they would not normally go out of their way to target. The football club is targeting girls. There are programmes that relate to disability and mental health. There is no cycling club in Drumchapel but a bike station has been set up there to get people riding bikes through a bike loan scheme. It has come out of the community sport hub initiative and the involvement of different agencies.

There is growing evidence from that case study of the real benefits of activity for physical and mental health. People in that area have really challenging lives and there is a strong refugee and asylum seeker community there, too. Drumchapel community sport hub will not be the only one or the only example of good practice in Glasgow or elsewhere in Scotland. We just need to understand in detail what is going on in communities such as Drumchapel, where there is success and real progress is being made in the most challenging of circumstances. If you go out to Drumchapel you will hear that, and the report’s case study says that, too.

One of the most encouraging things that came out of the GoWell East schools research was a shift in the orientation of the schools and teachers with whom we spoke from viewing sport as an elite activity—sport as, “You are going to be successful. You are going to represent Scotland”—to viewing it as something with which everyone can engage at some level, even if that is walking.

When I went back to university as a mature student, one of the first things that I did was research on urban green space and health priorities, and improved mental health is a massive positive outcome from that. Anything that we can do that gets people out in the world and engaging with it builds their confidence. That can happen at the level of primary schools having more outdoor activities—more things outside for pupils to engage with physically instead of just parking the children outside.

Informal exercise is colossally important. I will argue again and again for a quality urban environment that people feel happy and safe to walk about in. Any exercise that people do in green space is important and that space does not have to be elaborate, such as the Cuningar loop; it just needs to be somewhere that is pleasant to be in. People are more likely to sustain exercise in a green space environment and, as well as improving their physical health—it may help them with their blood pressure—it is likely to be calming. Quite a cluster of research has been done on that in England in particular. Such things are very good.

If people start to get used to being outside and moving while they are at primary school—they just have to think that they might have a nice time, not that they have to be an elite athlete—that will be a good foundation for going into adult life. People should feel that they can go for a walk without having a dog with them or having some other alibi and that that is not an insane thing to do: they can just be out enjoying the world. The more good-quality urban environments that we give people and the more time that people are in things such as parks—the forest park in Glasgow, for example—the better.

I strongly endorse anything that involves outdoor engagement. That can be work on an allotment, going on an organised walk or going on a walk with friends on the back of an organised walk. There are all sorts of ways of engaging positively with the world to support our mental wellbeing.

I will throw out a brief point about indoor engagement. What counts as a facility? I go back to my point about the importance of local government. The Leith Waterworld leisure pool was closed a few years ago. I remember that at that time some talked about people merely splashing about in water there—actually, it was my favourite sporting leisure facility on earth. I hear all the talk about local authorities building resilience, and there are interesting debates about what counts as a subsidy and what is investment. Given the amount of money that is available in places, that might be worth thinking about. What is best, particularly in disadvantaged communities, might not be going up and down in rectangular pools, which can be pretty cold. We need to debate a bit more what counts as a proper sport and leisure portfolio in cities.

I thank Dr Clark for mentioning the elaborate Cuningar loop, which is in my constituency. I certainly recommend it as a destination.

We need to look at broadening what we see as sport, and at exercise and activity. As has been said, sometimes people see sport as being elite sport and think that, if they are not good enough to be top or first, sport is not for them. I am really encouraged that so many women are engaging in dance, yoga and such things. Perhaps those things are not competitive, so they are more inclusive.

I am particularly keen to hear a little more from Ian Hooper about how he is engaging with refugee and asylum-seeking communities. In my previous role, I worked extensively with those communities throughout Glasgow. That group is very marginalised, and it has particular needs. In particular, there are cultural challenges for women accessing community facilities. How are you engaging with those communities? Is there anything in the east end of Glasgow looking at that population?

Your first comment was about the issue being about more than just sport. The Toronto charter talks about seven key investments that will make a difference to physical and mental activity and health. Sport and the whole-school approach are only two of seven key areas of focus. Some of the others that go beyond what we might traditionally call sports are: health services taking a more integrated approach to advice and prescription relating to physical activity; urban design, particularly for cycling and walking; safe green spaces; and embedding activity into daily lives. We must be careful that we do not view sport as the panacea for the health issues that we face.

We work with different black and minority ethnic communities in Glasgow, and those communities are growing. One example of our work is the single-sex sessions that we are running in North Woodside pool in the north of the city that have grown in popularity among Muslim girls and women in particular. The approach tries to be sensitive to the cultural barriers that some of the BME communities and groups face.

11:00  

We are trying to work with the leaders in those communities. There is such a wide range of communities in Glasgow now. The African community is really growing, as well as the Asian and Eastern European communities. We are trying to understand, get to know and work with the representative leaders in those communities to develop programmes of sport and physical activity and support organisations with capacity building. Be it through supporting volunteering, training coaches or providing time in local facilities, we are trying to provide support where we can.

In some ways, we try to do that with clubs across the city. We see capacity building and supporting traditional clubs as an important role for our staff in Glasgow Life. A lot of the organisations in the refugee and asylum communities are not what we would see as traditional sports clubs, as they are new organisations that often have a broader role than just sport, but we are trying to work closely with them, as much as we can, and support their volunteers and their access to facilities.

I will return to the issue of access and participation for people from less affluent areas. Dr Clark mentioned research that has shown that people from deprived areas are less likely to participate, and Dr Reid asked whether we are creating “middle-class playgrounds”. I ask those on the panel whose role is to provide sporting activities whether they routinely measure the socioeconomic background of the people who participate in their activities.

I was struck by the recent BBC documentary “The Medal Myth”, which revealed that nine out of 10 participants in publicly funded elite athlete programmes went either to a state school in a wealthy area or a fee-paying school. However, the BBC had to calculate that figure itself, because that information was not held. Do you routinely record that information? If not, how do you measure growing participation rates for people from more deprived backgrounds without having to carry out university research?

As with all these things, there are a range of indicators. As I said, we operate a low-cost leisure access scheme, and recently we found a postcode analysis tool that allows us to check on its reach. Our aspiration was to attract medium to low-income families to the scheme. It is not that we are not worried about the rest of the folks, but they have more options. We conducted a survey recently and two thirds of our members come from medium to low-income families. We took that as a reasonable reaffirmation of the intent of the scheme.

I will give another example. Half of the committee is going to the Aviemore area next week on a fact-finding visit. We have found there that 65 per cent of youngsters who receive free school meals take part in active schools activities—again, about two thirds. That one statistic does not tell us everything, but it helps us to start to build a picture.

To be frank, we could probably be better at this, but we have some key measurements. We have a Glasgow club membership, which is a universal membership of our public facilities in Glasgow, and at present there are about 62,000 members of that. Some 47 per cent of the population of Glasgow live in Scottish index of multiple deprivation zone 1 areas, which are the most deprived. Nearly 42 per cent of our Glasgow club members come from zone 1 areas, so the membership is not quite representative, but it is approaching being representative. We feel that that is a reasonably good indicator.

In addition, we are tracking every schoolchild’s level of activity or inactivity both in and out of school through the good move programme and, from this year, through the active schools. That is something that we have initiated ourselves in Glasgow over the past 12 months. We routinely track everyone who joins the good move programme, in terms of their postcode—that is, area of deprivation—and their levels of activity or inactivity, as they progress through the scheme.

The work that Glasgow Life does is absolutely tremendous. We have given it some figures and have collaborated with it on research over the years—that collaboration has been extremely useful.

However, on the big picture, socially speaking, there is a bit of a blind spot with regard to the social grading of health. Where you get an awful lot of poor people, you will also get a disproportionate number of people with poor health in one way or another. I can illustrate that quite graphically by saying that, in 2012, which was the first year in which we conducted a survey in the east end, which is pretty representative, 45 per cent of people we surveyed had some kind of long-standing illness or disability. That is a massive percentage of the population. A third of the people we interviewed had, within the past year, consulted some kind of health professional, doctor or nurse about mental distress of one form or another. That is not a “normal” population—I put that word in quotation marks. In a deprived area, a disproportionate number of people have poor physical and mental health.

People who have longstanding illnesses are far less likely to engage in physical activity. They are far less likely to find facilities accessible or even think that they might use them. There is colossal scope for outreach in those areas and for helping people to understand what it means to be physically active and what it means to engage in sport. For people who are physically inactive, a very low level of physical activity can improve their life quite a lot and can set them off on the trajectory that Ian Murray was talking about. Although we have a good representation of people’s lives in Glasgow from postcode information, we have to remember that the people who are not represented might need a lot of help and support just to enable them to understand that it is possible for them to be more active than they are.

That is useful information. I think that the work that Glasgow Life does is perhaps the exception rather than the rule across Scotland. Do Kim Atkinson or Mark Munro want to add anything? For example, do local athletics clubs routinely measure the socioeconomic background of their members so that it is possible to tell what the participation rates are from certain communities?

As Ian Murray suggested, that is certainly an area that we could be more focused on, if I am absolutely honest. We retain information on our membership across clubs and across the organisation within jogscotland, so we are well aware of where our members come from.

It is only in the last few years that we have started to devote resources to investing in and developing clubs in their local communities. I put my hands up and say that we need to target these issues more.

On the issue of people in the most deprived communities, one of the partners in Glasgow is an organisation called A&M Scotland, which provides free sport for significant numbers—thousands—of young people every week. Recently, representatives of the organisation told me that it now provides food at its sporting sessions, because some of the children who turn up have not eaten. They also let them have trainers so they can participate, because some of the children do not have trainers. The approach is not, “Hey, wee Jimmy, here’s some trainers because you are poor”; it is, “You’ve been really good and you’ve performed well, and these trainers are to encourage you to take part.” I think that that sort of free provision at that very basic level is absolutely fantastic. We should probably be doing that across Scotland in order to target the people who are in the most deprived communities. However, I wonder what impact the 8 per cent cut in the sports budget and the rolling cuts that we have seen in local government will have on that type of initiative, which targets the type of people who we really need to get to.

I can say only that these are worrying times. Outside, I was talking with a colleague about the teaching work that I do, which is around the idea of the social determinants of health—all the things beyond your personal genetics that contribute to your health.

When I work with undergraduate students and masters students, we look at the outer rims of the social determinants of health, which is your context. It might be your school context, your work context, or your community context—the wider socio-economic context. In times like this, all the things that help to protect people who are in a more vulnerable position are the first things to get the chop. We have a little window of opportunity in secondary schools following the Commonwealth games. We have some evidence that the teachers are more enthused and the pupils are a bit more engaged—they are asking to do sports that they have seen in the games—so there is that lovely little window of opportunity. If we cannot follow through on that, the more affluent and the less affluent schools will go back to bifurcating in terms of the levels of health inequality. These are perilous times.

I am interested in the idea of a long-term strategy to tackle health inequality through activity by intervening early—at the pre-school stage, almost, especially in the most deprived areas—and recognising the importance of what is done at the nursery, primary and secondary school levels. Are we most likely to be able to tackle health inequality in that way?

You will find a long version of our report online. The report looked ahead at regeneration in the context of the games and at what might happen. It asked, “What do we know about the things that evidence base suggests might be useful?”, and then analysed it in terms of different pathways. We did not start out with the pathways; we found them through our research. The school pathway is one of the most promising. For more deprived people, another is the urban environment itself—it is about making sure that people feel that they can walk around and be active. For example, are the streets safe? Are the cycle ways kept clear? Does it become normal to cycle?

That approach can be taken in schools; you can get in very early. I think that it is incredibly promising and should be regarded as an investment. Ideally, if I was queen of the universe, I would cost it as an investment. People should start thinking, “We should get money from the budget, because if we do not, it will hit us further down the line, in the areas of health and employment.”

I have worked with the Spartans Community Football Academy over a number of years, and I think that austerity and the budget cuts can lead to a bit of an opportunity for it. A number of schools that took students who were excluded from mainstream schools are now closing. There is an opportunity for Spartans to develop as an alternative school. It does much more personalised, one-to-one mentoring and education, with about 12 or so pupils who cannot cope with mainstream education. There is a positive side to things in that respect.

If we look at sport in relation to development work, whether here or internationally, there is a sense that the state can get it on the cheap because it is not funding it. It goes back to the research point—you have to provide evidence about what is working and what some of the challenges are, which is what we are trying to do with Spartans. We need to look at the positive side to these things and to be aware that there are some advantages.

There are some disadvantages to what is happening, too. There is a lot of stress on innovative sport social businesses. You do not often hear about that—in some publications, you just see the good news. Someone might say that their organisation could be just like the Spartans, the Crags community sports centre or whatever, but we need to have a more honest debate about the downside. That is a hard thing to do, but we need to talk about the impact on people’s personal lives and their work-life balance. We all struggle with those things but it might be particularly difficult for people involved in those organisations to balance the business and the social sides.

One of the sad things about the year-on-year cuts is the return to many councils of the debate about which services are statutory and which are not. That debate misses the point about lost opportunities. Once services or a set of animateur-type posts have gone, they have gone, and once a building is shut, the community has lost that opportunity. In many respects, there is a disproportionate effect on that community. It is not just unfortunate that the swimming pool or whatever is shutting; there is a subsequent lack of opportunity to keep fit and to have fun—it is about enjoyment, mental health and so on.

Of course, it is not just about cuts to the leisure budget, because cuts to the education budget mean that schools that are not managed by the likes of Ian Hooper’s organisation or mine find it very difficult to keep the school lets going because of the janitorial costs.

There are also opportunities. More doors in the NHS are open because the NHS and councils are struggling themselves. For example, we have seen a lot more doors opening for joint working with the NHS because we are able to say that we can help it to achieve the aims that it is struggling with as a result of cutbacks. We can work as a partnership.

It is a whole mix of things, but I agree that an 8 per cent cut in the sport budget feels a lot bigger than that.

11:15  

These are worrying times for sport, and particularly for the governing bodies. The recent cut that sportscotland received in the sport budget, coupled with the significant reduction in lottery funding, will undoubtedly have an impact on governing bodies and our ability to deliver good work with volunteers, coaches and clubs in local communities.

We are also seeing massive reductions in sports development teams, whether in local authorities or in leisure trusts. Year on year, posts are disappearing or being merged. The impact of that will be felt in the immediate future and in the medium term. These are really worrying times for sport in relation to funding, and we are waiting to see what will happen in the next couple of months.

I want to pick up on a point made by Ian Murray and Kim Atkinson about access to the school estate. Since I was elected in May, I have found that trying to help organisations get into the school estate beyond the school bell has been a total nightmare.

I want to know what the barriers are. When we are drawing our conclusions together and trying to put together what we need to do to move forward, what can we do to make the school estate more open? Is it a problem with the headteachers? Is it a janitor issue, as we heard from Ian Murray? Is it that local authorities do not want buildings to be used in the evening because of the associated costs? We need to be clear about what those barriers are if we are to be able to break them down.

I will pick up on one point before I come back to that. On the budgets, the point that needs to be made is that we do not know what the scale of the impact will be. I share Mark Munro’s concerns and those that have been intimated by others.

As we have already said, one potential impact concerns local authority budgets, which are obviously under continuing pressure. A figure that we have not covered today is that 90 per cent of investment in sport in Scotland goes through local authorities. Whatever the cut at the national level, and whatever the significant challenges are, as Mark Munro outlined, local authorities make a material contribution on access, support and helping clubs to work through facilities or the sports development teams that Ian Murray has so eloquently talked about.

The vast majority of sport is run by volunteers and more people volunteer in sport than in any other area, but volunteering is not free. It takes people to support and help provide the networks and facilities that make volunteering happen. That happens through the governing bodies, local authorities and leisure trusts. The benefit that we get is enormous but we still have to invest to make volunteering happen.

Investment and the political will to make things happen go hand in hand. There are things that we can do that do not cost money if we prioritise, and Miles Briggs has made a particularly good point about the school estate.

There is more that we can do. The fundamental question is: who is the beneficiary? It is not sport. As Clare Haughey so rightly said, people will benefit from the budgets for physical and mental health, justice, education and so many other areas saving money if we genuinely do preventative spend. I would argue that the tiny sport budget from both national and local government touches more people than any other budget does. The £30-plus million that sportscotland gets that is invested in community sport touches almost a fifth of the population—pick another budget that does that—and does preventative spend at the same time.

That goes back to the point about investing in values and about legacy being for the longer term. Although I welcome the committee’s reminder that legacy is important, this is not about a legacy within three years of the Commonwealth games. There are aspects of legacy, but let us keep coming back to them in 10, 20, 30 and 40 years’ time when we can see the scale of the legacy.

Miles Briggs asked a great question, and it is one that we have talked about for a long time. We would still use the phrase “the sleeping giant” to describe the opportunity that the school estate brings, whether as a community hub or a community sports hub. A community hub seems a very fair idea. There might be an athletics club training outside, or a range of sports in the gym or in meeting rooms, but why can there not be a knitting group or a local heritage group, or a local cultural group there too? Why can we not talk about the school estate as a real community asset? Surely that is what it is.

It is a great question. We do not know the detail of what the barriers are. The most recent report to which we have access is the one that sportscotland produced in 2013. It contains a wealth of information, but we do not know where we are on moving forward on that collectively. We do not know what challenges remain as a result of the cost of private finance initiative and public-private partnership contracts. We do not know how many of the barriers are still down to janitors in schools, because so much of the information is local and anecdotal.

What we know is that the facilities are not being used to the extent that they could be, and that—as Mark Munro has outlined—there are barriers. We have clubs with waiting lists, and we know that we can make more use of schools as places where people can go. We need to know more about what the barriers are, because they should not be there. We can make things happen, and I imagine that we can do so in a very affordable way, but we need more information to make that a reality.

I think that we could go on for a couple of hours, but we are really tight for time. I will bring in Ivan McKee and Maree Todd, and then we will do a round-up.

Dr Clark, you mentioned earlier—and Kim Atkinson just touched on—the concept of preventative spend, in which the committee is very interested. You said something about what you would do if you had a magic wand or whatever. I want to throw out a question. Conceptually, we all get preventative spend, and we can talk anecdotally about specifics such as the impact on the mental health budget, but is there any data that nails that down? Can we show that, if we spend £1 million here, we will save £10 million down the road because we understand that increasing participation rates among the population leads to X, Y and Z, which delivers A, B and C five or 10 years down the road? Do we have that level of granularity and robustness around the data? If not, what do we need to do to get there? Given the amount of academic research that goes on in this area, I cannot believe that no one has done the number crunching. If that has not been done, that seems to be something that we should focus on.

I have a strong suspicion that there is a vast amount of information out there that, with time, money and staff, could be wrangled into something cogent. We could then decide what was needed to fill the gaps. There is the whole big data thing—everything that Glasgow Life and the councils collect as a matter of course—so there must be a lot of information out there. It is a research project.

I was hoping that you would say, “Here it is.” You do not have it, and we certainly do not have it. In our earlier session, we discussed the issue of big data. You probably have a lot of big data too. What do we need to do to get it?

Dr Clark is exactly right. The issue is not necessarily that new data needs to be collected; it is that some resource needs to be expended on collating the data that has already been collected. I am aware of various studies that have been undertaken that address that very issue. Some of them focus on particular local authority areas or regions of the UK. Work has been done in this field, but collating it into one cogent argument, as you describe, is probably what is required. That work needs to be done.

Miles Briggs mentioned the barriers to accessing the school estate. Work on that has been done, and the evidence is there. The study by sportscotland—which really was enormous—looked at those barriers; we just have to start understanding the work that we have already done and acting on it.

I can give you three headline figures in an attempt to answer the question. We know that, when people are active, there is a 30 per cent reduction in all causes of mortality, and—to go back to Clare Haughey’s point—a 30 per cent increase in wellbeing. The figure that we quote most frequently comes from “Let’s Make Scotland More Active: A strategy for physical activity”, which says that if we were all 1 per cent more active over a five-year period, 157 lives a year would be saved, and the economy would save £85 million. An economist worked that out—it was not us. That is the best-guess answer to your question: let’s make Scotland more active.

So a 1 per cent increase would save how much?

It would save 157 lives a year, and the economy would save £85 million.

How much money would it cost to generate that 1 per cent increase?

I do not think that there is a plan for how that money would be spent, but we are bringing together a lot of ideas. That goes back to Ian Hooper’s point about bringing the information together—as Dr Clark mentioned—around the plan. There are a lot of plans in place. Partnership opportunities and investment can bring those plans closer to reality.

That is interesting, but how much does it cost to generate that increase?

My thought process is that it would not cost £85 million.

Exactly.

I will bring in Maree Todd.

I want to look at issues in the Highlands and Islands, as I am an MSP for the region. When I read the submission from High Life Highland I thought that it told a really good-news story. We have a challenging geography, a scattered population and areas of deprivation and poverty, but you have shown that you have increased participation across the board, including participation by women and elderly people. You have also told us that you have some good data to show that people who are in poverty or who come from a challenging socioeconomic background are using the High Life Highland scheme. How have you done that? How can everyone else do it, too?

That has put you on the spot.

Absolutely.

A range of things are involved, one of which is having the universal stuff in place through our low-cost access scheme. As Ian Hooper said, it is also necessary to have targeted stuff in place. For example, it is necessary to have clear plans for working with teenage girls, for volunteering and for working with older people. Ian Hooper has wrapped all of that up in the scheme that is described in his submission. We have not wrapped it all up in that way, but we have definite targeted areas. If we amalgamate all of that back into one, we can see some really encouraging trends.

Your submission mentions a particular issue that I want to ask about. I talk all the time about how difficult it is for kids who grow up in the Highlands to access facilities. A few weeks ago, I mentioned the fact that lads from my village have to come down to Glasgow to use the velodrome. The situation is quite challenging at every level in sport. Your submission includes some great stuff about the use of non-sporting facilities. Will you tell us a bit about that?

It is partly a case of taking the scariness out of sport. Older people and younger people find big public facilities quite scary. We have been experimenting with a range of day-care settings. That involves our folk going out to do activities in old folks’ homes or day-care settings, or in libraries, which, nowadays, are about so much more than just books. We also hold community activities in village halls. Rather than expecting people to come to the big public sector buildings, we are trying to reconnect with communities.

I loved the idea of videoconference dance on the islands. Lead the way!

Thanks very much for the prompt. We have been experimenting with the older girls leading dance sessions. On tiny islands such as Canna, Muck and Rum, the school might have four or five youngsters, who would never get the chance to take part in such activity. We have been experimenting with video links, whereby a sixth former or a fifth year student in Mallaig, for example, leads sessions with the three or four youngsters in their little classroom. It is heartwarming to see, and it is beginning to work.

The Scottish Sports Association gave us details on increasing participation. It might be helpful if we could see the other side of that—sports in which participation is declining. If you are aware of such information—if you have statistics on that—perhaps you could send it to the committee.

We do not have that information at this stage—it was a big ask to get our members to pull all the data together in a week—but we will aim to get a wider picture in due course.

Do you accumulate figures only from sports that are going in a positive direction?

No. To allow us to get the submission in on time, we had only a week to get our members to give us their data. There was a combination of factors. As far as the information that we provided is concerned, it was simply a case of what had come in as opposed to where we are on participation. We will try to provide a broader picture; the issue was timing with regard to our members.

Okay. Thank you.

Over the next couple of weeks, the committee will be out and about. Some of us will head to the Phoenix community centre in Easterhouse and the Drumchapel community sports hub, while others will head to Aviemore, to see Aviemore primary school, and to Kingussie, to see the Badenoch centre and Kingussie high school in action. Following that, we will go to Spartans Community Football Academy in Edinburgh, and some of us will also visit Muirhouse, to see what is going on in that community.

We usually finish by doing a quick whizz round the table. There are a couple of issues that we have not covered and it might be worth asking people to comment on them. The committee is focusing on a number of things, one of which is the active legacy from the Commonwealth games, so perhaps each of you could say briefly whether you think that there has been such a legacy and how successful it has been.

We are also wondering whether people have been engaging with the new integration joint boards as partners. Are you involved at all in discussions and debates about that?

Finally, health inequalities is a key consideration for the committee. Are we making progress?

The witnesses can give a sentence on each of those three quick questions. Do not blabber on for ages because we have not got time. We will go around the room.

11:30  

You will have to remind me what the third one was.

It was about health inequalities.

I would say yes to the question about legacy. The games brought an enthusiasm for volunteering that has contributed to some of what we have been doing.

I also say yes to the question about joint boards.

Through some of the targeted work that we are doing, we are beginning to address health inequalities.

Legacy does not just happen; it has to be planned, resourced and delivered. I can talk only about athletics, but there has been huge growth in the sport across all levels, from general participation and club activity to event entries and participation in the events programme. There have been significant increases across the board. Our elite athletes have improved dramatically during the past two years and we now have five world-class athletes breaking records week in and week out. There is therefore evidence of a legacy in athletics and it has been exceptional.

My focus is the host communities that live around the games areas, so my answer would be, “Up to a point.”

Is that a high point or a low point?

It is better than it was, and that is always good, is it not? What has been gained for schools locally is a good thing. It needs to be sustained and continued.

I would be surprised if there was any population change in activity among local people. However, if we are providing a better environment, we are one step on the way, and I would like to make sure that we hang on to that. At the moment, people who have long-standing illnesses are 40 per cent less likely than others to take part in any sport. There are things that we can do to engage with those people.

“On Your Marks” says:

“If Scotland rises to the challenge of mass engagement and participation we will have done something no country has done before.”

We have to ask questions about Scotland and society. We have seen reports about inequality in Scotland. How do we develop “mass participation” in a society that is divided by class? One of my former lecturers from 30 years ago said to a panel in 2009 that that sort of language was far too ambitious: it was setting sportscotland up to fail and it was setting people up for disappointment. My worry is whether, given the political environment that we are in, we can talk about failure and things that do not work. Do we engage in impression management or in badging things as legacy when they are not really legacy?

To sustain participation, we have had to increase participation. More people are taking part than were taking part before, but there are more people in the population. That is an important point.

We need to keep talking about the benefits that the 900,000 people who are already members of sports clubs get. Yes, we want more people to get those benefits but, by continuing to invest in sport and physical activity, those people continue to get those preventative benefits. More people are playing and engaging with sport—and by “engaging” I mean volunteering, coaching and getting involved in officiating and any number of other areas. Our members report increases, as will others.

There is a lot in the branding of legacy. From an inclusion point of view, our members at Scottish Disability Sport would support a number of aspects of the legacy that have made a difference. I am conscious that we have not got to that area today but it is about an on-going commitment to legacy and recognising it as an investment, not a cost, as we have talked about previously.

On health inequalities and joint integration boards, we sit on the national strategic group for sport and physical activity and I know that there are discussions going on there with the Scottish Government and colleagues about where the opportunities are, so we are a small part of the work that is being done at a strategic level.

I will focus on the Commonwealth games and the benefit of the legacy for sport and physical activity. The event focused people’s minds, including, in some respects, the minds of members of this committee. Back in 2009, we established a sport and physical activity legacy plan, which we continue to monitor to this day—we will continue to monitor it for the next three to four years. We have seen a range of indicators—on volunteers, attendance and many of the things that Kim Atkinson mentioned—move in the right direction universally across Glasgow, which is a good thing.

More important, people have got together to think about how we maximise the sometimes inspirational impact of a milestone event such as the Commonwealth games, and how we get policy makers, agencies and researchers together to think about that and plan together. The Commonwealth games brought the research community together in Glasgow, with a forum set up for the universities. There has been a benefit in just asking people to be accountable for answering the question, “What has been the benefit of the Commonwealth games?” I think that there has been a benefit, but the event was good in itself because it focused people’s minds.

I thank everyone for a stimulating discussion. We could have gone on for some time.

11:35 Meeting suspended.  

11:40 On resuming—