Health, Social Care and Sport Committee

Meeting date: Tuesday, June 6, 2023

Official Report 736KB pdf

---

Female Participation in Sport and Physical Activity

The next item on our agenda is the final oral evidence session of our inquiry. I welcome Maree Todd, Minister for Social Care, Mental Wellbeing and Sport and Andrew Sinclair, head of the active Scotland division in the Scottish Government.

We will move straight to questions. Minister, what progress has been made towards introducing a national approach to increasing female participation in sports leadership and governance, as recommended by the “Levelling the Playing Field” report?

There has been a great deal of progress over the years. I am very pleased that recent data from the Scottish health survey shows a significant four percentage points increase in women meeting the UK chief medical officer’s recommended levels of activity: the level has gone up from 61 to 65 per cent and the gap between levels of participation by men and women is closing. However, although we are delighted that things are headed in the right direction, I do not think that any of us would want to be complacent. We have to continue to work to improve that situation.

There have been some brilliant leadership successes, particularly with younger women taking up opportunities for leadership in sport. Again, I am delighted to see that progress but we cannot be complacent. Although we are seeing more female athletes participating in sport, when it comes to sports governing bodies and the organisation of sport in general, we are not seeing that participation reflected in the boardroom, nor are we seeing the level of participation that we would like to see in the governance of sport, in terms of officials and things like that. So we have more work to do, but we have some good things to report.

Some of the issues that you reflected on there, minister, are issues and concerns that were raised by various stakeholders about women’s traditional role in care giving and how it can become a barrier to their becoming coaches or participating in governance in sport.

Another area that the committee has touched on is how women’s sport is portrayed in the media and the lack of reporting in print and on television, with some exceptions. I fully accept that there has been some improvement in broadcasting, particularly of women’s football. In the 2021-22 programme for government, a Scottish sports media summit was promised. Will you update us on what is happening with that and how the Government is trying to promote women’s sport to a wider audience, which, realistically, is done through the media or social media?

You will be aware that, between the pandemic and the challenges that we faced in balancing the budget last year, some tough decisions were made and we did not progress with some work that we had intended to do. It is still our aim to hold a media summit and to challenge some of the reporting around female participation in sport. There are challenges. Football is our national game and everybody loves it, but it probably gets more coverage than almost all the other sports put together. I think that you heard about some of that in your evidence.

The fact that women are playing football, and playing it successfully, means that they are now gaining some coverage, but that does not help to celebrate the successes of other sports. An athlete who is involved in judo gave evidence to you, but the football coverage does not help to give her sport the profile that it deserves. Let me tell you that we are very successful at judo in Scotland and we have some fantastic female athletes participating in that sport.

There are real challenges, although I think that there is a cultural change afoot. There has been some change, particularly with broadcast media—I must credit BBC Alba for its work bringing women’s sport to television. That is phenomenally important. Every year, we have a women and girls in sport week, and every time we are told just how important it is for people to see the roles that they want to be in:

“If you can’t see it, you can’t be it”.

That is vital. I am absolutely passionate about sport. I have not found a sport yet that I do not like. I would like to see coverage of a more diverse range of sports and, absolutely, a celebration of those female athletes who are challenging some of the stereotypes in society.

I am a passionate rugby fan. When I see some of the social media films that are brought out about the Scottish women’s rugby team, where they are lifting weights and are shown as really strong physical role models, that busts the myth about women in general. It is really important that more people see those things.

Thank you. Finally on this theme, have any decisions have been made regarding the future of the women and girls in sport advisory board? If that board were dissolved, what would take its place and how would the Scottish Government continue to progress towards gender equality in sport?

The board has made some great contributions and there are some absolutely phenomenal leaders and glass-ceiling busters in that group. I think that Dee Bradbury is in that group, so there is a female president of a tier-1 nation in rugby, which has not been replicated in the rest of the world. Scotland has some very powerful people in leadership roles in that collective. Andrew Sinclair might want to say more about the future of that group.

The group went into a slight hibernation during Covid, as much of our work did; however, it made some clear recommendations before Covid hit. We are taking those recommendations forward at the moment.

On the media summit that the minister mentioned, there has been some great progress around broadcasting of women’s sport. We have seen a number of highlights, including the Scotland national women’s team’s move to Hampden, record crowds at Scottish Women’s Premier League games and at the women’s six nations and live coverage of the Scottish netball team.

10:45  

However, the print media is still an issue, because the column inches that women’s sports get is not good enough. Often, the women’s news stories do not focus on their sporting performance but on something in their private life—what they have been up to, who they are married to and that kind of thing. Shifting that dial is what we are looking to achieve through the media summit, which we hope to hold by the end of this year.

We know that socioeconomic status is the biggest factor in whether people are involved in physical activity, but how can we ensure that funding is used where it is most needed and that inequalities are not further entrenched?

That is a real focus for the Government, and we have committed to double the funding for sport and physical activity in this parliamentary term. We are determined to focus that extra funding on tackling inequalities. You are absolutely right that there is pre-existing inequality in participation across the board.

Football, to give it credit as our national game, is the one sport where there is equal participation across all the socioeconomic groups. Every other sport favours the wealthy, so there is a socioeconomic divide for literally every other sport. How do we tackle and improve that? We are speaking to all the sports governing bodies about that. There are some amazing programmes in place. For example, Scottish Athletics is doing some great work going into communities where it would not normally operate and targeting those groups that might not naturally participate in athletics. That is gaining it participants from those particular areas of socioeconomic deprivation, but it is also gaining athletics a more ethnically diverse participant group. That is an example of specific work that can be done.

Socioeconomic issues should not be ignored. Women experience inequalities generally because of inequality in wealth, in power and in status—when I was the Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health, I used to talk about women experiencing health inequalities for those reasons. Women also experience inequalities in sport because they do not have as much money as men.

One of the basic things that we can do about that is to encourage those sports where money does not matter and make things such as participation in the daily mile integral to the school day in Scotland. That is a really important way to target absolutely everyone, so that boys and girls can participate in the same way. There are no economic barriers to participating in that activity every day.

We have 1,000 schools participating in the daily mile across 32 local authority areas, which is really good, but that is still only about half the children in Scotland—so about half of children are not doing the daily mile. It is just 15 minutes of exercise three times a week. I do my daily mile every day, let me be clear, but the recommendation is 15 minutes of exercise three times a week. For that, you get such a bang for your buck. You get measurable improvements in children’s fitness and a decrease in body mass index and body fat—all the physical changes—but you also get cognitive changes. Children are more able to learn, more confident, happier and calmer. The cognitive and mood impacts are huge for a very small investment in time and no money. It is about the most inclusive programme that we have for exercise in Scotland and we are pretty keen to expand it further. Everyone should do their daily mile.

I assume that that is very important at the present time, minister, given that we are living through a cost of living crisis.

Yes, absolutely. There are many barriers to participation in sport, including the need for kit and equipment. As, I think, the committee heard, not all sports are equal. For example, I looked at the evidence that you were given in an earlier meeting by that young female cricketer, who said that because of the equipment that is required for cricket, it tends to attract people who are from a wealthier socioeconomic background. There are many barriers to getting involved and we, as a Government, want to bust as many of them as we can.

One of the great programmes—there are so many brilliant programmes—involved Scottish Sports Futures collaborating with Sweaty Betty, which is a luxury brand of sportswear. It provided hundreds and hundreds of bras so that young women who might have been prevented from getting involved in sport and physical activity had the right equipment. A sports bra is a really expensive acquisition—it can cost £30 to £60 to buy one decent sports bra. That is an absolute barrier for many young people in relation to getting involved in sport, so that collaboration is really phenomenal. I love the fact that that particular group of young women were getting the most luxurious brand that you could imagine. They came up and met me in Inverness and we did some sport and exercise together; it is a fantastic way to open the conversation about the possible barriers.

The need for specialist kit is not the only barrier to participating in sport. As you have heard from witnesses throughout this inquiry, those young women spoke to me about the challenges of being involved with sport while they are menstruating and the challenges of the general societal pressure to look and to behave a certain way. Women’s bodies, including young women’s bodies, are pretty pass-comment-able—that is the phrase that I would use—so they face a lot of commentary when they do get involved in sport.

Having money for kit is not the only barrier, but it is certainly a significant one and just now, in a cost of living crisis, it can absolutely make the difference when it comes to some women being able to exercise and some women not being able to.

I know that the Scottish Government is looking at perhaps restricting alcohol advertising. How will you do that while making sure that it does not negatively affect funding for sport?

It is a really challenging area and that is an excellent question.

I am absolutely passionate about sport. I want sport to be well funded but I want sport to be healthy and inclusive. There are two groups who are particularly vulnerable to alcohol sponsorship and alcohol advertising. The first group are children—there was a very dismaying study a couple of years ago that looked at the Calcutta cup in 2020 and found that children saw an alcohol prompt every 12 seconds as they watched that match on television. The other group that is particularly affected is people who are in recovery; they are particularly susceptible to advertising.

I believe that we can strike a balance. We have to start from a place where we acknowledge how much alcohol harm there still is in Scotland. Over 1,000 people a year, or around 24 people a week, die of drinking alcohol in Scotland. Although we have made some progress in recent years, it is absolutely essential that we continue to make progress.

There is a perception that the people who are dying of alcohol are a distinct group that you can somehow target with your intervention. There is some truth in that—there is no doubt that the socioeconomic divide appears here as well. If you are living in poverty and drinking excessively, you are more likely to die than somebody who is wealthy and drinking excessively. However, alcohol and alcohol misuse and harm from alcohol know no bounds; we saw that over the course of the weekend, when a couple of colleagues spoke up. Miles Briggs and Monica Lennon, both of whom lost parents to alcohol, have spoken very powerfully about the stigma of alcohol dependence and misuse.

It is important for us to have those conversations about what we can do, at population level, that would shift the curve somewhat, so that fewer people find themselves in a situation where they are drinking hazardously. A discussion around sport sponsorship, promotion and advertising is a really important part of that national conversation.

To bring it back to women’s sport, Scottish Women’s Football has made a conscious decision and commitment to engage only in ethical sponsorship, which means avoiding alcohol and gambling firms. That is a good model and brings us back to the committee’s inquiry. It can be done, although I accept that Scottish sport is fishing in a fairly small sponsorship pool.

I will make a small plea to the Scottish Government that, if it is looking at reducing alcohol sponsorship, it takes some lessons from what has happened in Ireland, where there have been alcohol advertising bans. Some companies appear to be trying to get around the rules by advertising low or no-alcohol products that share the same or similar names, so they still get that brand recognition.

Good morning to the minister and to Andrew Sinclair. I will pick up on Evelyn Tweed’s questions about alcohol and alcohol advertising.

There are two big soft drinks companies, one of which supports the Olympic games and one of which seems to be in about all the mountain biking and soapbox racing in America. A lot of sponsorship money helps to support sport. However, I have been approached by people who say that those are health-harming products, and we have to consider that when we support sponsorship or advertising or are helping to get young women or any young people into sport. How do you feel about implementing restrictions on advertising for products that are not alcohol related, including soft drinks?

It is challenging, but there is precedent in that area. Tobacco—or certainly smoking—advertising has been restricted. Last year, I had the absolute privilege of meeting Billie Jean King, who talked about the Virginia Slims circuit, which was a big tennis tournament in America that was sponsored by a cigarette company. We have made strides in reducing the appearance of tobacco and smoking in sport.

Unusually, our sports minister in Scotland is part of the health department. I am a junior health minister, and I absolutely recognise the health benefits of sport and physical activity. The benefits are not just for physical health; they are for mental health, too. I am sure that we will get on to that.

It is really important to remember that when we consider how we fund sport. The challenge is in getting the balance correct. As Andy Sinclair has said with regard to getting access to sponsorship in Scotland, there is a relatively small pool of companies to fish in.

It is important that we consider those issues, particularly for those groups that are particularly susceptible to advertising, which are young people and people who are in recovery.

I have a final question. We will come on to the theme of children and young people later, but I am interested in evidence that we took last week. Basically, there was a plea for a review of the national performance framework in order for it to include specific outcomes related to the physical, mental and social benefits of sport and physical activity. Would the Government consider making a specific target for that as part of the national performance framework? Would that help us to refocus or focus further on the importance of physical activity and sport for physical and mental health and wellbeing?

11:00  

I certainly try to make that link all the time. I regularly talk about sport and its benefits for physical health, mental health and social health. I think that, since the pandemic, when we were all restricted from participating in physical activity and sport and found ourselves walking outdoors to socialise because that was the safest way to do that, there has been a general, population-level recognition of the benefits of physical activity and sport for social health. I would absolutely love it if Scotland became a nation that socialises through exercise.

Andy Sinclair might want to come in on the national outcomes in particular.

Physical activity features in the NPF, which talks about being healthy and active. Therefore, I feel that we are quite well represented in that space. We also have the active Scotland outcomes framework, which sits below that and which talks about our whole-systems approach to physical activity and how we implement things in Scotland. That is recognised by the World Health Organization as an exemplar, and it is probably part of the reason why we are bucking global trends in getting people more active in Scotland.

One point that came out quite strongly in a previous evidence session was that around 90 per cent of funding for sport in Scotland is channelled through local authorities. There is quite a highly disseminated model of funding. In that model, councils are faced with 80 per cent through central Government allocations and 20 per cent through council tax and charges.

There is a bit of pressure, to say the least, on council finances. Often, the first things to go are things that are seen as non-statutory service provisions. The focus is on areas such as social work and education, and things such as sport are seen as potentially less severe options when councils are looking to make savings or cuts.

What is your assessment of the impact of council finances on the provision of sport, particularly for women and girls and those kinds of specific facilities? What can you do to ameliorate that impact?

I think that everyone would acknowledge that we are in challenging financial times at the moment. Things are challenging for central Government—the Scottish Government—and for local government. This particular cost crisis has come on the back of over a decade of austerity politics, which has undoubtedly had an impact on our public services for more than 10 years. We therefore face a challenging situation.

The Scottish Government has not only maintained funding to local government; we have increased it in real terms, and we are very keen to continue to prioritise local government spending in our budgeting. We recognise how challenging things are. We all see that in the press at the moment. In particular, a small number of local authorities in Scotland are making decisions on the closures of particular individual facilities. Just last week, we had a debate in Parliament about the challenging situation that is faced by Perth and Kinross Council with regard to maintaining the Dewars facility. Thankfully, it has managed to maintain the funding for the Dewars facility, and it is secure for the next few months.

We are working with local government colleagues day in, day out to try to rise to meet that challenge and see what we can do to support them. Much of the current challenge is being precipitated by energy costs, so it is the energy-dense sports that use things such as swimming pools and ice rinks that are particularly struggling. Continuing to put pressure on the UK Government, which has many of the cost of energy levers, is an important strand of trying to tackle that particular challenge.

In the short term, things are challenging. In the medium term and the long term, there is work that we can do together to try to improve the estate so that there is less energy consumption in those facilities. That is not an overnight fix, but we have to do that. We have to make that transition anyway in order to meet our net zero targets. The Government is more than happy to work alongside local government on that.

I know that there is a contested space around real-terms cuts from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. I would not want to get into that debate, because I think that the focus should be on what we can do to highlight risks in the estate that you mentioned, for example. Could things such as investment in district heating networks or capital investments be targeted? If councils are making decisions that involve a risk to the future provision of sport facilities in Scotland, is there a mechanism by which that risk can be flagged, and potential mitigating measures—for example, capital investments or targeted investments—looked at with the Government? Could there be opportunities to look at best practice in other authorities that have been able to crowd in some external investment, or where sponsorship or entrepreneurial activity has ameliorated the impact?

I wonder whether there is potential for a more developed ecosystem of feedback in relation to local government dealing with challenging situations on the ground versus sharing best practice and measures that have worked better. Swimming pools, for example, are energy-intensive assets. Could there be ways of investing capital into them to reduce the revenue costs? Is there potential to develop something there?

We are doing quite a lot of work in that space already. Andy Sinclair will probably want to come in and tell you a bit more about the work that sportscotland is doing with local authority colleagues on the sporting estate nationally, to try to take a strategic view about where investment will have the most impact. We are working very closely with our local authority colleagues on that. I absolutely empathise with how tough a situation they are in. We are in a tough situation too, and difficult decisions are being made. It is a really difficult time to be in politics.

We have very open and candid channels of communication and support available. What we do not have is a limitless pot of money to help out in such situations. That is challenging for all of us. There are no easy short-term solutions in the situation that we face. In the longer term, we can certainly work to get the estate on to a better footing.

To give some comfort, we speak regularly with local authorities and Community Leisure UK, which is the umbrella body for leisure trusts, to understand the position, which we recognise is incredibly challenging.

As the minister mentioned, sportscotland is commencing a full facilities review for Scotland to understand the condition of the estate as regards physical activity infrastructure. The pressure on local authorities means that they need to think about doing three things: reducing opening hours to cut costs, putting up prices for people—we have spoken about the challenges that that would present regarding inequalities—and closing facilities.

Swimming pools are a prime example. Swimming pools that were built in the 1970s will never be energy efficient. If a local authority does a proper consultation process, there could be facilities that could be used in a different way. As we know, local authorities have a requirement to provide adequate facilities—that is the only requirement on them. There is no clear definition of “adequate”, so, as long as there is genuine engagement between local authorities and the people who live in those areas, they can, I hope, come up with a solution.

When we had our witnesses in last week, Kim Atkinson queried how local authorities are held accountable for their investment in sport, given that, as Paul Sweeney has said, quite a substantial amount of the money that is put out by the Scottish Government for sport goes through local authorities. I have seen the price increases in my area, which caused a huge outcry. There was a 114 per cent increase for children and young people through a change to the discount that they had to access sporting facilities.

I appreciate that we want local authorities to be as autonomous as possible, and the Scottish Government walks a very fine line in that regard, but, given the impact that some of those price increases and closures might have, particularly on children and young people, is there more that the Scottish Government can do to ensure that the money gets to where it should be going?

That is a really difficult and challenging area. Local government is democratically accountable to the populations that it serves, and it is not the Scottish Government’s role to oversee its spending decisions. There must be locally accountable decision making.

Paul Sweeney mentioned how much of the budget is already ring fenced. I think that ring fencing more of it would not be welcome. To be honest, over the course of the pandemic, we have worked really closely with local authority partners. We rose to face an incredibly challenging time for our nation together, and we navigated the challenges together.

There is keenness on both sides—the Scottish Government and COSLA—to continue that positive working relationship. Although everybody acknowledges that challenging decisions will have to be made on both sides—local authorities might contest some of the spending decisions that we make, and we might contest some of the spending decisions that they make—there is absolutely room for respect on both sides and working together to collaboratively find a way forward in this really challenging time.

We move on to questions from James Dornan, who joins us remotely.

Good morning. It is 10 years since Maureen McGonigle, Alison Walker and I began Scottish Women in Sport under Maureen’s leadership. One thing that was of real interest to us at that point was how girls’ physical activity dropped off at a certain age, but I see that the current position is pretty much the same. How do you address that? What action can you take to ensure that girls feel safe and welcome to participate in physical activity and school play areas?

You are absolutely correct, James. That drop-off around puberty is well recognised and it is a long-established pattern. It is a challenging situation to shift. For children, we see a difference in participation that becomes statistically significant only between the ages of 13 and 15. Although boys participate more than girls, that does not become statistically significant until puberty. We see that difference continue throughout life. The reduction in participation is not permanent. Girls’ physical activity drops off at puberty, as does boys’ physical activity, but they re-engage at future points.

For women and girls, there will be expectations around caring roles from a very early age. There are challenges when girls hit puberty, because of the changes in their bodies. On my daily mile this morning, I was reflecting on the difference in my body confidence at age 50 compared with age 15, and I think that everyone would recognise such differences.

There are challenges for girls as they come of age in a gendered society such as the one that we live in at the moment. There are expectations with regard to body conformation and there is discomfort about menstruation. On the radio this morning, I heard a triathlete, Emma Pallant-Browne, talking about a photograph that she had posted of herself running with a bloodstained swimsuit. Menstruation is still taboo and body hair is still taboo. There are all sorts of reasons why girls stop exercising as we hit puberty.

It is a challenging issue to get into, but I think that we are in a healthier space than we have ever been in with regard to the debate that is occurring. There are particular programmes and other things that will help, including women and girls-only spaces. With regard to communal changing spaces, I note that women tend to have a preference for privacy, so changing the changing rooms so that it is possible for women and girls to change privately rather than in a communal space will help.

However, there is massive societal pressure and it will take time. We must not underestimate the societal pressure on women and girls to look a certain way, which we feel most strongly at the stage of life between the ages of 11 and 15.

11:15  

Yes. Being a grandfather—my granddaughter is now beyond that stage, thankfully, and is not having to go through all those worries—I understand what it is like at that age.

The issue came up for us 10 years ago but, 10 years on, we have almost exactly the same issues. What do society, the Government and those who are involved in sport and education need to do to try to ease the burden for young women at those ages?

I agree that it is frustrating that it has been 10 years. However, if you think about the taboo around menstrual blood, that has been in place for millennia. The idea that we could overturn some of the taboos and the challenges that women face around participation overnight is, frankly, wrong.

We are now having some really good conversations. I have never before known a time in my life when elite athletes have talked openly about issues such as menstruation, contraception, pregnancy and sport or menopause and sport. It is really healthy that this debate is finally happening.

In the same way that we have seen women’s health understudied, we have seen women’s participation in sport understudied. Historically, there has not been an understanding of the influence that our different physiology has on performance sport, for example, because that has not been looked at. First, women have participated less in sport. Secondly, we have been studied less, as we have been studied less in medicine.

There is now a great deal more understanding of those issues. Sportscotland is doing some particular work in the elite performance athlete field, which is really helpful. There are better conversations going on and there is more understanding and tackling of the barriers. However, it would be foolish to imagine that there is just one thing that would unlock sport and physical activity for women and girls. There are multiple barriers. As I said earlier, a sports bra is a pretty essential piece of kit and the fact that it can cost £30 to £60 is a barrier that many women and girls will not be able to overcome as they hit puberty.

I look forward to receiving a further report in the future and seeing how well we are getting on with this. Thank you.

I want to pick up on the sports bra issue. Yesterday, I visited Wallace Hall academy and I spoke to five young women—Mika, Fern, Zena, Michaela and Daisy. They are all sixth-year students or thereabouts and they all participate in rugby and running. They love all sports. They are absolutely confident, informed and empowered, but they recognise that not all young women of their age are confident or empowered to speak up about their periods or about the need for a sports bra.

An interesting thing that they spoke about was that the school has purchased for year 1 students a specific sports uniform for physical education. That has helped with equalities and acted as a leveller, because the kids come from different primary schools and it is a way to engage them all on—literally—a level playing field. I would be interested to know whether you think that we need to look at the availability of sports bras, for instance, and sports uniforms as part of the Government’s uniform policy.

Absolutely—that is a really good idea. We have committed to introducing during the current session of Parliament statutory guidelines for schools on increasing the use of generic items of uniform, and we have a lot of focus on reducing the cost of the school day. We have consulted on guidelines on school uniform and clothing. We engaged with pupils and undertook a public consultation. We are analysing the responses and our report summarising the findings will be published soon—pretty much around now, I would have thought. The costs of school uniform and of clothing and equipment for physical activity and sport come into it, and there will definitely be a focus on trying to reduce costs for families.

I think that looking at breast care is a really important part of that. It is definitely one of the reasons why there is a drop-off in participation. As we have discussed, there are lots of reasons, but that is one of them. Seeing what we can do to engage with that and improve the situation is really important.

Another thing that the young women raised was that the boys who they play rugby or sport with or who are on the field at the same time as them are sometimes a bit sexist and misogynistic. I mentioned to the principal teacher, Barry Graham, the “Don’t Be That Guy” campaign, which is quite hard hitting because it is about harassment, sexual assault and sexual violence. He is going to take a look at that campaign, but is there room for something else that might not be as hard hitting, such as an equivalent campaign for teenage lads?

That is definitely an important area to acknowledge. We live in a gender-stereotyped world where girls and women are expected to look and behave in a certain way and to conform to certain roles. There is no doubt at all that, as children grow up and reach puberty, they experiment and find out who their tribe is, and they test out and explore the world that they live in. Part of that can absolutely involve thinking that women’s bodies are pass-comment-able. That is the term that I use; I hope that it is okay to use it here. We face that all the time. Each and every female in this room will have had times when people have passed comment on their appearance.

It is particularly difficult for teenage girls. I hear all the time that boys’ comments are a barrier to their participation. Education can help to tackle that, but we have to recognise that—as with other societal challenges such as racism—the existence of sexism and misogyny in sport reflects society. We live in a world where those things are a reality, so some of that will be reflected in sport.

However, I firmly believe that sport can lead the way on changing that culture. I believe that there are some positives that sport can lead on in shifting the culture. It is important that we harness sport’s power to tackle some of those societal ills. As well as looking at education in schools, we can look at role models in sport and at grass-roots projects that might tackle some of those issues. That is a really important part of the work.

My final question is about the variety of sports that schools offer. It came up in the conversations that I had that, during the summer sports day, there were shot put and javelin events and a mixed-gender 400m relay, but also a tug of war. Not everybody wants to win a gold medal; some folk just want to participate and have a bit of fun, so Wallace Hall academy has implemented that. Can the Scottish Government do something to increase the variety of sports, taking on board the good practice in some schools, in order to get everybody not just competing but participating?

I will let Andrew Sinclair comment on that as well, but that tension has always existed. There is a difference between elite sport and social or recreational sport. As a Government, we want to encourage participation across the board. I could sing the praises of sport morning, noon and night, given its benefits for physical, mental and social health. We want everyone to have access to it. If it was a pill, it would be worth billions, would it not? We want to increase participation. One way to do that is to take away the barriers and another is to offer a diversity of experience, which means a diversity of sports.

Sometimes—there might be a gender difference in this regard, although I am not sure whether it is just a perception—there are different levels of appetite for competition, and there are definitely occasions when participating just for the joy of it is really important.

Scottish Gymnastics sees itself as a feeder for all other sports. Participation in gymnastics is particularly gendered, with a very high number of girls and women participating. They often go on to other sports, but gymnastics is where they gain their physical literacy. Only a small number of people go on to compete as gymnasts, but people very often use the skills that they picked up as youngsters in that sport when they take part in other sports.

We watched the Olympic games with a lot of interest last time they were on, and there were brand-new cycling events that captured the imagination of the world, such as BMX events. Exciting innovations are happening in sport, and new kinds of competition have come along. We are going to host the Union Cycliste Internationale—UCI—world championships in Scotland later this year, and I cannot wait to see football on a bike and gymnastics on a bike. There are really interesting innovations going on and I passionately believe that there is a sport out there for everyone.

I joke that I got into rugby because I was a bit clumsy. I banged into people often and fell over quite easily and I found a sport where those characteristics were an asset to me. Admittedly, I have always participated in social sports. I was never going to be an elite athlete. I trained hard and I played hard, but it was only ever going to be a social or recreational experience. Everybody should have that.

As I mentioned, on my daily mile this morning I reflected on my journey to the body confidence that I now have at the age of 50, and participating in rugby was a big part of that. I recognised that my body could do things that I never imagined it could do; it is really strong and I can knock down people who are much faster than me. We need to recognise that there are sports out there for every single body shape, because that is powerful. We need to broaden everyone’s horizons, get everyone participating and give them loads of opportunities.

A number of members of the committee were at the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Scottish Football Association that was held in Parliament last week. At that event, we heard from Sam Milne, who talked about starting a recreational football group. She talked about a lassie called Farrah Mackenzie who came along to play recreational football. She was not competitive at all but just wanted to do social sport. Sam and Farrah talked powerfully about the camaraderie and the social benefits of football, but also about the physical and mental health benefits. Farrah spoke about losing 6 stone. She had been a type 2 diabetic who was on the brink of going on to insulin, but participating in recreational football pushed that back for her.

Let us ensure that there are as many opportunities as possible for absolutely everybody to participate in sport and physical activity. We need some competitive opportunities. I am not dismissing the elite athletes among us, who need competition. Some people who play recreational football said that they have begun to enjoy competition and they gather together once a month to have football games so that there is an opportunity for that. However, I want participation. I want us to move more, to enjoy our bodies, to be fitter and stronger physically and mentally, and to get all the social benefits that those things bring.

11:30  

I add that we have about 200 community sport hubs across the country, many of which are based in schools, and they offer a range of activities. Over the past few years, sporting disciplines have become good at sharing participants and there is not as much competition between sports. For example, a club might say, “If football isn’t for you, you could try badminton. There’s also a club here.” That approach is giving young people in particular a range of activities to try out, which is positive.

As an aside, I note that the Scottish Tug of War Association is the smallest governing body in Scotland that we invest in. It does some good work.

Active schools co-ordinators are good at collaborating with the assets that already exist in the community and they make those links between the sports clubs in each local area. I know that Emma Harper’s part of the country is big on curling and ice sports, and my part of the country is big on shinty. We need to think about making links between the sports that are already being played in communities in order to give children and young people opportunities to join with assets that are already there. That is an important part of getting it right.

Curling is good for people who are in wheelchairs, too.

Curling is spectacular. I had a marvellous visit to Inverness ice rink, where I met a group of curlers. The sport nearly finished me off—you will remember that I said that I am a bit clumsy. [Laughter.] I did not find it easy, but there was such a supportive bunch of people and so many of them had stories to tell. Some were lifelong participants in the sport, whereas others had come to it very late.

Curling seems to be easy for older women, in particular, to get involved in. A couple of women spoke about having been widowed and said that their friends had invited them to come along. It is unbelievably social. Those women were pretty competitive, too. It was also a workout—I was sore for days afterwards. The advantages are endless.

We move to our next theme, which is sport and physical activity in the community.

We have already touched a wee bit on community sport in our discussion on leisure centres, and I am interested in some of the questions that we have asked other witnesses about how we try to engage women.

There are three main difficulties in that respect, the first of which is safety and going to and from venues, particularly if there are no local activities for young women. The second is childcare facilities at sports and leisure centres. Have you had any thoughts about that? Thirdly, there is use of the school estate, which has been raised not just recently but in the committee’s previous discussions about sport. It is an important point that we keep coming back to. What work have you done—or do you intend to do—on that issue?

There is no doubt that what you have highlighted are challenges to women’s participation in sport. Safety—and safe transport to and from sporting venues—is an issue, particularly during the long, dark winters that we have in Scotland, when not everyone feels comfortable being out and about at night. Frankly, some of our environments are not safe for women. Again, that is something that every woman makes decisions about every day. It is the reality of our lives: we make decisions about how much risk we are willing to take and make compromises as a result.

Designing communities with good active transport links to sporting hubs is therefore important. A couple of weeks ago, I opened the phenomenal West Lothian Cycle Circuit, which is linked to active transport routes, is well lit and has been beautifully made so that you can cycle to the track from many parts of the surrounding community.

It is important that we think about those sorts of things, including public transport. In my part of the country, and where I live now, public transport barely exists at all; indeed, where I used to live in the east of the Highlands, public transport tended to stop at a certain time of night. These are undoubtedly challenges and barriers for women, and we need to think about them by designing public transport systems that are accessible to and safe for women and by ensuring that communities are well lit and well designed.

I saw the evidence from one of the committee’s earlier witnesses about the fact that women feel more comfortable and safer walking in overlooked places—say, where there are lots of windows looking out onto a path. It is not always obvious what makes the difference, but we need to do more research and ensure that our communities are safe for women.

Childcare and caring in general are really important issues, too. I have been encouraging many sports to think about opportunities to link up. Given that women do a lot of children’s activities and organise a lot of aspects of children’s lives, we need to provide opportunities for women to participate in sport while their children are doing the same. I remember very well what the first captain of the Orkney Rugby Football Club ladies said about her journey into rugby. She was a rugby mum who had to hang about while her wee boy was at training and just thought, “How about we start training ourselves?” Within two or three years, that women’s team was picking up silverware—they were pretty phenomenal at rugby. Giving women opportunities to train while their children are training is important.

Jogscotland does a lot of that. I participated in a jogscotland group when my kids were really tiny; I could drop my children off at nursery and go for a jog with an inspirational group that was mixed gender, but mainly women, as it was during the day. There were some outstanding older women in that group who gave me, as a young mum feeling very out of condition, a lot of inspiration about the potential for lifelong participation.

There are some real opportunities for collaboration to provide—in that first postnatal year, for example—yoga and exercises that are focused on pelvic health. That would be a win-win. Encouraging more of that, with babies coming along, too, would be a really important way of encouraging women to exercise.

As for the school estate, we have, again, lots of policies in place to enable its use, and it is seeing lots of use. More could happen and we could go further, but we have made a great deal of progress in the past years. We have had a challenging few years with the pandemic, with safety and prevention of infectious diseases at the forefront of people’s minds. Trying to limit the number of people who access the school estate in a day has been challenging, and that situation has been slow to recover, post pandemic, but we are making progress.

I do not have too much to add. As the minister has said, the general principle of the learning estate strategy from the Scottish Government is that community facilities should be open to the community. It has been a while since we have done any research on that; I think that 2014 was the last time that sportscotland did a formal study, but it speaks regularly to local authorities and raises the school estate as a continual issue. In many cases, it comes down to scheduling more than facilities not being open but, again, it is just a case of working through all those challenges.

It is a point that has been well made before—the estate is open but it is not being accessed. Do you have any insight into why that might be? Has the Government had feedback on that?

It is definitely a difficult question, because, on the face of it, the estate seems to be open—the gates are unlocked—but we need to work with local authorities and governing bodies in particular to ensure that the scheduling is right. Schools quite rightly use the facilities during the day, but as soon as the school day finishes, the facilities should be available for communities. We just need to work through the issues.

I move to Gillian Mackay for questions on our next theme.

How do we ensure that an intersectional approach is taken to improving participation in sport and physical activity, including the participation of people with disabilities, the LGBTQ community and other marginalised and underrepresented groups?

You are absolutely right to raise the issue. There is already general concern about each of those groups and the women and girls who fall into those individual categories. Undoubtedly, the barriers are greater for those who are in more than one group.

A group that particularly challenges me is people with disabilities, and I would love to see more participation from—and more opportunities for—that group across the board. When I went to a disability sport festival in Dingwall, I was so impressed by the work that was going on to target inclusion. That was probably over a year ago, so it was at a time when we were still feeling pretty cautious about the pandemic. Many of that group of participants had spent a lot of the pandemic being very isolated and very vulnerable, and it was really joyous to see them participating in sport, sometimes with siblings, as they might never get a chance to play those games or do that sport together in the way that other siblings do.

Some really important work is going on, and it is bearing some fruit, but we could do more. Last year, sportscotland’s young people’s sports panel ran a very powerful course that challenged us all to reflect on what adaptations we could make to encourage the participation of people with disabilities. When I speak to people participating in sport who have disabilities, almost all of them talk about how challenging it was to get involved in school; they were told to sit at the side in PE classes. As those education sessions amply demonstrated, it is really easy to make adaptations that enable everybody to be included, and my plea is for every possible opportunity to encourage inclusion and participation to be taken.

I can highlight some great examples. Recently, I went to a badminton club run by a coach called Rajani Tyagi, who had won a prize as sportscotland community coach of the year—or something like that; I have probably got the title of the award wrong, so apologies to Rajani if I have. She had done some fabulous work on encouraging participation by the black, Asian and minority ethnic community. It was just the basic things that you would expect, and what she was doing was spread by word of mouth. She targeted people; she made sure that they had a safe environment to come along to; and she held sessions at times that suited people. They were at 8 o’clock at night, which would have been quite late for me to be running around playing badminton, but it worked, because many of the people involved had caring responsibilities and it was a time of night when they were freed from those responsibilities and could participate.

It is just basic: you ask the community that you are targeting what would work for them, then you do it and you reach out. Rajani had a thriving badminton club, and she had done quite a lot of work on cricket as a way of targeting BAME participation. Some really powerful work was going on.

As for the LGBTQ+ community and homophobia in sport, I think that the committee has heard from earlier commentators that women’s sport has traditionally been quite a safe space; it has been inclusive and welcoming to everyone. We really need to be proud of and hang on to that as we go forward. Clearly, there is a debate to be had about trans participation in sport, and some challenging conversations are taking place on that issue, but I again make the plea that we focus on inclusion where possible, recognising just how important the benefits that everyone gets from participating in sport are.

Each of the communities that we have talked about will face marginalisation and challenging health outcomes, and sport can be part of the answer. We therefore really need to make sure that we consider inclusion, where possible. As I have said, women’s sport has had a relatively healthy attitude to earlier discussions in previous times, and we need to hang on to that.

11:45  

Absolutely. As someone who, like yourself, found rugby because it is easier to stop things than it is to run quickly, I am interested in how we include people with hidden disabilities who might not end up qualifying for the disability sport side of things and instead end up in more mainstream sporting activities. Speaking as someone who has misjudged how quickly an opponent was coming at me and missed several tackles due to my hidden disability, I think that this is about how we make those environments welcoming and change some of that culture.

You have mentioned PE, and we also need to tackle the issue of children with hidden disabilities being ridiculed, say, for how many times they miss catching a ball. What work is the Government undertaking to improve the visibility of disabled people in sport, including those with hidden disabilities?

Many of the sports are doing a lot of work on that themselves, and rugby is an excellent example of that. I am pretty sure that, as a fellow participant in the Parliament rugby team, Sandesh Gulhane will be able to contribute here, but each year we play an inclusive team, which I think is called Clan Rugby. Some of that team have hidden disabilities and some have less hidden, but the roles are adapted so that everybody can play together. It is absolutely fantastic.

Wheelchair rugby is also hugely inclusive. It is a game that men and women often play together, in mixed teams. I have a Twitter pal—I do not know her in real life; I have met her in real life, but we are mainly friends on social media—who is desperately trying to get me to go along to wheelchair rugby training on a Wednesday night. It has been a revelation for her. She has very severe asthma and has been prohibited from participating in conventional sport, but wheelchair rugby has given her the opportunity to participate again. There are ways of adapting sports so that everybody can be included.

One of the people who got a coaching prize at last year’s awards ceremony was a lady from the north-east—I do not know whether you remember her name—who does inclusive swimming coaching. She was just phenomenal; she was an absolute power who reached out to people to get them involved in her sport and who made sure that they could achieve their best potential.

There are loads of challenges and barriers, but some really incredible work is going on out there. I come back to the point about default settings and inclusion: we have to ensure that everybody can experience the benefits of participating.

Sandesh Gulhane might want to comment on the rugby.

The one thing that I would never be brave enough to do is wheelchair rugby—that is quite scary.

I would like to ask questions around ethnicity in women’s sport. Minister, you have spoken about how participation drops off, but that is even more acute when it comes to ethnicity. You gave a very good badminton example of a way to engage with the community.

However, my first question is about information and data, because every single time that we have had someone in front of the committee, I have asked them what data they have around ethnicity and very few of them have come back and said that they have good data around that. Is that an issue?

It has certainly been a challenge in the past. I think that we have improved our data collection over the past few years; I will let Andy Sinclair give a fuller answer on how we have gone about doing that. However, certainly from a Government perspective, we are looking for ethnicity data as well as physical activity data in our household survey.

In relation to the data that sports governing bodies collect, we are doing a little bit better than we did in the past, when there was no data; we saw that in relation to health as well as physical activity. It was not really until the pandemic that we went out and routinely collected data that gave us the level of detail that we would like about ethnicity. Although anecdotally there were a lot of concerns about particular ethnic groups participating or not participating in the vaccine programme, we did not know the details until we got the data, so data is really important.

There is a balance to be struck around data collection—I will let Andy Sinclair tell you a little bit more.

As the minister said, we have quite good national data through our national surveys—the health survey and the household survey provide us with a good level of understanding around ethnicity and participation. Sportscotland collects a lot of good information, particularly around its major programmes such as the active schools programme. It used to really just look at participation stats but now looks a lot more deeply at participants: who they are, where they come from and what they are getting out of the experience of active schools. Although the data is probably incomplete in some places, it is a lot better.

Again, there is a balancing act around how much to ask. We have heard in previous evidence sessions that sport relies a lot on volunteers and there is only so much that you can ask them to do in a participant session. You almost start creating false barriers when you ask for too much data to be collected, both for the volunteer coach and for the participant who may not be keen to share that information. There is definitely a bit of a barrier there around data collection, especially when you are dealing with volunteers who are just looking to put on a sports session, not fill in 10 forms.

The data that we collect through our national programmes, through the Government and through sportscotland, is not bad—it is pretty good—but with some of the community-led, volunteer-led activity, we appreciate that there are some gaps.

Certainly, at that community level, it is difficult to gather data and I appreciate that. However, when an organisation is putting on organised events, I feel that it needs to think about data—it needs to think about what it has got. The reason why I asked the question is that if you do not have good data and you have a huge drop-off in participation in relation to ethnicity, you will not know why there has been that drop-off. If you do not know why, how can you possibly fix it?

You spoke about the household survey and other ways that you are gathering data—also, the organisations that we have spoken to have all said that they are looking to improve that data. Once we get the data, will you centralise it? There is no point in having the data if it does not undergo some form of research, so what research will you put in place to really try to drill down and find out why people of different ethnicities are not participating further, as we would have hoped that they would?

Individual sports governing bodies are looking at that question to varying degrees. They want more participation, so it is absolutely in their interests to ask those questions and to pursue the answers. I do not think that the answer will be the same for every sport. It is also difficult to generalise about different ethnicities. Rajani Tyagi, the badminton coach whom I mentioned earlier, initially was largely targeting Muslim women’s participation, but a whole variety of people of different ethnicities were coming along. What she had done was create a safe space for people of different ethnicities to participate in sport.

There are all sorts of barriers—for example, certain religions might have rules around modesty or clothing, but not all of them do. Therefore, once you get the data, you need to ask in a sensitive way what the barriers are for people and try to take them away. As I said, participation is key; we are dead keen to improve participation and all the sports governing bodies will be trying to do that.

A lot of sports governing bodies that appeared in front of the committee do not have the data and said that they are looking for it, so once we have that data, will it be centralised or, if you will not have an entire database, will you at least be able to access it in order to do research on it?

We will certainly be able to interrogate it to an extent with the individual sports governing bodies. However, as I said, it is a challenging area in which to coalesce all that data and to draw conclusions, because there are so many individual aspects to the sport and to the ethnicity. It is really important that we do not make assumptions, but I am absolutely open to conversations about how we improve BAME participation. There are all sorts of immense programmes around the country that are trying to do that, so it is really important that we have the data to support them and to support investment to tackle some of the exclusion that is apparent.

I will just add that, as part of our national governing structures, we have a data and evidence group that has BAME partners from across Scotland. We can definitely take that away and look at it in more detail.

A theme that has come up in many previous evidence sessions is income inequality and the fact that it prevents access to sports, especially, as was mentioned earlier, when the sport is particularly expensive to access in terms of transport, facilities, costs and equipment. What active steps is the Government taking to provide support in that regard, whether it is in the form of grants or loans for equipment or, potentially, even looking at things such as kit libraries? Is the Government looking to promote any particular measures to address income inequality as a measure of access?

At the moment, one of the Government’s core missions is tackling poverty, particularly child poverty. It is recognised that poverty impacts all of people’s life opportunities, and participation in sport and physical activity is just one of the areas on which it impacts. It is important that we do not lose sight of that whole-system approach and the fact that, instead of just thinking about ways to fix a problem—such as getting access to sports bras for young people—we must also think about the bigger picture and how on earth we can tackle poverty and make a difference on that. That is a really important thing for us to do.

There are really good programmes that provide kit libraries. Again, the young people’s sport panel came up with some brilliant work on that. That is being led by young people who have volunteered for leadership roles in sport and been supported by sportscotland to develop ideas and projects. A kit library is one of the ideas that they were working on, so that people could access and share good-quality items of kit. We need that work to happen at scale all around the country, because there is absolutely no doubt that it is a barrier to participation.

One of the challenges with regard to participation in sport is that, if you are working three jobs and struggling to keep your head above water, it is very hard to get involved in leisure and recreation activities. Therefore, it is not just about the costs but how tough people’s lives are as they battle day in, day out, with an acute cost of living crisis, which is what we are experiencing right now. That makes life very hard for people.

That is a big challenge for the Government, and we are seeing huge efforts on that across the board. Yesterday, we saw statistics about the level of poverty being experienced by children. In Scotland, 24 per cent of children are living in poverty, but the figure for the rest of the UK is 29 per cent, so we are seeing huge efforts and some benefit, but it is not good enough. We need to do more, because living in poverty is all-consuming. It is hard to think about anything else if you are struggling to access food, heat and shelter.

That is a fair point. I come from a low-income background, and one of the things that I did as a kid was swimming lessons because they were free, so my mum was able to take me to the local swimming baths.

12:00  

Earlier, we mentioned the cost pressures that people face. Free swimming is an increasingly scarce opportunity for young people, but statistics from Scottish Swimming show that 60 per cent of swimmers are female and that it is the top participation sport for people with a disability, so it is an obvious community-based facility that is accessible at a relatively low cost—for equipment required, and so on. However, councils have reported an increase of 90 per cent in electricity costs and a 200 per cent increase in gas costs.

In England, they have introduced a swimming pool support fund to the tune of £60 million, of which £40 million is for capital investment and £20 million is in revenue grants. Are there plans to introduce similar relief in Scotland to try to maintain access to swimming pools? Perhaps it could be conditional on providing things such as free access to young people.

As I said, conversations are going on between us and local authority partners about how we can ensure that we are able to invest in the estate in a strategic way to ensure that participation is maximised.

The challenge is that we will have consequentials from the allocation—I think that we get about £6 million in consequentials from the spend that came from that Westminster decision for England—but it goes into the block grant and the general allocation of our budget. Just because it was spent on swimming and swimming pools in England does not necessarily mean that it will be spent on swimming and swimming pools in Scotland.

We make all sorts of different decisions, not least the decision to fund the Scottish child payment, which is a uniquely Scottish benefit. It is game changing—as commentators tell us—and is clearly having an impact on the level of poverty that is experienced by children and young people in Scotland.

We will work hard with local authority colleagues to try to see what can be done, but it is certainly not automatic that because the decision was made in Westminster to invest in swimming pools we will make the same decision in Scotland. The Scottish child payment is a classic example of a different decision that we made in Scotland that is making a difference in the same area.

I accept that there are opportunities to do things differently here, and that it might not be necessary to automatically read it across, but would you say that there is a reasonable and pretty decent business case to ensure that there is targeted discrete support for—in this instance—swimming pools? It is an obvious opportunity. Whether it is designed in the same way as in England is secondary to identifying the threat to such facilities and addressing it specifically.

Absolutely and, as I said, a lot of work is already on-going in collaboration across the board with sportscotland and local government colleagues to try to ensure that the sporting estate has adequate investment, and so that we can continue to support it. Swimming is a fantastic example of a very inclusive sport that is a brilliant life skill. Learning to swim—something that is so frightening—and succeeding at it is a brilliant educational experience, and I absolutely would not argue against investment in swimming. We have a lot of work going on to ensure that children at school can experience swimming lessons, but we are in difficult financial times and we are going to have to keep working together to ensure security for the future.

Thank you very much, minister, and Andrew Sinclair, for your participation. It is very much appreciated.

At our meeting next week, we will hold stage 2 proceedings for the Patient Safety Commissioner for Scotland Bill. That concludes the public part of today’s meeting.

12:04 Meeting continued in private until 12:37.